Comedian, actor, and activist Dick Gregory once said that “In America, with all of its evils and faults, you can still reach through the forest and see the sun. But we don’t know yet whether that sun is rising or setting for our country.” Throughout my 23 years of life, I’ve realized that I’ve been led astray. That the “American Dream” is a fallacy due to the perversion of itself. I have come to believe that the pursuit of happiness is a game that I, and so many others that look like me, have the cards stacked against us. I have learned that there are certain institutions that have been put in place with the intention to oppress and control. It’s no secret that many communities across the nation,  that are predominantly African American, face various barriers. These barriers include crime and violence, the war on drugs epidemic, inadequate school systems, family disengagement, unemployment,underemployment, and more to this never ending list of disparities. These barriers negatively and unequally impact youth of color. I have realized that the root of systemic problems are linked to a white supremacist mindset that America embodies and the first step to saving our youth is working to eliminate America’s white supremacist mindset. 

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Poet Jermaine Cole elaborates on this in his piece Be Free, “can you tell me why, every time I step outside, I see my brothers die. I’m letting you know that there isn’t a gun that can take my soul. All black youth want to do is break the chains off. All we want to do is be free.” This causes me to raise the question: how do we break free from the chains of white supremacy? Yet dismantling the narrative of inferiority to rise above and conqueror is difficult in and of itself. If we have any chance of saving our youth, we must first begin by dismantling white supremacy. The term white supremacy is often times attached to images of the KKK burning a cross or other racist groups pledging allegiance to a swastika or the raising of the confederate flag. However this term isn’t just used in reference to groups of white terrorists. “White supremacy is a multilayered system that works in very subtle and unsubtle ways to ensure that the dominant group maintain a structural advantage over the subdominant group in nearly every aspect of life.” Carter G Woodson, Civil Rights activist and the father of Black History Month once said that “When you control a man’s thinking, you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his proper place and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told.” White supremacist’s ideas are so intricately woven in the fabric of our society and culture that it has become the norm. The oppressed group has been taught to accept being powerless while the dominant group is taught that the power and privilege that comes with the color of their skin, is their God given right. In his chapter "Historical Conditioning and Levels of Consciousness," author Paulo Freire speaks to this: “The oppressed are dehumanized and taught to believe the negative perceptions as fact. The most dangerous part of this process of indoctrination is when these negative images are internalized and become a part of the oppressed person’s own beliefs. They are taught by oppressors that their inferiority is normal and a fact of life.”

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 Dr. Nicki Lisa Cole states that “U.S. society was founded, organized, and developed in a white supremacist context. White supremacy and the many forms of racism it employs is infused into our social structure, our institutions, our worldviews, beliefs, knowledge, and ways of interacting with each other.” When European colonizers set foot on American soil, they brought along an elitist attitude that developed into white supremacy. They further embedded this supremacy through mass genocide, torture, enslavement, rape, and the internal colonization of indigenous and African people. The America that is held in pride by many, was built on the backs of my ancestors who were stripped of their freedom and brought here for service. The loss of history and understanding of heritage has caused misidentification among African-Americans. Families were commonly separated and sent across the nation due to the Atlantic slave trade. Rapper and songwriter Nasir Bin Olu Dara Jones tells us this story in his song I Know I Can. He says, “Before we came to this country, we were kings and queens, never porch monkeys. There was empires in Africa called Kush,Timbuktu, where every race came to get books to learn from black teachers, who taught Greeks and Romans, Asian, Arabs and gave them gold. When gold was converted to money it all changed. Money then became empowerment for Europeans. The Persian military invaded, they heard about the gold, the teachings, and everything sacred. Africa was almost robbed naked, slavery was money, so they began making slave ships.” We were stripped of our pride, our religious freedom, our names, our culture and forced to take the heritage of the colonizers that oppressed us.

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How is white supremacy affecting African American youth today in America? In society today, white supremacy is made up of different biases, actions, and beliefs. White supremacy doesn’t always rely upon the specific intentions of those who reap the benefits of it. We’d be fools to think that there aren’t blatant racists, whose actions and intentions are meant to serve a racist agenda. However, certain stereotypes, implicit and subconscious biases, can also add to the white supremacist agenda. These biases and stereotypes often times go beyond their structure and lead to life or death situations for many youth of color.

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According to data by the Department of Education, on inequalities faced by Black youth, African American students are arrested more often than their white peers. The data showed that 70% of the students who were either referred by schools to be arrested and actually arrested in schools, were either Black or Hispanic. This is often what we call the Cradle to Prison Pipeline. “The cradle to prison pipeline is a system that criminalizes youth and incorporates juvenile justice involvement for nonviolent offenses.” The pipeline acts as a catalyst for youth into the criminal justice system, leading to prisons being filled by people of color at a disproportionate rate. A sad reality that my people face is that, 1 in every 15 African American men are incarcerated in comparison to 1 in every 106 white men. If fathers are locked away in the prison system, who is then left to raise our children? “In the African American community, 72 percent of Black children are raised in a single parent household.” These facts also affect our youth outside of the classroom. 

The interaction that young adults have with law enforcement, is a deeply problematic structure that exists within society. A report by the Department of Justice found that “Blacks and Hispanics were approximately three times more likely to be searched during a traffic stop than white motorists. African Americans were twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police.”

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The statistics above give you a micro glimpse into the battles and barriers that young people of color face at the hands of white supremacy. This begs the question, how do we help eliminate white supremacy? Here are a couple steps that I believe are useful in the fight to end white supremacy. 

Educating youth of color about how life was prior to colonization is a strong step in the fight to eliminate white supremacy. It is important that we instill the fact that our heritage and culture did not just start during the transatlantic slave trade at an early age. They must be taught that even though this evil system constantly tells us that we don’t matter,  it is important to be constantly reminding ourselves that we do matter. Once we truly recognize that we come from greatness and that no trick of the devil can remove us, we will recognize our worth.

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Next, we must expose white supremacy for what it truly is. White supremacy relies heavily on stereotypes and misdirection and complicity. Exposing how white supremacy exploits everyone in order to maintain and defend the wealth, power, privilege of the white elite, is a critical step toward ending it. Writer Nat Williams reminds us that “White supremacy divides people into artificial binaries (non-black people of color/Black, immigrant/citizen), ascribes a social and legal hierarchy between these divisions and then fosters animus between the divided people.” If those that are oppressed continue to fight each other instead of the dominant group, white supremacy will continue to exist.

 The final recommendation I have to destroy white supremacy is unifying with allies against it. We have to continue to find people who are willing to use their privilege to advocate with African Americans. As a collective, we need to tear down all the monuments of white supremacy among us. That includes legislators, business people, police officers, politicians, and even civilians. Anyone that attempts to keep people of color in poverty and out of power needs to be confronted and stripped from power. If America truly cares about saving our youth, it starts with ending white supremacy.