Have you ever attended a training where the facilitator states, “Assume good intentions?” As a corporate trainer, later Regional Training Director at J.P. Morgan Chase, as well as Training Manager at the City and County of San Francisco, one hundred percent of trainings provided by me and my teams included “Assume good intent,” as one of the upfront training agreements.
A White narcissistic cultural attitude, believing that White people can do no wrong, ever, created, influenced, and/or shaped one hundred percent of these trainings, including all agreements. You will understand what I am saying as you continue to read this post.
Upon much critical analysis about Whiteness and Anti-Blackness in American society, over the last ten plus years, the realization that this cultural agreement extends directly from a White solidarity cultural agreement established many centuries ago has been mind-blowing.
For example, the colonial legislature of Virginia passed the 1669 Casual Killing Act, which manipulates legal frameworks to provide White people the benefit of the doubt by presuming and assuming that White men and women always operate with the best intentions. The Act explicitly mentioned that it would not treat the killing of a Black person by a master or overseer as a felony. The main variable in this law was the presumption that the White person would never operate with “premeditated malice.”
The law read:
“Whereas the only law in force for the punishment of refractory servants resisting their master, mistress, or overseer cannot be inflicted upon Negroes, nor the obstinacy of many of them be suppressed by other than violent means, be it enacted and declared by this Grand Assembly if any slave resists his master (or other by his master's order correcting him) and by the extremity of the ‘correction’ should chance to die, that his death shall not be accounted a felony, but the master (or that other person appointed by the master to punish him) be acquitted from molestation, since it cannot be presumed that premeditated malice (which alone makes murder a felony) should induce any man to destroy his own estate.”
And so, because White people operate and have been operating under the Eurocentric, Christian, moral, "good people," cultural agreements and constructs that we know have been sanctioned in law, from at least 1669, they are able to give each other the benefit of the doubt. The presumptions that most, if not all White people, are coming from a good place are critical and necessary to understand as they pertain to their perpetual subjugation of Black and specific other non-White people and groups. Of course, White people, even as they murdered, raped, and committed rampant violences against each other, as well as the violences committed against Black and non-White people, continued to delusionally and psychotically presume the best of intentions.
As Dr. John Henrik Clarke states in this clip, the intentions of White people, concerning African American/Black people, have never been good. According to James Baldwin, White people’s intentions towards Black people have always been genocidal.
I happen to agree. What about you?
MORE BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON THE 1669 CASUAL KILLING ACT:
This law effectively codified racial inequality and permitted violence against Black people with impunity, reflecting a broader pattern of systemic anti-Black racism and exploitation.
The Act's provisions reveal a deep-seated bias in the legal system (and all American cultural constructs and institutions), where White people were granted the benefit of the doubt, reinforcing their position of power and control. By legally sanctioning such violence, the Act dehumanized Black people and underscored their vulnerability within the colonial society. This legal precedent not only perpetuated the subjugation of Black individuals but also established a framework that justified and normalized racial discrimination. These cultural dynamics remain fixtures in American culture today.
Reflecting on this historical legislation highlights the extent to which legal and institutional systems, values, and practices have been and are designed to entrench social hierarchies and protect the interests of White people, men (especially White men), heterosexual people, and other dominant groups. It serves as a reminder of the need for vigilance and reform in addressing systemic biases across all legal, institutional, and social structures.
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