White Supremacy is a Cancer

White Supremacy is a cancer. That’s not a metaphor I use lightly or flippantly. In fact, I’ve argued more than once against other people using cancer as a metaphor for something they despise. I have cancer, after all, and a really bad cancer at that. I know what cancer is, what it isn’t, and what it involves. I’m much too familiar with cancer’s effects on the human body and I know too-well how difficult cancer can be to purge from one’s system. I don’t say this from a platform of ignorance about cancer or a desire to provoke a reaction. I’m just calling it as I see it. White supremacy is a cancer.

           

            I first felt my cancer—large lumps in my belly—several months before I actually went to a hospital for a diagnosis. I ignored the signals my body sent me saying something was amiss. I told myself it couldn’t be anything too serious, it couldn’t really be something bad like cancer. Not in my 23-year-old body. Eventually the distress signals became unignorable though. Long after I should have done something, I finally went to a hospital, got diagnosed with a terrible cancer, and started the process of grueling treatments. It’s been almost three years now, and I’m still in treatment. I may always be.

            And that as I understand it is how white supremacy has existed in this country, during my lifetime at least. So many of us have ignored the voices of people of color saying it is a real, serious issue. We’ve turned deaf ears to the signals saying something is amiss. We’ve told ourselves that white supremacy can’t still be a problem, not in this country. “That’s not us” we tell ourselves, as if that could make it so. Lately white supremacy has become impossible to ignore though. Long after we all should have listened and done something, we’re finally waking up to the harsh reality of who we are. We are a country with a terrible cancer, a malignant ideology that leaves no room for the diversity of humanity. We need treatment. Urgently.

            Now, I’m a pacifist. I believe in nonviolent, loving solutions to problems of violence and hate. I believe none are beyond God’s redemptive powers. And I do believe that applies even in situations like this. Yes, white supremacy is a cancer. It is irreconcilably evil. But the people who have been duped into such horrific ideologies are not. They must be confronted and corrected wherever they harangue and spout their deplorable ideals and they must be stopped from causing further harm, but they themselves are not cancer. Just as I’m getting every available treatment to kill my cancer while working to keep myself as healthy as possible through it all, we have to fight white supremacy with everything we have while working to rebuke and ultimately reconcile the people promoting it.

            Curing this country of white supremacy will be neither swift nor easy. My cancer has required years of chemotherapy, over a dozen surgical procedures, multiple rounds of radiation, and participation in a clinical trial. It isn’t a pleasant process and it’s left me with numerous scars. I fear the same will be true of the process to rid the world of white supremacy. But I also hold fierce hope that it can be achieved just as I hope, against all odds, that I will one day be cancer-free.