In a sense, I think whiteness has functioned quite similarly to divine kingship, paralysing those who are intensely invested, trapping them into a resentment of the reality that they are obviously not superior. For several centuries, people racialised as white were often taught – sometimes by some of the best minds in ‘their’ societies – that they were inherently superior to other human beings, that they could disregard the feelings of their ‘negro’ slaves, their Indian subjects and their vanquished Mandarins without having to fear consequences because their supremacy was in fact eternal,
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