WMC Women Under Siege

Understanding the rage of white male supremacy: An interview with Lisa Wade, PhD

The ascendency of white male supremacy to the national conversation appears to have happened overnight now that both the media and public seem ready to draw a direct line connecting hate-filled and violent rhetoric—which not only seems to be sheltered under this administration but instigated by it—to the nightmarish frequency of mass shootings, with gunmen brandishing manifestos against “race mixing” and “interracial unions.”

We spoke with Lisa Wade, PhD, an associate professor of sociology at Occidental College and author of American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus, to better understand the relationship—and long history—between white supremacy, masculinity, and the American image. The below interview has been edited for clarity.

Women Under Siege: White male supremacy is on full display in America right now, but how new is this phenomenon? What makes this moment different (or, the same)?

Lisa Wade: White supremacy has never been about all white people being at the top of the hierarchy; it always has been about giving and protecting some white peoples’ positions at the top. Race in the U.S., as we know it today, was invented by the white elites to divide and conquer labor. I believe you can see the same dynamic today.

Many white people in this country who are struggling economically are aligning themselves with Trump and other white elites over and against people of color, with whom they share a lot of interests and life circumstances, because they have invested in their whiteness instead of their class status. This is very effective at undermining what might be a revolution from below now, just like it did back then.

Middle class whites supported Trump in even greater numbers than working class whites. But working class whites had more to lose, so their support for him is especially reflective of the divide-and-conquer strategy.

How are white supremacy and masculinity linked?

In the U.S., the people with the most power, money, and prestige are not just white; they are not just rich; they are not just male; and they are not just protestant. They are disproportionately all those things. So, we have a status elite that is privileged in many ways, and upholding their privilege requires maintaining all these hierarchies at the same time. So, you could say that our economic inequality is patriarchal and white supremacist. Or, you could say that our patriarchy is white supremacist or classist. All harmonize together.

How does white male supremacy affect women especially?

For example, white supremacy needs to control white women’s bodies, ensuring that they only love and have children with white men. If they don’t exert this control, the children of white women blur the color line—an idea of W.E.B. DuBois’—and that undermines the idea whiteness invented during the colonization process. So, the people at the top of the race hierarchy need to control the women of the same race in order to maintain their racial dominance.

It [also] affects white women by promising them that if they connect themselves to the right white man, then they’ll be protected and able to enjoy the privileges of whiteness and wealth directly—and patriarchy indirectly—by being sponsored by a powerful man. So, some white women accept gender subordination to gain the advantages related to race and class. We call it a “patriarchal bargain”: accepting some of its rules to get some of its benefits.

It puts women of color in the position of disproportionately suffering the worst consequences of sexism. The intersection of patriarchy and white supremacy stereotypes them as the “wrong” kind of woman—doing femininity insufficiently, for example. Think about these stereotypes of the “hypersexual Latina” or the “angry Black woman.” And because anyone who defies gender expectations is potentially vulnerable to judgment—or even attacks—from others, women of color are especially vulnerable to sexism.

They are not put up on a pedestal like white women, nor are they given the opportunity to make a profitable patriarchal bargain with a high-powered man. Instead, they are more likely to be seen as threats to patriarchy, so they are more subjected to ostracism, policing of the formal and informal kind, and violence.

Even with this exaggeration of toxic—and violent—masculinity as performed by the President of the United States, why is white male supremacy so dismissible for so many?

Part of the reason is that we are used to it. When was the last time any of us really thought about the fact that 94.6 percent of the secretaries and administrative assistants in the U.S. are women? We take it for granted. It seems normal to see the world divided up in gendered, racialized, and classed ways that disadvantage women, people of color and immigrants, and poor people. In fact, research shows that equality is actually perceived as asymmetry. When men and women speak in proportional amounts in a business meeting, for example, it feels like the women may be dominating because we’re so used to an asymmetry that privileges men.

Another reason is that we think that it is right. We believe that the roles we see different kinds of people playing in our society are the roles that they are best suited for. So, a lot of people might say that women are better at being administrative assistants than men because they are more supportive, nurturing, warm, friendly, and have better people skills. Or, they might think that white men are best at being politicians because they are natural leaders. We buy into it. So, it doesn’t just seem natural; it seems right.

Finally, people feel that they are benefiting and are not willing to upset a system that they think gives them advantages. Many white folks, for example, still think they are better off throwing their lot in with white elites. Women do masculinity to try to reap some of its benefits. And almost all of us buy into capitalism and the glorification of hoarding wealth.

If we look more closely at Trump, his callousness against others, especially in the face of tragedy (which his own administration manufactured), what makes him still so attractive as a "champion"? 

In the book Strangers in Their Own Land, Arlie Russell Hochschild discovers that a lot of people who are struggling in the U.S., both culturally and economically, feel abandoned. Like in the example of the meeting in which men and women speak equally, they see growing equality as a growing asymmetry that disadvantages them. It’s a common psychological response. The playing field is slowly being evened, but to them, it feels like the game is increasingly rigged against them.

So, when Trump stands up and attacks people of color and women and immigrants they feel empowered by having a white man in office standing up for them.

His brand of bravado appears to be infectious with other heads of state. What do you make of this?

We’ve known for a while now that the globe has been getting more authoritarian, and that democracy has been on the decline. We also know that these politics are explicitly patriarchal. Authoritarianism is a form of masculine dominance, and it almost always involves the retrenching of male power and undermining of women’s rights. Global dynamics appear to be mirroring each other in many different countries right now.

Is there any alignment between white male supremacy and the idea of the American image, or even the American Dream?

The lifestyles that have been traditionally described as the American dream—most notably, home ownership—didn’t become a normal part of American life until the 1950s. White politicians, banks, businesses, and neighbors all collaborated to make sure that those advantages went almost exclusively to white people. So, it is only white people that have ever had open access to that thing that is called the American Dream.

You spoke about this briefly before, but can we go a little deeper into women's relationship to (or even embrace of) masculinity, and how that ladders up to their relationship to white male supremacy, if any?

Sociologists see gender inequality as occurring on at least two levels: one is sexism (prejudice against people with female bodies and in favor of people with male bodies), and the other we call “androcentrism” (prejudice against people who do femininity and the valorizing of people who do masculinity).

Because masculinity is what we value, doing masculinity is a way to gain power, to gain esteem and reward. Women can often mix some masculine personality traits and ambitions into their lives. That can include embracing some of its more toxic elements like exploitativeness, selfishness, and violence, including white supremacist violence.

While it is extremely rare for women to engage in mass shootings, I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the next months or years, there will be one by a white woman. And we will discover that she performed masculinity in the same way that white male shooters have. So, we may find pictures of her posing in camouflage and combat gear with aggressive firearms, and we will find similar attitudes in writing, ones embracing the combative attitude towards the people she perceives as invading a country she believes belongs to white people like her. So, it is perfectly possible that we will see white women start to mimic white male supremacists in the near future, and when we do, it will be important to understand that both women and men are performing a white supremacist masculinity that is really dangerous.

One more question: How do ideas of white male supremacy proliferate, especially among young people, through online media?

We know that young men are being directly targeted by white male supremacists and recruited into their organizations and spaces online. From what I understand, the dynamics of this is very similar to other kinds of radicalization processes. The recruiters feed on a sense of vulnerability, promising them a community that values them, and encouraging them to adopt increasingly extremist views, then to act on them. It’s a process by which young people are given a sense of pride and belonging by identifying an “other” with whom to contrast the self. And as long as that’s where people’s self-esteem comes from, these problems—from the rise of an overt racist and sexist to the presidency to the constant barrage of mass shootings—will be something we all have to live with.



More articles by Category: Gender-based violence, Misogyny, Politics, Race/Ethnicity, Violence against women
More articles by Tag: Masculinity
SHARE

[SHARE]

Article.DirectLink

Contributor
Categories
Sign up for our Newsletter

Learn more about topics like these by signing up for Women’s Media Center’s newsletter.