Racism and the Culture of White Supremacy Is Dangerous for People of Color

People of color are disproportionately targeted by structural violence and inadequate material resources because systems of education, public policy, and social and political capital are built from the toxic foundation of racism and white supremacy values. These systems cause harm as well as enormous restrictions on people of color’s access to choices and freedom. The consequences to folks who are not categorized as white, and particularly indigenous and African descendant peoples in this country has been, and continues to be, terrorizing, and in the case of Indigenous peoples, genocidal. 

As Kiese Laymon, a Black writer from Jackson, Mississippi, explains in an interview with Roxanne Gay, “In this nation, we all carry the immense burden of being human, but our backs are sore as hell because white Americans have failed to compassionately reckon with the worst of white folks. They tried to destroy us intellectually, psychologically, emotionally, economically, and we helped them out quite a bit. When people with more access to healthy choices and second chances obsessively want, and really need, you to have even less access to healthy choices and second chances, your back and your heart will tend to break. The wonder is that we’re not broken. We’re not broken. The wonder is that we’re still here creating, still willing ourselves into generative kinds of human being even though we’re really, really, really tired”.