I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation (Prophetic Christianity)

by Chanequa Walker-Barnes

The final hallmark of White moral injury is egoethnocentrism, the tendency to view oneself and one’s racial-ethnic group as the moral and cultural center of all things. This is the cornerstone of White supremacy, the notion that White people (and the culture that they produce) are the hegemonic ideal and thus represent the gold standard by which all other peoples and cultures should be adjudicated. White supremacy posits that because White people are the most beautiful and talented, they should be the faces that we see in magazines, on television, and in film; because they are the most intelligent, their books and theories (the “classics”) should be the focal point of our educations; because they are the most authoritative, they should be the people in charge of . . . well, everything. White supremacy tells us that what is White is universally right and that any departure from the norm is a deficiency to be remedied. And because the majority of US Whites live, work, and worship in social isolation from people of color, they rarely have the opportunity for the kind of meaningful cross-cultural exchange that might occasion them to question their internalized sense of superiority. What limited cross-cultural engagement they do have (such as on mission trips) occurs in the context of such an enormous power imbalance that it usually affirms, rather than challenges, their cultural comfort.