As discussed in their paper, “Anthropology of White Supremacy”, Aisha Beliso-De Jesús and Jemima Pierre opened their talk with an analysis and reflection on their experience hosting a panel by the same title at the 2016 American Anthropological Association (AAA) conference. This panel, which highlighted the work of anthropologists of color and addressed “white supremacy as a long-standing global system of power that benefits all white people” and as an embedded system within the discipline of anthropology, was surprisingly well-attended for a topic normally relegated to the fringes of such conferences. The largely white and politically liberal audience of anthropologists in attendance were looking for answers to the recent election of Donald Trump in 2016 and were subsequently unsatisfied as the panelists “addressed white supremacy as a long-standing global system of power that benefits all white people” directly implicating the discipline itself as a part of these systems (Beliso-De Jesús and Pierre 2016, 69). Their talk at Tufts held 4 years later, on the heels of another presidential election, was also highly attended, as professors from many departments, students, and others from the greater Tufts community logged on via zoom to hear these two scholars. Although the outcome of this election was different than the last, the audience on this occasion was decidedly more interested in asking the speakers about their work in relation to their own fields, in interacting with their methodologies and theories, and in relation to the movements for social and racial justice that once again have erupted across this country. This gradual paradigmatic shift can be seen in many ways on Tufts’ campus, whether it be through this speaker series, curriculum audits across the university, various forms of student activism, or the creation of new departments and fields of study. Although this shift in expectations and understandings for this event and in relation to other matters, it must be understood not primarily as a reckoning with the past four years of Trumpism but through the decades long work of BIPOC communities, activists, and academics, like Jemima Pierre and Aisha Beliso-De Jesús to usher in serious reflection, radical change, and reckoning within academic disciplines, institutions, and society at large.

After introducing their collaborative work arising from the panel they hosted in 2016, Aisha Beliso-De Jesús took the first section of the talk to highlight the ways in which anthropologists of color have had both their theoretical propositions and methodologies shunned because of their centering of a critique of white supremacy and racism as a lens of analysis. Beliso-De Jesús described institutional cultures and practices of policing by anthropological journals, department chairs, and funding providers that dissuade or outright reject the use of these themes as points of analysis because those modes are “for other disciplines…not anthropology”. These practices of censorship and policing in the political production of knowledge within anthropology are not only reserved for the analysis of white supremacy and race but for a variety of topics, methodologies, and modes of analysis, including research from the sub-field of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Anthropology. In their book, Anthropology’s Politics; Disciplining the Middle East, Lara Deeb and Jessica Winegar highlight the ways in which MENA anthropology is policed to support American imperialist and geo-political objectives reflecting orientalist logics embedded in the field and these geopolitical systems (2016). I think Beliso-De Jesús and Pierre’s analysis of white supremacy as a foundational system embedded in the discipline can support their work and claims by locating the censorship and discrimination many MENA anthropologists face in a broader context of policing within anthropology that targets and suppresses knowledge production that criticizes and endangers the white supremacist foundations of the discipline and the greater socio-political status-quo it is embedded within. From this discussion on the anthropology in and of white supremacy, Beliso De-Jesús moved into discussing how she applies the analytical framework of white supremacy in her work, underlining that her use of these frameworks not only serves to reckon with the discipline but is also theoretically applicable and fruitful when applied to many subjects.

As Beliso-De Jesús transitioned from her and Pierre’s discussion on the white supremacist modes of policing, censorship, and control within anthropology, she moved to highlight her ethnographic work in another and much more incarnated mode of policing, the police themselves, specifically the policing of ideas and bodies during police training sessions. She artfully intertwined her observations from the field with a diagnosis of police cultural and institutional practices as white supremacist in both their origins and value systems. While describing the ways in which police academy instructors mold police cadets to fit a predetermined physically and mentally muscular and dominating body, a body and mind resembling the phenotypic white male fascist, Beliso-De Jesús highlighted the ways in which cadets’ conceptions of their individual identities are suppressed to meet this ideal police body. This cultural and physical molding is juxtaposed against the criminal body, described by the training instructor as a 6,5 basketball player, a description with little interpretation needed. As Beliso-De Jesús realized her time was coming to an end, she passed the floor over to Jemima Pierre. Peirre spoke of her application of the lens of a critique of white supremacy to western development industries and academia, highlighting another way in which this lens of analysis is not only necessary to reckon with anthropology itself, but also to identify white supremacy in other very important fields and reckon with it there in both theory and practice.

Jemima Pierre identified two main tenants or logics of white supremacy on which the western development industry and academia rely: the suppression of histories and a dichotomy between whiteness and non-whiteness. The first theory or example that Pierre focused on and critiqued was the deterministic resource-curse assumption, which presumes that countries with an abundance of valuable natural resources will beset themselves with widespread mismanagement, corruption, and conflict, without ever discussing the ways in which extractivist and oppressive western corporations bleed countries dry while creating unstable conditions to continue profiting. The resource curse analysis relies upon, according to Pierre, a racialized lexicon of African inability that then necessitates the involvement of western developmentalist pressures, measures and supervision. The second example that Pierre discussed was the concept of the “artisanal”: in the African context. In developmentalist lexicon, artisanal presumes a lack of technology, positioning African traditional practices as primitive and pre-modern. Pierre highlighted this point through the case of artisanal mining and other resource extraction industries. Leaders of these industries often find a culprit for environmental degradation in communities that have been mining for natural resources over centuries rather than in the environmentally destructive force of foreign corporations that strip the tops of hills and mountains to reach those same resources. By highlighting these two concrete concepts and examples, commonplace in developmentalist industries and academia, Pierre situates their core logics and foundations within a framework of white supremacist ideologies, histories, and structural systems. As Pierre quickly wrapped up her presentation, the floor was opened up for audience questions, which included questions about white supremacy in the field of global health, about centering whiteness in discussion of white supremacy and about how to access further works that take similar critical approaches to topics in other fields and in popular media. As the talk came to a close and people began logging off, it became evident that this time a talk titled “Anthropology of White Supremacy” had been understood by this audience in a very different light. The event promoted and drove forward critical reflection, reckoning, and change within our academic institutions and disciplines, and also was means to learn about an important analytical framework and methodological practices that must be applied to fields of study far broader than a single topic or school of thought. 

Bibliography:

Beliso De-Jesús, Aisha and Jemima Pierre. 2020 “Anthropology of White Supremacy.American Anthropology 122, no. 1 (March): 65-75.

Deeb, Lara and Jessica Winegar. 2016. Anthropology’s Politics; Disciplining the Middle East.     Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016.