Racism doesn't wither, but is trained when to advance or retreat. It becomes self-regulating.

White women have known from the beginning in this country that they possess this power, the power to activate white supremacy and spur it to extreme violence... The activation of white terror is a white woman's soft power... We like to masculinize white supremacy, to presume it reeks of testosterone, when in fact, it is just as likely to be spritzed by perfume.

Forty percent of slave owners were white women. It was white women who made the market for Black women's breast milk and who were attended by Black women in the big house. It was white women who upheld much of the day-to-day white supremacy – the schoolteachers, the store clerks, the waitresses. And it is now often white women activating police interactions with Black people.

It took centuries for America to hone its instruments of oppression. Every time part of it fell, it simply re-emerged in a more elegant form. Battling racism in this country is like cutting heads off the Hydra.