The legacy of white supremacy
An American friend of mine has put it succinctly:
“One of the many profound outcomes of the BLM movement is an awakening among many people (many are already quite enlightened on the matter) that racism is indeed systemic. The entire adventure of British, other European and American imperialism (as well as Japanese imperialism) was and remains founded on a belief in white supremacy. The genocide against Native Americans was premised on the idea that people of color were for the most part savages. Much of the most famous British literature (Kipling, Swift, Defoe, even Shakespeare) assumed white supremacy. Indeed, all of colonial history and the world as we know it is rooted in racist institutions, language, ways of seeing, common assumptions, etc. The changes needed toward anything in the direction of social justice are very radical in nature, almost too radical to imagine.”