Liberal white supremacy for dummies: Taking a deep dive into an important book

Abstract

Angie Beeman’s Liberal White Supremacy: How Progressives Silence Racial and Class Oppression exposes what she refers to as the “fault line in American politics” that makes alliances between liberals and radicals so difficult. To that end, she traces the causes of that fracture among “a divided left” to “fundamental differences . . . in their approaches to racism, class, capitalism, and social movement tactics . . ..” (Beeman, 2022: 1). That examination reveals essential insights as to why alliances with white liberals within anti-racist and class-oppression focused movements that push for fundamental change, rather than piecemeal, system-sustaining reforms, fail, and what needs to done to make them work, if and when that is possible.

Drawing upon Professor Beeman’s ethnographic research on racism evasiveness in progressive social movement organizations, Liberal White Supremacy exposes the ideological, political, and moral contradictions inherent in the very notion of what it means to be a white liberal. Such insights are especially needed now for those serious about forging effective alliances to resist the United States’ movement into what I refer to as the Trump-era of authoritarian racism. That is, a pre-civil rights movement return to the types of oppression (e.g., slavery, peonage, and Jim Crow) made possible through the dreadful mix of systemic racism and authoritarian rule that African Americans have resisted throughout most of US history.¹

Taking a deep dive

Because Liberal White Supremacy is well written, without academic jargon or literary pretense, its radical intellectual and history-based conceptual premises may be lost for many of its readers. The goal of this review, therefore, is to offer those who are so inclined an opportunity to take the plunge necessary to explore the depths of Liberal White Supremacy’s analytical ocean. Let me be clear, however, that this is not a criticism of Professor Beeman’s book, as written. Its appeal to a large audience of progressives, many of whom are not academicians, and few of whom are theory-adept intellectuals, is precisely because it is such a brief, accessible, and inviting read. That definitely would not have been the case if it was a 400 plus page tome written for those relatively few people who have a passion for philosophy, social theory, and African American history.

A good place to begin the deep dive necessary to bring to the surface Liberal White Supremacy’s pearls of wisdom is by defining its three key concepts; liberal, white, and supremacy. Unfortunately most people don’t have a clue as to what being a liberal, being white, and, more specifically, being a white liberal means, and how all three are inherently linked to deeply embedded notions of their intellectual and moral supremacy.

Liberal

Many people falsely assume that a liberal is simply a kind and “bleeding heart” soul who is inherently progressive and humane. That belief obscures what liberalism really is, its origins, and the social, economic, and political functions it serves, and for whom. And it certainly is not what Professor Beeman means when she uses the word. Despite its lofty sounding ideals, liberalism emerged as class ideology, not as a moral theory promoting kindness, caring, and justice for all. That is, to put it in Enlightenment-era terms, its main goal was the promotion of “self-interest,” not “the common good.” Here is what I have to say about the origins and functions of liberalism in my book, Kindness Wars: The History and Political Economy of Human Caring.

. . . political scientist C.B. Macpherson placed the rise of liberal thought in the West within the context of the shift from a feudal to a capitalist economy and the rise of the bourgeoisie as a new affluent class that challenged the economic and political dominance of monarchs and other aristocrats and the Catholic Church through the development of ideology which, with kind-sounding and lofty ideals like liberty, justice, and equality, justified its own class’ right to own, keep, and infinitely enlarge its property (Cazenave, 2024: 69–70).

That property also included slaves. In Kindness Wars I discuss the ugly, not very kind, side of some of the liberal Enlightenment scholars like John Locke, Voltaire, David Hume, and Thomas Jefferson. Those affluent “white” men found no contradiction in advocating such liberal ideals and the development of racist theory that justified systems of economic exploitation they benefited from like industrial capitalism, colonialism, slavery, and genocide. And they had no qualms about limiting the right to vote to affluent white men like themselves (Cazenave, 2024: 69–72, 88–95).²

Each semester that I teach my Racism Theory graduate seminar, I pass out to my students a brief article on liberalism. While American liberalism has changed over time, that article documents how today’s liberalism was heavily shaped during the Progressive Era. That was a time (1890–1920) in the US when it was assumed that: reform should come through the actions of experts; capitalism, while being more regulated, should not be challenged in any significant way; and conflict between social, economic, and political groups should be avoided as much as possible. Early liberal progressives included overtly racist presidents like Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. Later, other liberals would avoid racial issues that could threaten their political ambitions, like Franklin Delano Rooselvelt’s refusal to support challenges to Jim Crow or to even back federal anti-lynching legislation. It was only after World War II, with the harsh lessons of European fascism and the emergence of the modern civil rights movement that American liberals embraced civil rights as a major concern (Tuck, 2000: 428–429). However, such support rarely included the more militant efforts of African Americans to forcibly change the power relations that keep us oppressed. Then, as now, white liberals were usually so concerned with “civility” that they could not fathom African American calls for “black power!,” or later chants of “No justice! No peace!”

White

As is true for the concept of liberalism, when it comes to understanding what whiteness really is, most European Americans are like fish comfortably oblivious to the water surrounding them. Like fish swimming in water, so-called “white” Americans, have the privilege of just bathing in their whiteness and its many social and economic benefits without needing to know what it really is; much less it’s negative personal and social consequences. Indeed, as I put in a commentary I published in the Hartford Courant titled “What Does it Mean to be White?” being white is not about skin color. That fact is evident in that there are people of color, including my own mother and other kin, who are lighter in their complexions than many so called “white” people. Seemingly tons of scientific research has debunked the notion of race as human biology, while historical research has revealed that, instead, the race concept was invented as an ideology to justify exploitative systems like colonialism, slavery, genocide, and ruthless forms of capitalism. What that suggests is that, like “race,” “whiteness” is not just nonsensical. Because it is based on the premise of white supremacy, it is an inherently racist concept that no truly progressive person should embrace. It is not surprising, therefore that supporting my position that what it means to be white is an attitude, an ideology, and privilege, during Jim Crow young racially “white” designated young people would sometimes assert their independence and entitlement by proudly proclaiming that “I am free, white, and twenty-one!” Building on those and other ideas, a succinct definition of white racism I share with students in my White Racism classes is White Racism = White Racial Identity + White Racial Privilege (Cazenave, 1995: A15; 2016: 136).

The fact that white racial identity is not only erroneous, but is injurious, is a premise that is central to the neo-abolitionist movement advocated by the anti-racism journal, Race Traitor. With its motto “treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity,” it calls for those designated and identified as “white,” who are committed to anti-racial struggle, to become “race traitors” by committing themselves to the abolishment of whiteness and all the privileges it encompasses. With that background, it can be understood that not only is the uncritical acceptance of the notion of whiteness problematic but, when it comes to anti-racist alliances, the mere idea of being a “white” (and therefore racially superior) anti-racist is oxymoronic. In brief, while a white liberal view of whiteness and whiteness studies is that they require little more critical examination than being aware of one’s white racial privilege, a radical perspective insists that, if anti-racist alliances are to be effective, white and other color-based racial designations and identities must be relinquished and challenged (Nopper, 2003; Race Traitor, 1993: cover, 1–3).

To her credit, Professor Beeman makes clear the problematic nature of both the uncritical use of the word white to refer to people and of the acceptance of white racial identity. As she puts it, when she uses the term she “is not referring to a socially constructed category of people, but a pervasive ideology of whiteness that permeates institutional culture and practices.” Finally, Beeman places a spotlight on those who “normalize whiteness” and its assumption of white supremacy by uncritically accepting that erroneous and injurious social designation and identity. Within that ideology, being white means, above all, being racially superior (Beeman, 2022: 11).

Supremacy

At the core of her arguments is Angie Beeman’s premise that, whether they are conscious of it or not, white liberals suffer from delusions of both racial and class superiority. This is what she has to say about how their posture of being especially enlightened in their understanding of racism both reflects and feeds such presumptions of moral superiority. “Liberal white supremacy reinforces a white liberal frame that positions European Americans as superior and people of color as inferior” (Beeman, 2022: 25). In dictionary definitions and widespread cultural representations, the color white is associated with all things good and pure compared to its bad, black opposite. That belief in liberal white supremacy takes two major forms; intellectual and moral superiority. The assumed intellectual superiority of “white” people is one of the racist stereotypes that is used to justify the oppression of African Americans and other people of color. That is, white people must rule because they are best capable of doing so. And here is a Merriam Webster definition of white, “free from moral impurity: innocent” (Merriam Webster Dictionary, 2026). Such notions of white moral superiority are deeply ingrained in Western culture. For example, white magic, white witches, white lies, and the white attire of the good-guy cowboys in some Western-genre movies represent moral goodness. In stark contrast, black magic, black witches, lies other than those that are white, and bad-guy outlaws clad in black, are white’s moral opposite, black. And, of course, it is not a good thing to have a black mark on one’s record.

Beeman makes the case that such attitudes of intellectual and moral superiority also apply to the class elitist view of many white liberals that they are superior to members of the white working class who they often dismiss as little more than ignorant bigots, as represented in the old Archie Bunker television series. As she puts it, “Asserting moral superiority above working-class white racists and poorly behaving radicals represents the class-elitist behaviors of liberal white supremacists.. . .” (Beeman, 2022: 25).

Thesis and key premises

As I noted earlier, Liberal White Supremacy’s thesis can be summed up in four cogent points Beeman makes about white liberals that cause them to be ineffective in alliances that require organizing for fundamental change in racial and class relations. First, there is their uncritical acceptance of capitalist ideology. Second, is their rejection of conflict as necessary for social change. Third, is their tendency to be racism blind both in their ideology and social movement strategies and tactics. Finally, there is their class elitism, based on their view that they are intellectually and morally superior to both people of color and to members of the white working class (Beeman, 2022: 1).

Uncritical acceptance of capitalism

Unlike class-focused radicals, liberals have no real beef with capitalism, the way it works, and its social consequences. While as progressives they are open to providing some governmental regulations and social welfare safety nets for those who need it; the economic system works quite well for them. And as is true for their view of the racial order, they do not see the need for fundamental or radical change. Instead, reforms can be made as needed, not just to help those in economically precarious circumstances, but equally, or perhaps more importantly, to protect the system from collapse, or from attacks by radicals. A case in point are the functions served by Franklin Delanor Roosevelt’s “New Deal.” As Professor Beeman puts it, in explaining what she refers to as the liberal “perspectives on capitalism,” “[l]iberals are apologists for capitalistic exploitation. They see problems in this system but have not embraced a ‘shift change’” (Beeman, 2022: 33).

Conflict aversiveness

Throughout her book, Professor Beeman stresses that conflict-focused strategies and tactics are a major area of contention between the racially oppressed and white liberals. The centrality of conflict to African American social thought and social movements is evident in the following declaration made in an 1857 speech by African American abolitionist, Frederick Douglas as his eloquent rejection of the moral suasionist argument of white abolitionists.

If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will (Foner and Taylor, 1999: 367).

And more than a century later, this is what Martin Luther King, Jr. had to say in his equally famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” about the problem of conflict-aversive allies.

. . . I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection (King, 1963).

As I noted earlier, for many of today’s Movement for Black Lives, and other African American activists, that moral theory and strategic/tactical philosophy can be summed up nicely in the pithy slogan “No justice! No peace!” (Cazenave, 2024: 219).

Here is some of what Angie Beeman has to say about conflict-aversive white liberals based on her study of the failures of interracial social-justice-focused movements.

Liberals of the worst sort claim to care about social justice and express this care in nonconfrontational, subtle ways that do not upset the class and capitalist status quo. They go along with middle-class norms of respectability and fruitlessly work within the power structure’s rules while they attempt to challenge injustice. This allows them to appear morally righteous, while keeping intact the chances for gaining access to power and influence (Beeman, 2022: 52).

Racism blindness

In my Conceptualizing Racism book I define racism blindness as “the dominant ideology and practice of not seeing systemic racism in highly racialized societies in which strong sanctions are applied in the denial of its existence, pervasiveness, and consequences.” Related concepts I discuss there are racism evasiveness, racism denial, and racial accommodation (Cazenave, 2016: 17, 23). In American society, where even mouthing the word racism causes many white people to “put up their dukes” as if you just said something scandalous about their mamas, it is widely accepted that a good way to avoid the conflict white liberals hate so much is simply to remain “see no evil” blind to the racism around them. As Professor Beeman states, such racism blindness is especially easy for white liberals because of what I refer to as the IPA Syndrome which includes “the ignorance of not knowing, the privilege of not needing to know, and the arrogance of not wanting to know” (Beeman, 2022: 33). In brief, they ignore it for many reasons, but ultimately, because they can.

An important reason white liberals and radicals choose not to see racism is because they view its acknowledgement as impeding focus on what they consider to be larger, more important, and more encompassing economic issues. Thus the popularity among white liberals for racially accommodative scholarship like William Julius Wilson’s, The Declining Significance of Race. Ironically, that book was widely received, both inside and outside of academia, as facilitating a badly needed “race” v class debate; with white people of all political stripes leaning toward the class side. I say ironically in that the word “race” was used as a proxy that avoided the implied term “racism” which at that time was barely allowed within American sociology, while Wilson rarely even mentioned the word class, much less defined it, and focused instead on socio-economic status (Cazenave, 2016: 97, 200–201).

It is important to stress here that Professor Beeman’s beef with the tendency of “white” people to be racism evasive is not limited to white liberals, moderates, and conservatives. She also correctly criticizes some white radicals for engaging in their own form of racism evasiveness by reducing racial oppression to little more than an unfortunate residue of what they deem to be the much larger and more important issue of class-based exploitation (Beeman, 2022: 126–127).

Class elitism

White liberals tend to be highly educated. And there is a widely accepted belief that education not only makes people more tolerant and accepting of others, but levels social and economic inequality by providing upward mobility opportunities for those not born into class-based privilege. While that is often true, many decades ago, in Schooling in Capitalist America, Bowles and Gintis (1976) made a convincing argument that higher education also serves a class-reproduction function. Consistent with that view, Professor Beeman notes that class elitism often targets those with less formal education. For example, liberal class and educational elitism is certainly evident in Democratic Party politics that may have been a factor in some of their losses to Republicans who have successfully made their charge of Democratic Party elites stick, especially for the large block of non-college educated white voters. A good example of that education-driven class elitism is the comment Yale Law School graduate, Hillary Clinton, made in her 2016 presidential campaign loss to Donald Trump, when she characterized half of his supporters as a “basket of deplorables” who were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it” (BBC News, 2016).

It is also important to note, as does Professor Beeman, that many ambitious people of color also adopt white liberal framing of things when they see it has being helpful for career advancement and other purposes. For example, during his successful 2008 presidential campaign, Harvard Law School graduate, Barack Obama, gave a speech in Philadelphia in which he denounced his former African American pastor for suggesting that racism is endemic to American Society (Martin, 2008). That same month Obama also seemed to follow Hillary Clinton’s lead in insulting potential white working class voters when he asserted about those living in previously industrial areas where unemployment is high, “[t]hey get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations” (Pilkington, 2008). And there was Harvard Law School, graduate Michelle Obama’s very privileged and conflict aversive “When they go low, we go high” advice she gave at the 2016 Democratic National Convention for dealing with vicious right-wing political attacks (Obama, 2016).

Painful memories of my own experiences with liberal white supremacy

Professor Beeman’s focus on the sense of moral superiority at the core of white liberalism suggests that for people of color interracial alliances may also come at great emotional costs. In my Cazenave Eyes: Memories of Racism and Racism Studies memoir I recount the racial traumas that caused my anger and burnout within academia as I battled racism and fought for racism studies, while all too often being naïve as to the true nature, goals, and functions of white liberalism. The pain that I and other African American faculty members have experienced is evident in the chapter titled, “Knives in My Back: White Liberals as Paternalistic and Treacherous ‘Allies.’” The emotional toll dealing with white liberal allies can take is also evident in the poem I wrote as that chapter’s epigraph.

Treachery

Betrayal is like a razor-sharp

dagger plunged deeply into our backs

and through our bleeding hearts

as we see how it slices us into lonely fragments

of our formerly connected selves.

(Cazenave, 2025: 175).³

Among that chapter’s section headings that offer a glimpse of the types of issues I have faced with white liberals within academia are: Racial Liberalism and White Liberals as Guardians of the Racial Status Quo; African American Critiques of White Liberals: A Brief History; and Some Thoughts on the Privileges and Contradictions of Today’s White Liberals. Other headlines are: Morality Plays, Paternalism, and Conflict Aversiveness Within UConn’s Sociology Department: A Case Example; From the Iron Fist of White Male Dominance to the Velvet Glove of White (and Brown) Female Treachery; and The Heavy Toll of Betrayal (Cazenave, 2025 chapter 7).

In response to being deemed as essentially a conflict-prone and demonic person for not behaving like a saintly and conflict-aversive white liberal, I sent a colleague I worked closely with for many years an email titled Conflicting Orientations to Social Justice Between Liberal/Dominant Group Members and the Radical/Oppressed. In that email I identified and discussed the following seven differences. It began with: goals (make system more inclusive v fundamental change); methods (reasonable, facts-based arguments v intellectual and political confrontation); view of self (a caring and tolerant person v a warrior against oppression); and view of oppressors (people who need to understand v people who need to be challenged). It also included: view of the oppressed (social others to be tolerated as long as they operate within a white liberal framework v self and others as allies in a never-ending struggle against social oppression); position within the social structure (secure and privileged v insecure and subject to constant challenge); and ideological worldview (liberalism/multi-culturalism v radical oppressed). While the purpose of that email was to outline differences in our politics so that we could work together on things we agree on, while respecting our differences, and accepting the fact that at times we would not make a good team, that effort failed because my department colleague would not even acknowledge that their actions were, indeed, political. They simply saw themself as a good person; the opposite of the all-too-often angry and conflict-ready me (Cazenave, 2025: 188–190).

In the concluding chapter of Cazenave Eyes I include the following among the advice for the racially oppressed and their allies in predominantly white work environments that closely fit the findings of Professor Beeman’s study. They are: “[r] recognize and embrace the importance of conflict and confrontation in changing power relations” and “[u]se allies wisely, but never allow them to set your agenda or to dictate your methods.” In brief, as I also found in my review of the long history of African American resistance to what I call authoritarian racism as part of my current book project on that topic, while anti-racist interracial alliances are important, they should be engaged in on the terms set by the racially oppressed who decide what is to be done, why, and how (Cazenave, 2025: 262).

Where do we go from here?

Angie Beemn’s Liberal White Supremacy is essential reading, not just because it provides a no-holds-barred critique of white liberals and their racial and class elitism, moral and intellectual gamesmanship, conflict aversiveness, and tendency to settle for piecemeal reforms rather than push for fundamental change. Criticism is only the beginning in bringing about meaningful change. There must also be hope and guideposts for how to get to a better place. Professor Beeman’s work on while liberals is being well received because it adeptly diagnoses what is wrong, and what is fixable and what is not, for effective interracial, cross-class, and liberal/radical progressive alliances. Such insights can help progressives navigate the often rocky terrain of agreeing on goals and methods when that is possible, and knowing when a successful alliance is not possible, and instead, having those most committed to the cause go it alone.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Noel A. Cazenave

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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