I’m the Only One part 2

As I thought more about this white supremacy characteristic, the last four aspects (see below) of it had me thinking about how the conversation has seemingly gone on in the political world. We see the centering of political figures as if they are the “chosen one”, can do no wrong, and they the truth is more equivalent to opinion. So I started to wonder, if these aspect of the white supremacy characteristic plays a role in this political world.

•putting charismatic leaders on pedestals (or positioning yourself as a charismatic leader on a pedestal);

• romanticizing a leader (or yourself) as the center of a movement, idea, issue, campaign

• hiding or covering up the flaws of a leader (or your flaws) in fear that the organization, movement, effort cannot survive;

• defining leadership as those most in front and most vocal (thank you Cristina Rivera Chapman for these last four bullets).

In July of 2019, Pew Research Center published a great article about Trust and Distrust in America. It’s a long article, but worth the read as I goes through a lot of considerations to the issue of trust and solutions that people have. What struck me was that people jumped to things like policy changes, working together, political reform, and improving political leadership will help grow trust in the federal government. For trust in each other, they think changes in personal behavior and electing more inspiring leaders can lead to improved trust. This struck me peculiar because this is what we have tried to do over and over again with little success.

We tend to skip the hard and deep work needed to address accountability and consequences. We will point the finger at someone else that did wrong and say, “but I wasn’t as bad as them” as if that absolved themselves of their wrongs. We build up culture wars, like the one about critical race theory where, we get focused on misinformation and avoid facts and the notion of looking at consequences of legal actions. How can we move towards healing, reconciliation, and unity, if we live in denial, a lack of accountability, and the role of a white supremacy characteristic like “I’m the Only One”.