Within sociology there isn’t a unique term for when white people enact white supremacy; we might just call it “white racism”. However we use the term Internalized Racism to denote the ways people of color adopt white supremacy. The idea here is that when people of color internalize white supremacy this often whittles at their self-esteem and may lead them to dislike the aspects of themselves that they feel are part of their non-white racial-ethnic identity. Many people of color can easily think of times in their life where they felt shame or felt shamed by others for the non-white aspects of their identity. For instance an African American student recently said to me, “I hate my name [because it sounds Afrocentric], people hear it and immediately assume I’m loud or… you know, ’stereotypically black’.” People of color are also just as capable of using white supremacy to stereotype or discriminate against other people of color and themselves.
Nathan Palmer
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