Systemic White Supremacy
White supremacy was dominant in the United States before the American Civil War and for decades after Reconstruction. In large areas of the United States, this included the holding of non-whites (specifically African Americans) in chattel slavery. The outbreak of the Civil War saw the desire to uphold white supremacy cited as a cause for state secession and the formation of the Confederate States of America.
In some parts of the United States, many people who were considered non-white were disenfranchised, barred from government office, and prevented from holding most government jobs well into the second half of the 20th century. Many U.S. states banned interracial marriage through anti-miscegenation laws until 1967, when these laws were declared unconstitutional. White leaders often viewed Native Americans as obstacles to economic and political progress, rather than as settlers in their own right.
White supremacy was also dominant in South Africa under apartheid and in parts of Europe at various time periods. Governments of many European-settled countries bordering the Pacific Ocean limited immigration and naturalization from the Asian Pacific countries, usually on a cultural basis. South Africa maintained its white supremacist apartheid system until the early 1990s.
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Famous quotes containing the words white and/or supremacy:
“Every time I embrace a black woman I’m embracing slavery, and when I put my arms around a white woman, well, I’m hugging freedom. The white man forbade me to have the white woman on pain of death.... I will not be free until the day I can have a white woman in my bed.”
—Eldridge Cleaver (b. 1935)
“Her wrongs are ... indissolubly linked with all undefended woe, all helpless suffering, and the plenitude of her “rights” will mean the final triumph of all right over might, the supremacy of the moral forces of reason and justice and love in the government of the nation. God hasten the day.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)