The reason people think it’s important to be white is that they think it’s important not to be black. – James Baldwin

Let’s just lay this out:

White supremacy is not exceptional in the US. It’s what we have classically called racism, but more clearly lays out the reality that social/institutional racism is built upon a power relationship, a hierarchy defined through socially constructed distinctions called race which benefits whites at the expense of nonwhite people of color. White supremacy is not antithetical to a multiracial society. In fact, you actually usually need to have one, because otherwise, folks at the top of the hierarchy have no folks to exploit. During the chattel slavery era, this hierarchy and power relationship was much clearer to lay out, but many of the same dynamics continue to play out even now, since racism/white supremacy is about a system that allocates and maintains power, wealth, and resources disparately, whether that looks like slavery or something different. Any situation where this hierarchy and power relationship is allowed to play out without question upholds white supremacy. This is part of why while Black folks and other POC can maybe be prejudiced against white folks, they can’t be racist, because the power relationship/hierarchy that racism is based on hasn’t changed. It’s also why white supremacy shouldn’t be seen as an aberration, but is actually everywhere in the US, and so prevalent even among the more left-minded people, because the sense of unquestioned hierarchy it is built upon is everywhere.

Which is why historical context matters; without looking at how Black people have ended up where they are now in the US as a result of slavery, Jim Crow, the new forms of Jim Crow, etc.. and simply claiming we’ve reached some point of equal opportunity and more importantly, power, is to deny the reality of how that hierarchy’s operation over centuries has created very disparities of wealth, health, and other resources/benefits between white folks and Black folks, and how every time a change was made to end one form of how this hierarchy would operate, others were put in their place. Much like capitalism, practices and forms of white supremacy are mutated into others, with the intention of always keeping racial hierarchy and disparate levels of social power in place. As long as we have substantive racial disparities and power disparities, we can’t claim to have disrupted or dismantled this hierarchy, this power relationship. And as long as our society operates in ways that are based in prioritizing white folks’ experiences and lives and holding them as default normative, we’ll always have white supremacy. Because, whether even the most-radically minded folks among us want to admit, we still center whiteness as the standard for Black folks and other folks of color to reach, instead of troubling that standard, and thus, the hierarchy our society is built upon.

White nationalism, on the other hand, is based on a vision of actual separation of whites from all people of color. Within its strains, there’s generally no interest in keeping any POC around, even for exploitation, because it’s based in this mythology that any plural society will inevitably decline. And here’s where the two intersect: this is based on the same belief of white superiority that white supremacy is. A homogenous white society would be the apex of all civilizations, white nationalists believe, because again, racial hierarchy makes whites the apex of all races.  Anti-Semitism is crucial to white nationalism, in a way it isn’t with white supremacy, because it is the only way for white nationalists to explain how such inferior peoples have been able to progress (to whatever degree we have) and thwart their goals. It can’t be that marginalized folks are intelligent and creative enough to direct our own struggles towards liberation; it has to be white-ish (or at least, superior to POC) puppet-masters committing treason against the white race. It also helps explain away the difficulties of living in a plural society, and under capitalism, by laying every problem at the feet of Jews and their pawns, people of color.  As such, I’d propose that there is a double meaning to the chant, “Jews will not replace us,” popular with white nationalists: 1) that Jews will physically not displace whites (meaning Gentile/Protestant whites), and 2) that Jews will not be able to carry out their plots of creating a more multiracial society in the interests of maintaining their power and disempowering non-Jewish whites, which to white nationalists, effectively means “white genocide”.

There is an increasing tendency for folks, especially in media, to equate these two, so it’s important to keep this distinction from being muddied in this way. The muddying, I’d suggest, is happening both as a way of deflecting from everyday white supremacy, as well as acknowledging the mainstreaming of more explicitly white nationalist ideology and mythology through policies obsessed with maintaining some abstract American identity (equated with whiteness).* But we need to be clear about how even though they may intersect, these are different, so as to better illuminate how white supremacy is part of everyday social reality in the US, even as white nationalism – as in the ideology of a homogenous ethnostate — may or may not be, depending on whether it is seen as marketable enough.  Because ubiquitous, unexamined white supremacist consciousness provides fertile soil in which white nationalism can then take root. As such, white supremacy – totally consonant with multiracial societies – can become very easily exploited to build white nationalist movements.

*NOTE: A good argument can be made that the US was created as a white nationalist project, but I guess I would argue that this shifted once chattel slavery was firmly established; at that point, a system of hierarchy and pluralism needed to be developed. While this tension has surely existed over the history of the US, I’d argue that white supremacy is much more foundational. It could be that the prime underlying mythology/ideology (white supremacy vs. white nationalism) depends on the narratives around different colonized peoples (indigenous folks, as opposed to Black Africans), but I generally think that white supremacy is much more widely believed in (consciously and unconsciously) than white nationalism. But that is simply my own perspective and experience, as a Black person who’s lived in the latter quarter of the twentieth century up to now; it’s quite possible that I’m wrong, or other folks of color may have different takes, based in their own perspective and experience.   

ADDITIONAL NOTE: I want to thank brother Eric Ward for helping draw out this distinction between white supremacy and white nationalism for me, and the crucial role antisemitism plays in white nationalism. See his incredible piece, “Skin in the Game: How AntiSemitism Animates White Nationalism”, for more.