One of the most obvious signs of a white supremacist is an apparent belief that white people are superior to Black people. This belief in fact may be rooted in self-hatred or a sense of inferiority that bubbles just beneath the surface, but the outward manifestation is the hatred and mistreatment of Black people. Psychologists would say they are high in “social dominance orientation” (believing that some groups are superior to others). But many Black people have so deeply internalized the racism that swirls around them that they wind up treating other Black people as badly as the white supremacists do. These are the signs of membership in that group of Black self-haters:
Embracing and Propagating Eurocentrism
These Black people have so enthusiastically embraced the narratives, stories and culture of white America that they have no use for Black people and the Black community. They have thoroughly rejected most everything about their history and culture, deeming it unworthy of their time and attention. The brilliant Afro-French philosopher Frantz Fanon addressed this phenomenon in his 1952 work, “Black Skin, White Mask,” theorizing that the divided self-perception of the Black Subject who has lost his native cultural origin and embraced the culture of the Mother Country, produces an inferiority complex in the mind of the Black Subject, who then will try to appropriate and imitate the culture of the colonizer.
Treating White People Better
Psychologist Bill Cross hypothesized a cognitive developmental model of racial identity that posited that as racial identity evolves, Blacks progress through a sequence of five stages (pre-encounter, encounter, immersion-emersion, internalization and internalization-commitment). Cross suggested that Blacks begin their development at a stage called pre-encounter. This stage is characterized by dependency on white (not Black) society for definition and approval; attitudes are anti-Black and Eurocentric in nature. It is at this first stage where far too many Black people have gotten stuck, showing preference for everything white, choosing to treat white people better than Black people.
