Cover Image original caption reads “the power of dancing to soothe the savage breast upon the western plains.” From the New York Public Library Digital Collection.

I began this series on things I never understand about anti-racism back in April 2019. In the process of beginning to see my blindspots in regards to race, I have been deeply grieved, but I have also found so much freedom, clarity and humanity. As with whatever I write here, I aim to encourage with the encouragement I’ve found. Sometimes that encouragement means facing hard truths.

Here’s a recap of this series so far:

1. In part 1, I explained that I never understood that our ideas about racial difference were never biological or natural, but were formed and fostered from the very birth of our nation for the purpose of consolidating privilege and power and oppressing people of color.
   
2. In part 2 I wrote about how I never understood a precise definition of a racist idea. I used Ibram Kendi’s simple, but precise, definition of a racist idea: “My definition of a racist idea is a simple one: it is any concept that regards one racial group as inferior or superior to another racial group in any way” (from Stamped from the Beginning*).
   
3. In part 3 I wrote about how I didn’t understand that racism is much more than individual prejudice. Even if we all were kind to each other and worked really hard on resolving our personal prejudices, racial inequities would still exist. Inequities continue to be reproduced in our country because racism is systemic or institutional.

This last part is simple: I never understood how the big lie of white supremacy shaped this country and its people (including me).

I recently helped my kindergartener complete a school assignment about first Black American achievements in various sports. I asked him, “Do you know it was important that these people were the first Black Americans to play these sports?”

“No,” he responded.

I replied, “Well, it’s a big deal because before this time, Black people weren’t allowed to play sports with white people. White people believed that they were a better kind of human because of their skin color. Isn’t that terrible? For a lot of our history (more than 200 years), most of the Black people in this country were made to be slaves. They didn’t have to choice about what job they wanted to do or what school they wanted to go to or what sport they wanted to play. It was terrible. And even after they were free, white people still didn’t give them the chance to play the same sports or go to the same schools for a long time. Many white people just couldn’t imagine a world where people who looked different were equal and did stuff together.”

It struck me in that moment that if I didn’t teach my son about the big lie of white supremacy, he might have assumed that Black people were just slower to achieve things (along with women–but that’s another conversation).

This is why I think we have to talk about white supremacy and our history.

Until recently, for me white supremacy meant white men with shaved heads on government watch lists and the fringes of society. But I began to learn that in reality, white supremacy is a lot closer, a lot more pervasive, a lot more distorting for both white people and people of color than I ever realized . . . and a lot more wicked.

In his book, Lies my Teacher Told Me. James Loewen argues that to understand this country’s history, we must understand the ideas that shaped it. One of these shaping ideas was the big lie of white supremacy (I’m gonna keep repeating that phrase). Students learn about slavery and the civil war, and even Black firsts like my son in kindergarten, but they aren’t taught the why.

Maybe that seems like a lot for a child to take in, but what are they absorbing from our culture if we don’t tell them the truth in ways they can understand?

James Loewen writes, “In its core our culture tells us–tells all of us, including African Americans–that Europe’s domination of the world came about because Europeans were smarter.”

I was confronted by this history again in the book Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery by Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah.* The authors argue that the Doctrine of Discovery, and the dehumanizing legacy of white supremacy, fundamentally shaped this nation, and have left lasting scars.

Have you heard of the Doctrine of Discovery? Here’s a very simple summary. In January 1455, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Romanus Pontifex (one of several such edicts in the 15th century). It gave Catholic Europeans legal justification to take land from any non-Christian rulers and to enslave the “discovered” peoples. This helped set the stage theologically and legally for colonization, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and western expansion and Indian removal in the U.S. (I recommend Ibram Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning for a complete history of racist ideas in America).

Here is Mark Charles on the Doctrine of Discovery and its assumptions of white Christian supremacy:

“At the foundation of this doctrine was a narrative of European Christian purity and supremacy that negated the value and worth of the other and permitted European Christian to assume their own supremacy and privilege on specious theological ground.”

“The Doctine of Discovery deemed as just and lawful what benefited the European powers, affirming the privilege of the ‘pure’ European Christian to determine what is right and just. Because the pure European body held an inherent spiritual worth, the actions of European Christians would be deemed just . . . . while the conquered and enslaved people would have no agency before God. The Doctrine of Discovery created the possibility of significant harm upon those outside the privileged position of the pure European body.”

Here is a summary of THE BIG LIE of white supremacy:

*NOTE: When you hear people speak of “whiteness,” the above is what they usually mean (although I can’t speak for everyone). It does not mean individual people with white skin, but a socially constructed idea about what white skin means.

I hope it’s obvious that espousing outright white supremacy today is not socially acceptable. Many good people have shed blood to fight this big lie, and I don’t believe that we have made so little progress that their life’s work was in vain.

But there is much evidence that we are still dealing with the legacy and aftermath of our history. I love a good and precise definition! In The Little Book of Racial Healing,* Thomas DeWolf and Jodie Geddes define these terms this way: “Aftermath descries political and economic structures, while legacy refers to cultural ideas, beliefs, and prejudices.”

While many of our cultural ideas, beliefs, and prejudices have and are changing (the legacy), the aftermath (the laws and systems–think policing, education, justice, healthcare) is slower and harder to change.

Many would argue that we have much work to do in BOTH areas. Charles and Rah argue that “the assumption of white supremacy took root in the imagination of the Western mind. This imagination and narrative have become embedded realities in the American Christian worldview.” That hurts, doesn’t it?

These are the questions I keep asking myself:
When have we taught a full and accurate history of this country?
When did we make amend as a society for the destruction this big lie cost?
When did we as the church lead in repenting of and combatting this big lie?

I don’t think we can move on until we have confronted these.

You know one thing we can do today? I heard Marcie Walker of Mockingbird History Lessons say this years ago, and it has stuck with me: we must think long and hard at what it means to be human.

We don’t have to go any further than Genesis 1 to start. This is something you can open up and read and talk about with your kids or students or friends! In Genesis 1 we see that humans–male and female–were created in God’s image and given what? Dominion. Is that human vocation limited to Christians? Is it limited to white people? Or course not! God gifted all people with agency–over themselves and over creation. All human are inherently valuable and worthy before the God who made them.

Take a minute and think about my chart above summarizing the big lie of white supremacy. How do the truths of Genesis 1 combat these lies?

When we take agency away from humans, whether through oppression or paternalism or racism, we attempt to steal away what God has given. And in the process we’ve damaged our own humanity because supremacy is just as much a distortion of the image of God as is dehumanization! Only God is supreme and good and completely just.

Jesus declared that God’s Kingdom has come and that He’s made us ambassadors of that Kingdom. Racism is in direct conflict with the culture of that Kingdom, so it will always be our work as ambassadors to combat it.

Regular lament before God will be needed.
Regular repentance will be needed.
Regular grace will be available.

COPYRIGHT/USAGE: All writing, artwork and photos are copyright Marydean Draws. Please do not repost or resell on another website. I’m happy for you to use my coloring pages and other printables for home, school, and ministry. If you share content, please link back to the original post. Thank you!

FOR FURTHER STUDY

More on the Doctrine of Discovery:
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/doctrine-discovery-1493
The Bull Romanus Pontifex (Nicholas V), January 8, 1455 (primary source)
The Bull Inter Caetera Pope Alexander VI – 1493 (primary source)
Supreme Court case of Johnson v. M’Intosh (using Doctrine of Discovery as U.S. law)
Supreme Court case City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York (references Doctrine of Discovery)
https://doctrineofdiscovery.org/what-is-the-doctrine-of-discovery/

VIDEO | Mark Charles Ted Talk: We the People, the three most misunderstood words in US history

BOOK | Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery by Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah*

BOOK | Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
BOOK | Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi (version for young adults)
VIDEO | Ibram Kendi talks about his book, Stamped from the Beginning

A complete list of resources I’ve founded helpful is HERE.

*affiliate link. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

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