Andrea Smith White Supremacy Summary

An Analysis of Andrea Smith’s Heteropatriarchy and the three Pillars of White Supremacy in Canadian Women’s History

This analysis of Andrea Smith’s “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy” define the important aspects of revolving sense of oppression from slavery/capitalism, genocide/colonialism, and orientalism/war in Canadian history. The institution of slavery and the capitalist system tended to structure power around the ability of Canadian male officials to enslave women as a type of servant workforce in the black community For example, Canadian women’s history will define the effects of the Treaty of Paris as an example of slavery capitalism, since it created a monetary system that was based around exploiting labor in the female population: “One effect of this transfer in power is the legal strengthening of slavery in Canada. At this time, 1500 Black slaves have landed in Canada

(Vancouver Status of Women, 2008, p.7). In this manner, the collaboration between French and English superpowers allowed this patriarchal dominance to continue in the global system of capitalism in the Canadian colonies: “A capitalist system cannot exist within any framework except that of a world-economy” (Wallerstein, 2004, p.766). This is an important example of Smith’s argument defines how the historical foundation of the treaty of Paris allowed slavery and commoditized blacks: This racial hierarchy tells people that as long as you are not Black, you have the opportunity to escape the commodification of capitalism” (p.67).

This type of economic reveals how women were institutionally enslaved through a

world-system of capitalistic exploitation within the historical aspects of Canadian colonialism under the treaty of Paris.
The next heteropatriarchal pillar that Smith (2006) defines is based on the correlating system of genocide that reduced indigenous populations through geographic displacement and alienation from white settler communities: “Native peoples are indeed vanishing and that the conquest of native land is justified” (p.68). Canadian racial structures were built off of the same American system of genocide that removed indigenous peoples fro their land and forced them into exile in poverty, hunger, and death. For instance, the formation of the Confederation of 1867 defines the British North America Act, which makes Canada a nation and it gives them the jurisdiction to control Indigenous land rights:
Under Section 91(24), the BNA gives the federal government of Canada exclusive jurisdiction over the administration of Indigenous People and lands reserved for Indigenous People (Vancouver Status of women, 2008, p.10).
These legal conditions are an extension of the white hegemonic racism that effected women of color as being without the right to land and to a place within the new government.

This pattern is not unlike that of the United States, which continually used the framework of nationalism as a way in which to remove Indigenous Peoples as a form of apartheid that destroyed their economy and forced into a genocidal system of elimination. This aspect of genocide is part of the removal or murder of Indigenous Peoples, which is also part of white supremacy as a legal code: “it has never been against U.S. law to commit genocide against indigenous peoples” (Smith, 2006, p.70). Apparently, this same rule of law applied in the formation of Canada as a nation, which gave no lands rights to the Indigenous population, and forcibly attacked and removed them from its

territories.
Finally, the third pillar that Smith (2006) defines is another heteropatriarchal facet of the ferocity of white supremacy under the law and the devastation of war that permitted white settlers to attack Indigenous Peoples through violence. The rotation of continual disintegration of Indigenous rights in the United States defines the false pretenses of legal rights for native Americans through treaty agreements that promised them land on reservations. However, the use of the American military on these people define a similar paralleled of how Indigenous Peoples suffered under false contracts and through forced removal by military aggression. This type of white supremacy demonized the Indigenous Peoples as being racially inferior through the concept of Orientalism, as it is currently used against Arabs in today’s world: “The logic of Orientalism marks certain peoples or nations as inferior ands as posing a constant threat to the well-being of empire” (Smith, 2006, p.68). In Canadian history, the formation of the Act for the Gradual Assimilation of Indian Peoples of 1868 quickly followed legislation after Canada became its own sovereign nation: “Under this policy the Indian Act becomes a key legislative tool for assimilation” (Vancouver Status of Women, 2008, p.10). This type of racial alienation laid the foundation for creating an inferior race, which was not deemed as intelligent or civilized as the predominately white Eurocentric Canadian government. Also, the Canadian government validated its military aggression against Indigenous Peoples through this type of racist policy, which gave them carte blanche to murder and kill entire communities. The Indian Act of 1868 would eventually lead to adjustments to statute adjustments in 1898 that “allowed Indigenous People to be forcibly removed from reserves adjacent to or partly within towns of 800 inhabitants or more” (Vancouver Status of Women, 2008, p.17). Edward Said defines the historical racism of white supremacy that assumes that people of color are primitive and without civilized behaviors since it “allows one to se new things, things seen for the first time, as versions of a previously known thing” (p.804). Said’s (year?) classic realization of Orientalism defies how Smith (2006) defies the American example of racial superiority and legal violence as a policy that was quickly adapted by the Canadian government.