I’m sorry what? The illusion of white supremacy? I was with you for almost your entire article but this paragraph was a little bit troubling to me. Mainly because I hear ignorant white Americans repeat everything you espoused in this paragraph. Let’s break down the word supremacy.

Supremacy - a position in which you have more power, authority, or status than anyone else. (Oxford)

Do you think that in the U.S where white people hold 80% of Congress. That it can be said that white people have power, authority and status over the majority of non white people?

White Supremacy is not just an ideology? Perhaps it was when they were originally implementing its tenets to over represent themselves in every major industry in the U.S.

But now white supremacy just refers to a factual analysis of the data. We know which people hold the majority of power, authority and status in the U.S by percentages. Percentages which do not accurately reflect their population either as some white supremacist try to claim.

They do not in fact hold 70-80% of the powerful positions because this is consistent with their demographic numbers. Conservative estimates place white Americans at around 57% of the U.S population. Less conservative estimates place them at around 61%. Yet they still consistently hover at or above 70% in almost all sectors of U.S society ( power and authority). So why the nearly 10-20% discrepancy between their actual representation and their over representation in positions of authority?

It’s called White Supremacy. Not only is White supremacy just a statistical fact. It is also a perpetuation of this fact through continued discrimination toward non white people gaining any type of fair representation in these positions of power,authority and status.

The victim hood narrative is also known as a white supremacist narrative. Nobody told Jewish people after World War II to stop playing victims. Yet, Black Americans are still dealing with ongoing genocide in the U.S and they are supposed to what? Act like it’s not happening.

Once the U.S stops trying to genocide its black American population then maybe it would be time to look into your victim hood claim. But let’s not tell the Jewish people during Nazi Germany to stop playing victim.

You mentioned that black immigrants do well in the U.S.

This is known as class reductionism. It’s where you conflate racism with class.
Though in the U.S race can sometimes intersect with class. Obama was still called the N-Word by white people who dropped out of high school. This is what we mean by superior to all others in positions of status. Obama’s education and class positioning did not take precedence over his race. Where as apparently white people who have never set foot inside an Ivy League institution estimated their skin color to be a determining factor in their ability to assess Obama’s status relative their own.
Their assessment is that he was a monkey eating watermelon. You see if we just looked at Obama’s class in this situation it would be reductionist not to consider that his “race” was attacked regardless of his class positioning.

So it would be silly to assume that just because black immigrants are doing well economically that they do not still experience racism. Or that they did not have to work twice as hard to thrive economically. I’m still waiting for the study from white supremacists that claim this narrative. That breaks down how black immigrants doing well financially do not experience racism. My guess is that it doesn’t exist, but I’ll wait.

I want to make it clear that I am definitely not calling you a white supremacist at all. White supremacist narratives infect all of us. I was infected by it growing up. I was raised by White Americans exclusively. Adopted out at birth. I had to figure out what was a narrative and what I really felt and saw. I also began to read different sociological studies that also broke down this problem for me. Again, I’m not saying you haven’t done this. But the narratives of white supremacy are insidious and almost always illogical. They rely on feel good explanations to try and divert people’s attention away from the current genocide happening against African Americans.

The United Nations however is less concerned with narratives and has found that.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/09/1141652

As well as the White House

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/03/21/fact-sheet-u-s-efforts-to-combat-systemic-racism/

Again this is not me accusing you personally. This is the same old wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s White supremacy. An appeal to a status quo that sounds better than it really is.

I’m not saying I don’t understand what you meant about Black Americans driving their own destiny. I believe this myself but I cannot just ignore that my ability to steer my own destiny is markedly different from other POC with no emergency fund. Others who did not grow up with English as their first language. Others who are at the mercy of an impossible housing market who have to struggle to pay rent. Not because they don’t work hard enough but because their white parents did not leave them a house and investments. Or maybe they don’t get paid as much as their white coworkers. Or perhaps the white coworkers are constantly getting promoted over them for doing less work? I’ve seen this with my own eyes.

I have largely escaped almost 90% of the economic and social disenfranchisement of the majority Black experience in America. You’ll never guess what the other 10% I didn’t escape was? Racism, yep that’s right. Regardless of my private education, my inherited economic stability and my biracial ambiguous appearance. Still as a child I have memories of being called the N-Word. Being bullied by old white southern women. Punched by little white girls. Being called a “troublemaker” in a 97% white private school.

My suspicion is that the reason Black immigrants experience less of the “U.S black victim hood mentality” as you said. Is because they are victims of U.S racism less.

No really how do we conflate coming to a country as an adult with the experiences of Black American children growing up around white racist adults for the entirety of their formative years? Public school teachers are overwhelmingly white women. If my experiences are any indication in a school my white mother was actually paying for. I still experienced vicious traumatic racism from white adults when I was child. I can’t imagine what black American children in a public school system with no “white advocates” are experiencing. My white advocates being my parents. When my parents showed up to the school or my gymnastics camp the racism came to a much faster halt. Because white people respect other white people. This is called white supremacy. They knew and respected my mother because she came from a “good white family”. White is the operative word here.

It really upsets me to see people trivialize the pain not just of adult Black Americans but of black children.