The Roots of America’s Violence:
White Supremacy, Power, and the Struggle for Dignity
In September 2025, activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking at a Utah campus event. His death was shocking — not only for its brutality, but because it showed that political violence is not just a relic of the past or a threat on the horizon. It is part of our national identity. Today’s surge in violence follows patterns we’ve seen before. Let’s take a look at that history.
When Pope Alexander VI issued the Doctrine of Discovery in 1493, he gave theological and legal cover for European conquest of lands already inhabited by indigenous people. These papal bulls declared non-Christian peoples “less than” and their lands open for seizure. This was more than a geopolitical maneuver — it embedded into the Western imagination a belief in the inherent supremacy of some over others.
When the United States was founded nearly three centuries later, the Founders carried this worldview with them. In the Constitution, they enshrined compromises that upheld racial hierarchy:
The 3/5 Compromise gave enslavers disproportionate power by counting enslaved people as partial humans.
The Fugitive Slave Clause treated Black people as property to be returned.
Indigenous sovereignty was denied, laying the groundwork for forced removal and massacres.
These legal structures weren’t neutral. They authorized violence: slave patrols, lynchings, Native removals enforced by militias, and the steady expansion of “whiteness” as the standard of belonging.
That seed has borne bitter fruit for centuries. In the United States, political violence has always been part of enforcing this hierarchy.
In 1837, abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy was murdered by a pro-slavery mob for daring to print against bondage.
After emancipation, the Colfax Massacre (1873) and the Wilmington coup (1898) used terror to crush Black political power during and after Reconstruction.
Native peoples were targeted in state-sanctioned violence, culminating in the Wounded Knee Massacre (1890).
In the 20th century, racial violence surged whenever Black communities flourished. The Tulsa Race Massacre (1921) destroyed “Black Wall Street,” while the Red Summer of 1919 saw dozens of cities erupt in white mob violence.
The Civil Rights Movement was met with assassinations and bombings: Medgar Evers (1963), the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing (1963), the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner (1964), and of course, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1968).
White supremacist violence continued into our own time: the Greensboro Massacre (1979), the murder of Denver talk show host Alan Berg (1984), and mass shootings in Charleston (2015), Pittsburgh (2018), El Paso (2019), Buffalo (2022), and Allen, Texas (2023).
Across four centuries, violence has been used to enforce the same hierarchy: the supremacy of some over others.
We often think of white supremacy as something “out there,” belonging only to extremists. But if we are honest, we must ask: Where does it live inside us? In our unspoken fears, in the reflex to protect what is “ours,” in the subtle hierarchies we accept as normal. To live in peace, we must do the hard work of rooting it out of our own hearts and minds.
What we all yearn for is simple: a dignified life. A way to live securely, peacefully, and in community with one another. That dignity cannot be built on the subjugation of others — it can only grow in soil where all belong.
Steps Forward
My heart yearns for a peaceful world where our society is based in convenient, life-affirming systems. Our current society has deep roots in a hierarchy of human value and we have yet to break free. Our liberation depends upon us doing so. Here are things everyone can do:
Tell the truth about our history. Remember the massacres, lynchings, and assassinations not as isolated tragedies but as a continuous thread.
Examine our own complicity. Where do supremacy-based assumptions show up in our daily lives, in how we see neighbors, or strangers?
Practice dignity. Uphold it in how we speak, how we act, how we shape institutions.
Create new norms. From local communities to national politics, insist on policies and practices that make space for everyone to thrive.
The arc of violence will not bend toward peace on its own. It requires all of us, together, to name the roots, pull them up, and choose a different inheritance.
See Also
They Want You Afraid. Here’s How We Take Our Power Back Terrified Nation podcast, Season 4, Episode 9
Surviving Beyond Our Survival Instincts Substack blog by Debilyn Molineaux
Rule of Law or Rise of Fascism? Substack blog by Debilyn Molineaux
From Owners to Neighbors: Rebalancing Property and Human Rights in America Substack blog by Debilyn Molineaux
The Eternal Cycle: A Story of Death, Renewal, and the Path Ahead Substack blog by Debilyn Molineaux
From Fear to Flourish: Naming and Claiming a Preferred Future American Future interview/blog
Becoming the Helper We’re Looking For Substack blog by Debilyn Molineaux
Blasts from the past: History isn't always pretty - The Fulcrum
Thank you, @Debilyn, for this important inquiry. It's always worth the effort to search for root causes of human dysfunction, especially in the domain of violence. Your writing reveals the legacy of centuries of domination by antiquated, divisive, disastrously-brutal religious belief systems perpetrated by Christianity Synchronistically, this past weekend I spent time with the producer and director of the film "The Doctrine of Discovery, Unmasking the Domination Code." https://vimeo.com/ondemand/dominationcode Sheldon Wolfchild, a Dakota elder and Dakota Hstorian based this film on decades of research by Steven Newcomb and his book Pagans in the Promised Land. I learned that Sheldon will be visiting the Vatican this October to meet with the Pope, show him the film, and request a formal, global acknowledgment of the immeasurable and avoidable suffering perpetrated by a succession of Popes leading to our modern era. Sheldon's mission is to invite the current Pope to formally accept responsibility with an eye toward truth and reconciliation combined with restorative justice. The film provides insights into what is required of our human species now to restore civility, peaceful co-existence and human dignity and decency. Stay tuned!