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My theory: most of what is now called "white supremacy" is just boomers attempting to prolong "boomer reality." (Obviously not all boomers)
What do I mean by "boomer reality"? Boomers are an American cohort born in unprecedented wealth when America was the only intact industrial power. They are also quite large cohort and were therefore over their lives able to use their influence to "fine-tune" America to their specifications. Boomers like to drive, therefore America is easy accessible via cars, not so much via public transport. This is also why gasoline tends to be cheaper in America than elsewhere. Boomers love to see their property values soar, therefore pretty much nothing is legal to build anywhere in America. (or so I hear)
What looks like white supremacy is boomers' dislike towards brown immigrants. But I would argue that the reason is not that they are brown, it is because they are not part of "boomer reality." Hispanics are more used to public transport (compared to white boomers) and are also okay with living in higher density. If lots of Hispanics materialize in America, and have a chance to vote for their preferences, this might result in more public transport (which boomers don't need) and more dense housing (bringing boomer property values down).
This also explains boomer opposition towards global warming. Global warming implies that car-centric culture might not be completely sustainable and anything that implies "boomer reality" might not be sustainable is an enemy.
I do think "boomer reality" is now very toxic, but here's how it is different from old white supremacy: Southern white supremacists cared a lot about their own legacy. They were thoroughly evil people, but they did care for their own white children (and noone else). White plantation owners could picture the world without themselves in it. Not the world without plantations (they fought a war over it), but one with different owners (their sons) running these plantations.
Boomers are fundamentally narcissistic and they cannot imagine anyone else as main characters of life, not even their own children. And that's the black heart of "boomer reality". Real white supremacy would be white male tenured boomer professor retiring and giving his tenured seat to his younger -- also white male -- protege. That's not at all what's happening, instead cushy tenured professorships are being replaced with insecure nontenured positions -- mostly held by brown and female people.
Calling this "white supremacy" almost gives it too much dignity. This is fire sale.
"White supremacy" is simply not the right terminology to describe what is happening. It is also unfair because younger whites are not profiting at all from "boomer reality". Accusing a poor white millenial of "white supremacy" is kicking the chained dog. I suspect the popularity of the concept -- alongside most of "awokening" -- is the result of elite millenials getting radicalized by realization that their Boomer parents intend to spend everything on luxury cruises and leave them with jack shit. In other words awokening is fueled precisely by a lack of actual, working white supremacy. (As well as a lack of any other safety net for precarious millenials)
(Don't get me wrong, I do think it is good white supremacy is no more, my point is that boomer narcissism is also bad, but in a very different way)
Why do I think my theory is correct? Because there was a similar generation divide in my native Serbia (then Yugoslavia) in the early 90's although generations were one step back. It was "Greatest Generation", Silent Generation and some elder boomers, versus younger boomers and x-ers (millenials were still young children or not yet born). The former still lived in "communist reality" while that reality begun to unravel for the latter.
One of the reasons why Milosevic ruled over Serbia for so long is because he promised the pensioners that their pensions will remain untouched no matter what. So there was a bloody civil war with younger generations being thrown into meat grinder which had comparatively little impact on the old people (not zero impact due to inflation, but lesser impact). What Milosevic promised to the old was continuation of "communist reality" till they die. And they followed him.
Not saying that the younger Serbian generations were completely innocent here -- there were some rabid warmongers there too -- but the whole thing would have been impossible without the compliance of the old people.
I don't think it is a coincidence that both Trump and Milosevic have promised to the old people continuation of their respective realities. Hence old people disproportionately voting for them.
Returning to situation in America, what I think is going to happen is that "boomer reality" is going to continue unraveling and it will be replaced with "woke reality." The advantage of woke reality is that it is cheap -- you don't need a car and a house to live it, just internet connection. Problem is that it is not all that much more real than "boomer reality". It is based on throwing around inaccurate inflammatory terms like "white supremacy" (as I explained) and on funding things like DEI offices -- which make people MORE racist. A self licking ice cone. None of it is as toxic as boomer reality, true, but it is still a type of unreality.
One variable I am unsure of is how much of boomer wealth will millennials be able to actually inherit. Are boomers really going to spend it all on luxury cruises and nursing homes? If not, if millennials actually inherit something valuable, they might switch from woke into something similar to "boomer reality," possibly also justified by wokeness. Something something building more housing is racist somehow. Obviously I am not saying that EVERY millenial is going to end up like this, but then not every boomer is Trump voter.
But I am just a millenial from Serbia, and first to admit that I don't know jack. What do you think?
I think it is more about the dissolution of regional distinctiveness, and lack of tolerance that follows from that, because every place and people is assumed to be the same, or should be.
My (boomer) mother grew up in a Southwestern American city with a lot of hispanics and very few blacks. She speaks Spanish badly, but my grandparents spoke it fluently (none of us are hispanic). When Bussing went into effect, she had to sit for an hour on a bus every day to move from one majority hispanic school to another, and the main change was not being able to invite her classmates over, because they lived too far away. Her opinion on bussing is that it may or may not have made sense in Alabama, but it was stupid and wasteful in her city. I took busses all the time as a teen, though they're hot and not very efficient. "Brown people" is a stupid category, but New Mexico and Arizona hispanics love their automobiles -- low riders, trucks, mechanic jobs, custom details, the whole package.
There was a woman in one of my social groups, born in Africa, went to a college in the Great Plains, living in a former Spanish colonial part of the American Southwest, going on about her experience as a Black American and her Blackness, and her sensitivity toward people curious about her background, and it was so very tiresome. None of her ancestors were American slaves, or suffered from redlining, or were discriminated against in any way. None of our ancestors owned a plantation. Nobody in our state was involved. And yet here we all were, unable to talk about any of our actual histories or the places we were actual from, because of her feelings of Blackness.
For a while, I lived with an Albanian family in rural Kosovo. Everyone was very nice to me, and I especially liked that I didn't have to drive or own a car at the time, and I could drink a 50c macchiato at a cafe over the course of an hour without anyone judging me for it. That was mostly because everyone was poor, though. They were upset over having their village shelled, and that for a while they had to teach their language in basements with only a single book for a room full of children. This may be peripherally related to pensioners, but it seems more related to feeling responsible for people who are deemed backwards. Which is, yes, also a problem in many American cities.
The American West has in some sense always wanted cars, even before they were invented. Horses were adopted with great enthusiasm the instant they arrived on the continent. And so were cars. Phoenix isn't full of cars and expansive, flat suburbs because of "boomers." It's full of cars and boomers and suburbs because it's in the middle of an enormous desert. Arizona spent 20 years building the CAP canal system, not for boomers to spread out (although they do), but because they're in the middle of an enormous desert. Boomers from Arizona and Texas drive RVs around for the same reason. i don't think this is necessarily grounded in unusual narcissism, but simply in unusually high wealth.
My mom also has anecdotes about bussing an hour one way to a distant schools with slightly different racial proportions. For seemingly no benefit to anyone. Having heard various bussing anecdotes has put me in a very cynical mindset regarding technocratic solutions to social problems.
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Thanks for your perspective.
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