"Cone insists that “most whites do not like to talk about white supremacy because it makes them feel..."

Cone insists that “most whites do not like to talk about white supremacy because it makes them feel guilty.” Oppressors try to expunge the history of their crimes committed against blacks and “portray themselves as the innocent ones.” “Through their control of the media and religious, political, and academic discourse ‘they’re able,’ as Malcolm put it, ‘to make the victim to look like the criminal and the criminal to look like the victim.’” Whites misunderstand violence, Cone argues. They are not really concerned about violence in all cases but only when they are the victims. White theologians use Jesus’ so-called “nonviolent” attitude in the Gospels as primary evidence that the oppressed ought to be nonviolent today. But we do not hear from “nonviolent” Christians when blacks are violently enslaved, lynched, ghettoized and poisoned. In reality, the problem of violence is not just a question for the oppressed but primarily a question for the oppressors.

It is also too easy for whites to say that racial and spatial disparities are not their fault, notes Cone. Insofar as whites tolerate and sponsor racism in their educational institutions, their political, economic, and social structures; they tolerate their environment and, in every other aspect of American life, they are directly responsible for white oppression. Racism is possible because whites are indifferent to black suffering and cruelty.