The popular idea in our culture right now, driven by the newly trendy but toxic racialist ideologies such as critical race theory, is that white supremacy is ubiquitous.
You don’t need any physical evidence or individual racists as evidence for this claim. White supremacy is just out there, an invisible force surrounding us and influencing every aspect of our lives.
The View’s Sunny Hostin has embraced this idea, recently citing “white supremacy” as the reason for the surge in black people buying guns.
“If you listen to the FBI’s statistics, we had FBI Director [Christopher] Wray testify that the greatest threat in the United States is white supremacy, and who are the victims of white supremacy?” Hostin asked. “Generally, they are African Americans, and so I really believe that that is why you are seeing African Americans now buying guns and arming themselves and protecting themselves.”
Of course, if you “listen” to FBI statistics, you would know that most black people murdered in the U.S. are killed by other black people. Likewise, most white people who are murdered are killed by white people. Using the FBI’s 2019 data (the most recent available), 2,574 of the 2,906 black homicide victims (or 88%) were killed by black perpetrators; 246 were killed by white perpetrators, which is around 8%. (Just over 78% of white victims were killed by white perpetrators, and 17% were killed by black perpetrators.)
As it happens, Wray made the remarks that Hostin was misquoting in 2019. He told Congress that the FBI considered white supremacist terrorists to be a “persistent, pervasive threat.” He also said that the FBI’s big concern in this regard was lone-offender attacks. His appearance before Congress came after deadly mass shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, both perpetrated by white nationalist extremists and both (as it happens) against nonblack targets.
We will not have national data covering the 2020 homicide surge for a few months yet, let alone current numbers. But there is absolutely no indication that there is a sudden surge in “white-on-black” homicides. Hostin’s assertion is based only on Wray’s comments made two years ago, and note that she swapped a concern about terrorism with a concern about “white supremacy.” Wray wasn’t referencing typical homicides but a small handful of lethal “lone wolf” terrorist attacks.
The View has never been a bastion of rigorous political analysis, but Hostin’s view that white supremacy is as faceless and omnipresent as the air we breathe is not exclusive to her. This is the view of “anti-racists” across the country, including media outlets trying to assert that racism is more pervasive than it really is and Democratic mayors trying to brush off criticism of their shoddy, soft-on-crime records as violent criminals victimize their constituents.
It’s a Democratic talking point, designed to push their agenda further and, in this case, excuse the failures that are Democrat-run cities. Black people aren’t buying guns because of “white supremacy.” They are buying them because Democrats are running and ruining the cities they live in.
