I watched a video made viewable by The Atlantic on Richard Spencer’s Alt-Right ideology (linked above, and also here), and my only reaction is shock. Truthfully, as a mixed racial, partly Asian, partly White young woman, Spencer’s words offended me. Richard Spencer is a white supremacist public speaker, American Neo-Nazi, who wants to reinstate the Roman Empire — with the idea that the recreation of Rome will provide white people with a safe space to embrace with heritage and bond together, as a tribe. He speaks as those white people are the victims of the global social change that has happened in recent years, and his intention is to restore the old integrity of the social structure — putting people of white ancestry back at the top of the social ladder, where he believes they have fallen from. For more reading on Richard Spencer, please see this Wikipedia link.

Now, the shock from Spencer’s speech — shock which I believe originates from hearing thinking that is radically different from the thinking my school is teaching, which promotes racial diversity and equality — has begun to wear off, and I have a few main takeaways from watching this video.

First, that one of the people speaking in the video (not Richard Spencer, but a man seemingly part of the National Policy Institute, Spencer’s group) described his positioning as “tribalism” — not racism, or white superiority. Oxford Languages defines tribalism as “the state or fact of being organized in a tribe or tribes,” and then builds on that definition with an example used in a derogatory sense: “the behavior or attitudes that stem from strong loyalty to one’s own tribe or social group.” This man did not think of himself as racist — rather, from his perspective, he was just trying to protect and form a support system with his tribe, the way many racial minorities are also doing. In my opinion, the difference here is that racially, the cultural experience of being white has never been unwanted. White has always been the dominant culture with the most power in American society, or at least, the Seattle, Washington community I’m growing up in. My school has racial affinity/alliance groups whose purpose are to support the racial minorities. White students at my school have the option of joining the LARS club instead of an affinity-alliance group, whose mission is to educate students on how to be anti-racist. But the idea of tribalism — that he’s just trying to protect what he defines as his people — is a concept very primal and very human. The issue lies in his definition of his people; after all, we have learned in previous blog posts that 99.9% of all human DNA is the same, even if physically humans may look different. We should all be in the same overarching tribe — the human tribe.

The second takeaway I had was how convinced Richard Spencer was in his beliefs, and how much energy he put into presenting for and convincing others of his thinking. He began and closed his speech with, “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” which ties to the idea of tribalism once again, in addition to the political events that took place (Donald Trump’s election as 45th President of the United States) that Spencer took be a victory for his ideology. He believes in his thinking so much, even when society publicly has a very different point of view — to the extent where he stated that he isn’t opposed to the slogan “Make America White Again.”

Spencer believes that he is not a victim, being White in America, but he also said he had experienced racism. He recalled going to a coffee shop in a primarily Black neighborhood, and having to wait 10 minutes for coffee when other Black and Hispanic customers came and went with their coffee. He thought, “So this is what it feels like.” I feel like that is a minor experience of discrimination, and that there are much worse events that happen or can happen to a person when that person is not white — because of the social construct that is built to support white people. But I acknowledge that he did have an experience.

The Alt-Right Movement is pretty shocking. I’m all for people advocating for what they believe in, but in this case, advocating for what Spencer believes in means harming a vast number of other people. I can’t support that; it is not only racist, excludes so many people, and is morally awful, but it was interesting to learn about. Hope you all find it an interesting perspective too!