North America racial capitalism extermination of Native Americans

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(enslavement of people of African descent) From the war capitalism of the settler colonialist period in North America to the racial capitalism of that same time frame, extermination of Native Americans and enslavement of people of African descent became instruments of institutionalized white supremacist terror. The irony, of course, was that in the expansion of the United States and the development of an American Empire, both formal and informal, engaging in savage wars became inherent in the so-called civilizing mission (Atwood, 2010; Nugent, 2009).While there were numerous motivating forces and ideological rationales for conducting savage wars for over four centuries, from economic and geo-political imperatives to gendered expressions, white supremacist terror, in the form of an “iron fist,” was part and parcel of wars that “extermi-nated ‘savages’ who stood in the path of Anglo-American expansion” (Drinnon, 1997: xi).7 Whether those “savages” occupied territory on the continental United States or in Mexico, the Philippines, Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq, American military forces unleashed white supremacist terror against racialized others. In highlighting the policies and practices that informed these sav-age wars, I want to underscore both those hegemonic moments in the construction of white suprem-acist terror and the half-life of that terror as it expanded beyond the continental United States at the end of the 19th century. As Janne Lahte contends in her recent study of the 50-year war against the Apache nation during the 19th century, the “United States was born, manufactured, and maintained through conquest and war” (Lahte, 2017: 20).It is not surprising that the author of the Declaration of Independence, having cited fomenting “insurrection” by “merciless Indian savages” as one of the grievances against King George III, would himself become the advocate for merciless policies toward Native Americans. Although Thomas Jefferson hoped to convert Native Americans into yeomen farmers, he undertook courses of action that led to the dispossession of immense parcels of Indian Territory. Whenever there was any resistance by Indigenous peoples to what Jefferson considered the benevolent policies of a “Great White Father,” he reacted with what would become the guiding rationale for white suprem-acist terror. In instructing his Secretary of War in 1807 on the preparations for military The Long Life of US Institutionalized White Supremacist Terror Wayne State University, USA Abstract Emerging as a racial formation under specific socio-historical conditions, white supremacy enacted racial projects that institutionalized terror as a function of its hegemonic rule. From the war capitalism of the settler colonialist period in North America to the racial capitalism of that same time frame, extermination of Native Americans and enslavement of people of African descent became instruments of institutionalized white supremacist terror. From colonial to contemporary times white supremacist savage war and white racial framing of policing reinforced institutionalized white supremacist terror. Nonetheless, resistance to and deconstructions of white supremacy contested and continues to contest those racial projects and that white racial frame.Keywordsinstitutionalized terror, racial formation, racial projects, white racial frame, white racial frame policing, white supremacist savage war, white supremacy Introduction Born in the colonial past and bred into the foundational documents of the United States, white supremacy remains a persistent presence, albeit one that is dramatically different today than at its inception.1 Although a white supremacist now resides in the White House, his vile utterances and vicious policies, as reprehensible as they are, do not rise to the level of terror and torture that marked the emergence and early existence of white supremacy. Certainly, Trump’s language reflects “white supremacy in all of its truculent and sanctimonious power” (Coates, 2017).2Moreover, Trump’s “immigration policy is a matter of white supremacist social engineering aimed at excluding and decimating poor, predominantly nonwhite immigrants” (Leonard, 2018). One can then see how Trump’s constant references to “building a wall” could resonate with those anxious and resentful white voters, tapping into historical and contemporary expressions of white suprema-cist xenophobia (Coaston, 2018).3Corresponding author:Fran Shor, Department of History, Wayne State University, 3149 FAB, Detroit, MI 48202-3489, USA. Email: 855775CRS0010.1177/0896920519855775Critical SociologyShorresearch-article2019Article 6Critical Sociology 46(1)On the other hand, because of changed material conditions and the long history of resistances, the present iterations of white supremacy are more of a regression to an imagined past than reso-nant of a promising future. As argued in a recent study of Trump voters, “evidence points over-whelmingly to perceived status threat among high-status groups (i.e. whites, Christians, and men) as the key motivation underlying Trump support” (Mutz, 2018). Underlying this “perceived status threat” is a variety of racial resentments that appeal to “aggrieved whiteness” (King, 2017) and racialized nostalgia, tinged with restorative fantasies (Hochschild, 2016: 49). These racial resent-ments could also be understood as the kind of “morbid symptoms” that the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, writing from his prison cell in the midst of fascism and economic depression in 1930, attributes to a “crisis.” According to Gramsci, that crisis (as relevant today as back then) “consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear” (Gramsci, 1971: 276). If white supremacy remains a morbid symptom, examining its origins and development should provide an explanation for why and how it emerged and persists. As a socio-historical process of domination and control, white supremacy materialized as a “racial formation” that informed both the structures and subjectivities of the dominant and dominated.4 In turn, white supremacy enacted “racial projects” connecting socio-economic power to a political culture that determined the value of “racialized others” (Omi and Winant, 2015). Although white supremacy, as a historicized racial project, achieved and perpetuated its hegemony through socio-economic, political, and cultural practices, that hegemony remained contested and unstable. Furthermore, while those hegemonic racial projects eroded, they nonetheless lived on in a kind of half-life because of recurrent and regressive patterns in the political culture of a “white racial frame” (Feagin, 2009).What I want to trace in this short history of the long life of white supremacy in North America is how these racial projects were enacted through institutionalized terror. I need to account also for the ways in which the half-life of those racial projects of white supremacist terror endured beyond hegemonic moments, appearing often as regressions to the past even as a white racial frame per-sisted. Finally, I want to underscore the fact that the racial projects of white supremacy had and continue to have both covert and overt representations. Those representations embody certain met-aphoric modalities, from an “iron first” in the overt form to an “invisible hand” in the covert form. It is the iron fist of institutionalized white supremacist terror that I intend to investigate over its long life in American history.White Supremacist Racial Projects and Institutionalized Terror of Savage WarThe first two emergent racial projects of white supremacy in North America were essentially coter-minous. As hegemonic moments in the establishment of settler colonialism in the 16th and 17th centuries, these racial projects entailed the extermination of Indigenous people and the enslave-ment of people of African descent (Horne, 2018). These racial projects were extensions of war capitalism (Beckert, 2015: 29–82) and racial capitalism (Melamed, 2015), socio-economic systems that expanded the role of capital to appropriate resources and labor and to allocate hierar-chical value on the basis of race. Once land accumulation supplanted trading with various Indigenous nations of North America as an economic motivation, the racial project of extermina-tion shifted into high gear.5 In turn, the cultivation of that land, especially in the southern colonies with the growth of cash crops like tobacco, rice, and later cotton, exploited enslaved Africans as chattel commodities (Sublette and Sublette, 2016). In effect, the Indigenous suffered dispossession by white settler accumulation while Africans were possessed, increasingly through torture and rape, in order to accumulate profit. In the midst of this socio-historical process and as a Shor 7consequence of conflicts between poor whites and the rich owner class, e.g. Bacon’s Rebellion, white supremacy arose as a socio-cultural construction that helped suppress class conflict in favor of white solidarity against racialized others (Allen, 1994).6As English settlers pushed inland from the Atlantic coast regions in the 17th century, they invari-ably confronted Native populations who had already been engaged in competition and conflict over trading routes. While enlisting different Native nations into alliances and promoting an “invisible hand” of encroachment on Indigenous territories, the settlers turned increasingly to the “iron fist” of warfare. The Pequot War (1636–1637), fought between English settlers and their Native American allies against the Pequot for control over fur trading and land, became emblematic of both the aggressive expansion of settler colonialists and the penchant for extermination against the Indigenous of North America. As one historian of this expansionist “iron fist” notes about the Pequot War’s implications, “The war established the credibility of the English will to exterminate... and estab-lished a peace based on terror that lasted more or less for four decades” (Drinnon, 1997: 48).Throughout the colonial period and right up to the War of Independence, violent conflicts ensued as settlers continued to push against Indigenous territory on the frontier, resulting in what one historian has labeled “race wars” (Grenier, 2005: 12). The malleable and contested construc-tion of the frontier provided both a physical and ideological border from which an assault was waged against “savages” in the name of “civilization” (Nugent, 2009: 304). Indeed, as argued by Richard Slotkin:the story of American progress... took the form of a fable of race war, pitting the symbolic opposites of savagery and civilization, primitivism and progress, paganism and Christianity against each other.... The doctrine of “savage war” depended upon the belief that certain races are inherently disposed to cruel and atrocious violence. (Slotkin, 1985: 53) The irony, of course, was that in the expansion of the United States and the development of an American Empire, both formal and informal, engaging in savage wars became inherent in the so-called civilizing mission (Atwood, 2010; Nugent, 2009).While there were numerous motivating forces and ideological rationales for conducting savage wars for over four centuries, from economic and geo-political imperatives to gendered expressions, white supremacist terror, in the form of an “iron fist,” was part and parcel of wars that “extermi-nated ‘savages’ who stood in the path of Anglo-American expansion” (Drinnon, 1997: xi).7 Whether those “savages” occupied territory on the continental United States or in Mexico, the Philippines, Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq, American military forces unleashed white supremacist terror against racialized others. In highlighting the policies and practices that informed these sav-age wars, I want to underscore both those hegemonic moments in the construction of white suprem-acist terror and the half-life of that terror as it expanded beyond the continental United States at the end of the 19th century. As Janne Lahte contends in her recent study of the 50-year war against the Apache nation during the 19th century, the “United States was born, manufactured, and maintained through conquest and war” (Lahte, 2017: 20).It is not surprising that the author of the Declaration of Independence, having cited fomenting “insurrection” by “merciless Indian savages” as one of the grievances against King George III, would himself become the advocate for merciless policies toward Native Americans. Although Thomas Jefferson hoped to convert Native Americans into yeomen farmers, he undertook courses of action that led to the dispossession of immense parcels of Indian Territory. Whenever there was any resistance by Indigenous peoples to what Jefferson considered the benevolent policies of a “Great White Father,” he reacted with what would become the guiding rationale for white suprem-acist terror. In instructing his Secretary of War in 1807 on the preparations for military