Recognition of the system of oppression by the State
In work, “Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy,” Andrea Smith examines “Imperialist White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy” as the basis for the discourse of power in which people participate and communicate. She puts across the argument that white supremacy is not monolithic. According to Smith (2012), white supremacy should be looked at and understood as a phenomenon that is “constituted by separate and distinct, but still interrelated logic.” Owing to her argument that monolithic white supremacy is inexistent, Smith finds it essential to name and examine the impacts of indigenous genocide through the variant lens, such as settler colonialism, slavery, and anti-blackness through capitalism and white supremacy, etc. She identifies three different racial schematics that correspond to the white supremacy ideology’s various strands as anti-Black racism, which fosters capitalism, the genocide of indigenous people that anchor colonialism, and orientalism that anchors war. Smith’s argument is characterized by breadth – white supremacy is intricate, fluid, and constituted by networks of friendships, rather than being unitary. Thus, white supremacy operates based on the contingent needs of the specified white power structure. As a result, the capitalist-colonial white supremacy cannot be expected to exploit all racially marginal people in identical or homogenous ways in its global and expansive network. Racial-colonial associations grow more entrenched, and differently oppressed groups of marginal subjects are integrated into white supremacists’ system in a manner that their success is dependent continued marginalized of other groups and individuals.
Smith describes three pillars of oppression as genocide, orientalism, and slavery. These pillars uphold a vice with genocide upholding settler colonialism, orientalism upholding war, and slavery upholding capitalism (Smith, 2012). The logic of genocide claims that indigenous people must always disappear so that non-natives can rationalize their claim over the land. Thus, oppressors steal land and occupy it, disrupting the native ways of living. Under white supremacy, slaveability goes hand in hand with blackness. When putting together capitalism, slavery a racial hierarchy to the economic system of capitalism. This reality is manifested every day in the criminalization of blackness and the related prison industrial complex. It is no coincidence that the present prison system germinated as an aftermath of legal slavery. It is also an open secret that more people of color (Blacks) in prison today who were incarcerated at the peak of slavery. As theorized by Edward Said (2018), orientalism is a belief system developed by the East about the East as an inferior and contrasting image. Essentially, orientalism is geared towards marking people of the Orient and its countries as inferior, and a permanent foreign threat to the health of the empire o the West. Essentially, orientalism is the justification that the U.S gives for its constant state of war with other nations. This logic of oppression works together in the sense that they trap people differently in white supremacy because such people benefit from taking part in and enforcing the other pillars. It is essential to focus on these pillars in a communication course because then, people of color can better grasp the significance of oppression, and understand where they are positioned in each other’s oppression.
The mere recognition of the system of oppression by the State has done nothing so far as the dismantling of the system is concerned. If anything, the government seems to support the system, seeing how it continues to thrive in capitalism, war, and settler colonialism. The only way to do away with oppression is to dismantle the ingrained politics that enable and legitimize the numerous forms of violence perpetrated by institutions.