Also being the first generation to break out of that opressor mindset is tough. Like your family, lots of friends, etc are all evil. And you have to rebuild your social life from scratch or just put up with being surrounded by evil assholes.

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. -Karl Marx

I keep going back to Fanon, how he observed that colonialism dehumanizes the colonized and the colonizer. Torturerers and butchers and slavers traumatize and twist themselves into inhuman things, and that trauma surely gets passed down to their kids and grandkids. I suspect it might have epigenetic effects as well, although I shouldn’t speculate too hard about that.

i’ve thought for a while now that white people are congenitally evil and this is a good explanation for why

(i’m white myself)

Yes, but also, USians cannot possibly think themselves as belonging to this national community or think as their wealth as a legitimate thing to have without a complete mythology of racism and liberalism

The superstructure maintains the structure, if you could magically remove racism from the psyche of americans the revolution would be immediate

I don’t think this is the correct way of framing this idea. Using the words “People who are descended from people…” makes it sound like eugenics.

Generational trauma is a shorthand explanation of the flow on effects of trauma and the feedback loops it can cause. If you have trauma to your arm you can’t use it properly. Mental and emotional trauma impedes people from thinking and acting rationally. Generational trauma is when truma isn’t mentally and emotionally healed properly and then the trauma prevents the protection of the next generation. Each generation using coping mechanisms that inflicti the same wounds their parents inflicted on them.

Having your worldview shaped by oppressors can warp one’s morality but it doesn’t impede one’s ability to think critically and act rationally. People born to horrible people do have a higher chance of turning out horrible. The inherent irrational immorality of racial supremacy leads to its decay but improved material wealth because of said racial supremacy can tip the scales. Throw some trauma in there and the immorality becomes acceptable to the emotionally crippled individual even without any material benefits.

The western world is founded on slavery, colonialism and genocide. All its institutions are founded in white supremacy and chattel slavery. Yet, the majority of western white people are only passively in support of white supremacy as far as it is material beneficial to them. They don’t mind the treats but they want to have plausible deniability. They want their government to act like it is addressing racism as long as their standard of living isn’t threatened.

The ones who are frothing for the blood of POC are the Rich who benefit the most from the oppression and exploitation and… The poorest white people. Their trauma (often generational from substance abuse or physical or sexual abuse) and their constant stresses obtaining the minimums of food and shelter make them less rationally and emotionally equipped to correctly apply morality and ethics.