Settler Colonialism and White Supremacy (Smith & Moreton-Robinson)

Settler Colonialism and White Supremacy

      Andrea Smith’s Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy focuses on the disparate nature of opposition movements efforts by oppressed groups. As she argues women, people of color, women of color and other oppressed groups (i.e. LGBT communities) end up working against each other due to current delineation of groups by the hetereopatriarchal system. Smith describes the three pillars of White Supremacy as Slavery/Capitalism, Genocide/Colonialism, and Orientalism/War. In the Slavery/Capitalism pillar, black people are viewed as slaves whether through the slave system, sharecropping system, or prison-industrial complex. By racializing groups capitalism and modernity operate to divide groups, provide the more dominant group with an impetus to accept their circumstances because they don’t inhabit the bottom rung of society, yet ensure a willing labor force by the threat of cheap labor. The Genocide/Colonialism pillar justifies the acquisition of land from indigenous peoples by arguing that since indigenous peoples have disappeared their claim to land are forfeit. This pillar operates through integration efforts, blood quantum demarcation, and the Indian “wannabe” phenomenon (68). Finally, the Orientalism/War pillar describes how the West defines their civilization as superior to others by constructing itself in opposition to an “exotic” but inferior “orient” (58).  The system enables the west to justify a constant state of war and implement a state of exception in order to circumvent laws which may limit state action. Smith argues that efforts of acceptance, recognition and integration will be unsuccessful due to these systemic needs of modern society. Therefore, opposition groups would be most effective by combating the heteropatriarchal racial nationalism. She suggests focusing on changing the conception surrounding the family unit as a starting point.

        Aileen Moreton-Robinson uses the example of the Australian governments intervention into Aboriginal communities on the basis of addressing concerns of widespread abuse and sexual molestation of children. The themes outlined by Smith appear in the views of Aboriginals by the Australian media, government and public as “living in a state of nature that was in opposition to the discourse of white civility” (65). With the perspective of the widespread molestation and abuse of children focusing on the community as a whole the Australian government saw the crises as a state of exception requiring the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975.  The methods employed by the state counter the threat posed by indigenous people to the state’s sovereignty and ensure subjugation and support for a state of exception.

      Many of the writers this week view colonialism, threats to indigenous peoples, and racism as products of Focoult’s conception of biopower. If modernity rests on the requirement of a biopolitical structure will indigenous rights be best achieved by aligning with others opposed to modernity and biopolitics? Are there elements of a more matriarchal society that could be integrated within a biopolitical structure which would achieve widespread results in ensuring the rights of indigenous people, people of color, women and other marginalized groups?