The End -- Yea! Finally! -- Of White Christian America
For the cheap seats, no, we are not celebrating the end of America…
...or the end of Christianity…
...or the end of white people…
But we are celebrating the soon to arrive end of white [cultural] Christian [male] supremacy in the US.
I spell things out in brackets because unlike those on the opposite side of this issue, I want to be precise and concise in what I’m talking about.
It’s impossible for even the most woke white folk to fully grasp how pervasive white supremacy is in this culture.
Even when we (i.e., white people) recognize it exists and even when we take steps to avoid flaunting it and even when we speak up as allies for non-white people who are discriminated again…
…we never truly get it.
This is not to say our meager efforts are unappreciated or for naught, but it means we are so frickin’ close to the problem that it’s damn near impossible to recognize the problem at all.
It’s like standing at the very base of the Statue of Liberty and looking straight up.
If you’re lucky, you might be standing in a spot where you can recognize you’re looking at the underside of a giant sandal, but anywhere else and all you get is a sense of a great green mass looming above you.
Only when you step back and get some distance do you realize the Statue for what it is.
Same thing with white [cultural] Christian [male] supremacy in the US.
As white cultural Christians the best we can hope for is to recognize there’s a giant heel looming above us, and that somehow it’s connected with something much bigger that we can’t completely grasp from our perspective.
Mind you, that’s a good start, and one to be encouraged.
But it’s not the end of the game.
Several things are all changing simultaneously right now, and these changes will collapse white dominance in this country.
And that’s a good thing, mind you.
Even if -- no, especially if you’re a white [cultural] Christian [male].
We’ve gone over the origin of the problem often enough: The United States of America was founded (for the most part) by desperate Anglo colonists trying to generate wealth for absentee Anglo landlords as fast as possible.
The continent was virtually empty thanks to a plague that wiped out 90-98% of the native population.
The native population was treated as sub-human savages, and were allowed to be misused with impunity by the colonial then US government/s.
When the Anglo colonists began dying off too quickly, enslaved African labor was imported.
These people and their descendants were also treated as sub-human, and systematically denied rights for centuries (and when rights and freedom were finally granted them, new laws were enacted to deprive them of same).
Women -- even Christian Anglo women -- were denied equal rights under law.
Hispanic and Latin inhabitants of the American West became second class citizens at best when US expansion took territory from Mexico.
Asian workers imported for labor were denied the right to become citizens of this country no matter how many generations were born and raised here.
And when the cultural Christians couldn’t outright ban any religious expression they didn’t like, they could make damned sure that only their favored form was used for all public displays of faith.
It was a white man’s world, and even after laws changed to permit women and non-whites and non-Christians a sot at equality, it was still geared for men.
Look at the advertising.
I do.
For centuries the advertising norm in this country has been what makes white men happy.
Yeah, there were always exceptions for specific niche markets, but by and large the focus was on what had father-husband happy when he came home.
And it was always a white home, or if non-white, then an ethnic home desperately hoping to imitate the white norm.
The whole flippin’ culture was like this, from top to bottom.
We can’t say it was unexpected.
Indeed, our culture had been established to put white Christian males at the apex of the power pyramid. Even without official edict, it was designed To represent them as the apex of society, the most desirable status one could obtain.
It was bullshit, of course, but it was bullshit supported by a majority of the people, so screw those to whom it didn’t apply.
But the times -- and the cultural demographics -- are a’changin’.
Whiteness defines itself by whom it excludes.
And by refusing to acknowledge their children with ethnic partners as white, white people consistently and relentlessly reduced their own numbers.
We’re thirty years away -- a mere generation -- from 2048, the year demographics overtake whiteness and being a white person no longer means you’re part of the majority…
…merely the largest minority in a nation of minorities.
Thing is, those other minorities have learned a thing or two about realpolitik in the centuries they were oppressed.
They know how to better look after and preserve their own interests, how to organize, how to make alliances with other marginalized communities for their mutual benefit.
Stuff wypipo are gonna hafta learn PDQ.
Right now, for the first time ever in our history, there are more African-American young men in college than in prison.
You think that isn’t going to have a major impact on how this country does business in twenty years time?
Similarly women are learning that they can’t rely on men to look after their best interests, and as a result more and more are becoming involved in activist roles in politics.
What passes for mainstream Christianity is imploding in this country as more and more people who were born into white cultural Christianity realizes it has nothing to offer and are abandoning it.
It’s not that the teachings of Christ have nothing to offer people today, but the perversion that has become mainstream cultural Christianity no longer represents Christ.
And as it doesn’t pass the smell test, more and more people turn from it.
(Ironically, the people most closely following the teachings of Christ are most likely to be persecuted and ridiculed by white culture.)
These are all segments of a vast overlapping Venn diagram, the incels and the Proud Boys and the Christian dominionists and the quiverful movement and the purity movement and a host of others.
They’re not all 100% white, they’re not all 100% Christian, they’re not all 100% male oriented, but lordie, where those fields overlap you’ve got a toxic sludge that represents the worst of America.
Yeah, I know a bunch of ‘em are clean cut frat boys; those are the worst kind.
This is a distorted view of America, a distortion far too many people grew up assuming to be the unchangeable norm.
A distortion an enormous number of people still think they are entitled to merely by accident of birth.
As this era (or error, if you will) draws t a close, we can expect to see uglier and uglier, more and more horrific outbursts against their sense of loss of privilege by white cultural Christians, males in particular.
Riots, terrorism, bombings, assassinations.
They’re going to act out in ways we’ve only seen hinted at, because deep down they know This Is It.
This is the time it changes.
This is the time they’re no longer automatically on top.
They’re afraid of the future.
Good.
They should be.
The future is no place for cowards.
For those who aren’t cowards, the future is going to be a much bigger, brighter place.
As more and more voices are heard in the marketplace of ideas, better ideas will advance, no longer held back by coming from the “wrong” people.
With privilege gone, so is the burden of expectation.
All people, including the white ones, will be free to be who they want to be.
Not what the culture tells them they must be.
I intend to be here in 2048 when the tipping point is reached.
I’ll be 95 years old, but people live long and vibrant lives on both sides of my family.
I’m not going to be able to enjoy the new age that’s coming.
But I can watch it dawn.
© Buzz Dixon
