Recently, Sam’s Club’s CEO Rosalind Brewer, a black woman, made comments regarding diversity on her executive team and lack thereof in the corporate world altogether:
“My executive team is very diverse, and I make that a priority. I demand it within my team…Just today we met with a supplier and the entire other side of the table was all Caucasian males. That was interesting. I decided not to talk about it directly with [the supplier’s] folks in the room because there were actually no female, like levels down. So I’m going to place a call to him.”
In other words, Brewer believes that there should be people of different backgrounds (people of color and women) in executive positions as demonstrated by her team. However, she was kind of taken aback when she met with a group of top business folks who happen to be all white males. So, she wanted to talk to the supplier about that. That’s all.
Here’s what some white folks apparently got out of it according to some tweets and articles:
SHE’S RACIST AGAINST WHITE MEN! SHE MUST BE FIRED!
Evidently, this is what they took out of the interview, particularly her comment about diversity. To them, it was a sign of the white apocalypse, a black person discriminating about white people. She’s got to go!
It’s happened many times before whenever the ugly d-word is brought up or when the subject of racism is mentioned and discussed. Whenever someone, anyone, especially a person of color, talks about some kind of racial injustice, even as a soundbite, there is always a group of sleeper-type white folks that spontaneously get agitated as hell, because racism is brought up. Only, they are not angry for the people discriminated. Instead, they feel they are the real victims and turn their rage towards the people of color that dared to bring it up.
There’s always that set of white people that believe that they are endangered, that they live in a world where white people are victims of some kind of plan involving some genetic annihilation where whiteness, always treasured above all else and deemed “superior” by lower-class thinkers, is under attack from nonwhites. These people, such as the ones attacking the Sam’s Club CEO, apparently believe that whites, white men, in particular, are about to be discriminated against simply because they are white. Even though, Brewer’s comment said absolutely nothing of the sort, some white folks interpreted it as such.
White interpretation, a term I just made up, seems to be a habit where white people misinterpret quotes and comments based on race into what they think they are saying, which usually ends up twisted in favor of whites and their racism. In some warped way, they hear what they want to hear and fear it. And they will find any and all examples, no matter how unrealistic or insane, to prove their case. Black-on-white crimes anyone?
Despite that they live in a white dominated societies where white entitlement and white privilege reigns supreme, the thought of being oppressed by nonwhites scares the living shit out of white people. Some believe that they actually are being held down while you have those that are on top and fear of losing their place at the top of the racial caste system. However they look at it, they want to keep the machine of white supremacy going forever, no matter the costs for as long as humanly possible.