ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an introduction to white supremacy as integral, central, and necessary to the ontological architecture of Western civilization since the rise of modernity in the 1500s and 1600s in Europe. The chapter begins with a rationale for why the excavation of this ontological architecture is a needed addition to the current literature on whiteness, white racism, and white supremacy. In the second section, I explain what I mean by ontological architecture. In the third section, I focus on the nature of this architecture. In the fourth, I delineate three key elements of this architecture—individualism, private property, and capitalism. In the fifth, called “Living in Color in the White House,” I address how the ontological architecture of white supremacy is experienced “differently” by folks of color than it is by whites. In the sixth, I address my racial positionality, put off until near the end so that my explication of the ontological architecture can frame my discussion of my positionality. Finally, given what I have provided here, I end with the question, “What is to be done?”
