Kyle Rittenhouse Confirms White Male Supremacy

By Halford H. Fairchild

The “not guilty” verdicts awarded to Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old White supremacist who murdered two unarmed people and seriously wounded another, is confirmatory.  It confirms what we’ve known all along.

The United States of America was founded in 1776 in the spirit of White male supremacy.  The “Founding Fathers,” most of them, were slave holders.  Or to put it less succinctly, the Founding Fathers (George Washington, et al.) held other human beings in lifelong captivity and profited from their uncompensated labor.  Their justification for doing so? The ingrained belief in the supremacy of White men.  Native Americans and Africans were defined as “savages” deserving of genocide and enslavement.  This barbarous behavior was given license in The Constitution of the United States.

I watched the Kyle Rittenhouse trial—and the concurrent trial for the murderers of Ahmaud Arbery—with rapt attention.  From my vantage point, the guilt of the accused is without question.  After all, one of Rittenhouse’s victims was shot in the back, while prone on the ground.  The murder of Ahmaud Arbery was caught on video-tape; an unarmed jogger was murdered by three Confederate flag waving vigilantes.  The fact that the Arbrery jury was given the opportunity to exculpate the three defendants is sad commentary on American jurisprudence.

For hundreds of years, White men have led campaigns to kill or enslave Native Americans, Africans, Native Hawaiians, Koreans, Vietnamese, Iranians, Afghanis and many others.  Their not guilty verdicts bring outrage, but no surprise.  

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Halford H. Fairchild, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus at Pitzer College in Psychology and Africana Studies. He is a past National President of The Association of Black Psychologists. He is also a writer and performer.