Imagine if we were asked to identify the supreme carnivorous predator mammal. We want to keep this very narrow so that we're not being asked to name the best non-human predator on the planet, because not all species of creature should be compared with one another, as they have different sets of skills and abilities based on their needs for survival, needs that have evolved over time to accommodate for changes in climate, terrain, and food supply. So we'll stick to mammals. Most non scientifically minded humans, especially those from North America, would likely select bears, wolves, large cats like tigers and lions, animals with strength, speed, sharp teeth, and senses that are honed for such a task. These humans would contend that these predators are the best at their jobs of all others, and their reasoning might be conscious or subconscious. They might believe that because these predators have no real natural predators themselves, that they are at the top of the food chain and cannot be outwitted or driven to extinction by anything other than human interference and intelligence, these predators are the best ones, the superior predators.
But there's a problem.
A creature being superior at its current standing in the food chain implies that the creature ascended over time, and that many factors apart from the creature played into its ascent. These factors do not make this animal inherently better or more superior on a genetic, predestined level. It was a creature that, simply, slowly, and through a great and expansive journey, was able to take advantage of situations and gain its strength through the weaknesses of other animals and systems.
Some white supremacists believe not only that whites are superior in brains and brawn, but that they deserve to be separated and kept "pure" in their supremacy. But the only reason that white people came to see themselves as superior is by artificially downgrading all other races to serve the agenda of independent wealth and Manifest Destiny. They brought over and installed slave labor (legitimizing their status because they were not "Christian," another form of false superiority) to craft systems of wealth through degradation, dehumanization, genetic interference through forced procreation between slaves, and inhumane cruelty in all other forms. Whites only became supreme when they shoved everyone else down the sides of the mountain to not only fend for themselves, but to do so while denied access to resources that whites would keep to themselves.
White supremacy is often touted as a genetic claim. If you are white, you are automatically superior, better than other races, smarter, stronger, more capable. If this were actually true, how is it that poverty, drug addiction, crime, reliance on public programs, or inability to provide for families on a living wage could ever touch such a superior race of human? Wouldn't all white people be in the 1%? If the retort is, "Well if we didn't mix races or have to live among other races, our superiority wouldn't become diluted." Well, then I guess you aren't genetically superior then, are you? Superiority is something that you have until you no longer have it, like the best predators. If a cougar can only remain superior in the food chain if humans protect its habitats from other predators who would otherwise drive them to extinction (or, through their own drive to be superior, hunted out the competition for cougars, if such an animal even exists these days), then it is not actually superior. If you can only be the best at something by having nothing to compete with fairly, you're just the predator conveniently at the top until a larger, better, stronger one evolves into being and takes your place.
Now, with humans, finding this new predator is a bit harder, since we as humans have already put ourselves at the top through this false sense of superiority on a special level. I want to believe that something will come up and rub out the white man's claim at the top of the hill, but I don't think it will be any one race; it will be a combination of all other races and white non-racists, genders, ethnicities working together. The sad irony of this is that it seems like it is almost impossible to get all of the other people to work towards or against ANY singular goal like this, nor do we feel like this is THE big, hot button issue of our time. And it may not be. With everything else going on in North America right now (and I specify this area because I am aware of my ignorance of how white supremacy is playing out abroad), stamping out racist, bigoted, misogynist tripe is not a constant call to action, but only cropping up when there's a rally turned deadly, a rally where no one really showed up, or when a white supremacist is supposedly driven from his home in my town because of local pressure. Also, the solution might not BE a race of human; it might be that all humans will go, that we will have been deselected for evolution through our combined neglectful destruction of our habitat.
But I do think that, given how long the US has been around and how long these tired, imbecilic and distracting arguments about whites being superior have been around and never seem to die, it seems that there is still a need for them to exist, that we have not evolved enough to move past it, or that it is so embedded into our culture that to gut it out would leave nothing to salvage, like digging out 80% of a tooth for its cavity when you should probably pull the whole thing out and start over.
Similar to the politically divided world in which I currently reside, it is still quite a racially divided world, often along the same lines. With both of these systems and countless others, we're going to have to find ways to talk our way out and find compromises that can be made while clarifying those that cannot be made.
ADDENDUM: White people don't own a corner of the market on billing themselves as superior. I am sure any race, ethnicity, religious group, or gender that wields most of the power in a society function similarly. I use them as an example because, well, in the North American world I live in, which is the only world I can comfortably speak on and is the only one I know, white supremacists are the most prevalent example.