How shall we dismantle and reverse the entire system of colonization?
"Hey, Colonizer!"
https://www.tiktok.com/@stenjodditmg/video/6977003437745605894?lang=en&is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1
IMPORTANT CLARIFICATION: check your privellege and listen to BIPOC & other intersectional voices... they are sick & tired of having their bodies controlled, their cultures raped & their resources stolen!
Over the last few years in earnest, I have been learning how to better check my white male privilege. After talking with my BIPOC friends in-depth, as well as learning how to shut up & listen to BIPOC voices in general, over the past few years; I realize we still have a long way to go... we, being the US in general (and particularly white people) have a lot to learn & accept about both their own passive, as well as active participation in perpetuating this system... I have been working on charting a course for how to make this world fair & equitable to everyone, asap!
America was founded on many philosophies that can easily be interpreted to transcend racism; but the actual practical day to day life in America shows us that we live in a society that is still based upon many inherent forms of racism and the colonizer mindset. The system was built to benefit white male slave owners (who were also mostly judeo-christian); and no matter how it has evolved, there are a great many aspects of our society that remain that way. Unfortunately, that means that to be an American, is to be a racist colonizer to some degree or another. And I benefit from that because I am a white man, whether I consciously realize that or not. So, how can we own this and transform the actual day to day experience in America so that all people experience less effects of colonization & racism every day? For example, there is a growing movement among people of European descent to continually register their intention to dissent from the racist/colonial institutions and values designed to benefit them. And the intersectionality of many oppressed people's situations (all colonized peoples, women, LGBTQ*, and differently abled people, for instance) has become more apparent as we each realize our own privilege and learn how to exercise accountability, humility, solidarity, mindfulness, acceptance, empathy & compassion...
I have always made an effort to understand "the other." As much as I am able, I have made efforts to put myself in the shoes of anyone with whom I am speaking. From my earliest years as a homeschooled/unschooled child, I have spent my life analyzing complex social structures around the world & throughout time. I have portrayed a diverse variety of characters on the stage, and in film... as well as through playing RPGs in private salons & organizing LARPs in large public festivals. I have always read voraciously about current events, history, anthropology, archaeology, philosophy, comparative spirituality & religion. But I am still limited by my experience of being an older white male in Texas, no matter how much I have travelled or talked with people or studied or worked on changing what I can in this world to be more fair & equitable to everyone!
There may be decent people out there who are respectfully contributing to the actual preservation of and reverence for indigenous culture, but they are not the target of the criticism in this post. Furthermore, many people that I have known from all walks of life have grown up without being able to identify with the culture of capitalist greed & colonialist domination that we were born into. Some of us sought for a home in other cultures that have also not been traditionally accepted into the dominant colonialist culture of capitalist greed that we were born into in this country. But so many people are completely disgusted by "Western Chauvanists" & the toxic patriarchy, we are finally seeing a great deal of pushback at all levels, by intersectional forces that are banding together to resist their/our oppressors (as often happens in late-stage empires).
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The work of a local ATX group called The Last Sunday has constantly been on my mind, lately...
"We may be decent people, acting compassionately in our daily lives, but when we live in unjust hierarchical systems, being decent day to day isn't enough. No matter what the specific topic of any Last Sunday, we tried to keep this in the foreground: We live in an imperial society structured by a predatory corporate capitalism, with identities shaped by white supremacy and patriarchy, in a technological fundamentalist society dominated by the faith that we can invent our way out of an ecological crisis."
https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2007-06-22/494078/
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Every other civilized country in the world uses some form of fair taxation upon those who have more than their share of wealth & income! The US is already a Mixed Economy
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/mixed-economic-system.asp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_economy
...but the subsidies here in the USA often go to those who already have the lion's share of the wealth, particularly the military-industrial complex and the detention-industrial complex!
Here are some springboards for research on how the detention-industrial complex continues to influence the perpetuation of systemic racism in the USA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_in_the_United_States_criminal_justice_system
Race in the United States criminal justice system refers to the unique experiences and disparities in the United States in regard to the policing and prosecuting of various races. There have been different outcomes for different racial groups in convicting and sentencing felons in the United States.
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And the documentary _13th_ is as profound as it is distrubing... i simply cannot reccommend it enough! If there is one thing I can ask people to do after reading this post, it is to watch this documentary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_(film)
_13th_ is a 2016 American documentary film by director Ava DuVernay. The film explores the "intersection of race, justice, and mass incarceration in the United States;" it is titled after the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted in 1865, which abolished slavery throughout the United States and ended involuntary servitude except as a punishment for conviction of a crime.
DuVernay contends that slavery has been perpetuated since the end of the American Civil War through criminalizing behavior and enabling police to arrest poor freedmen and force them to work for the state under convict leasing; suppression of African Americans by disenfranchisement, lynchings, and Jim Crow; politicians declaring a war on drugs that weighs more heavily on minority communities and, by the late 20th century, mass incarceration affecting communities of color, especially American descendants of slavery, in the United States. She examines the prison-industrial complex and the emerging detention-industrial complex, discussing how much money is being made by corporations from such incarcerations.
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So, a few years ago (after finally watching 13th), I realized that I needed to a deeper dive for resources [which i will provide links to in the second section of this post] to help develop a better understanding of how to address the intersectional needs of BIPOC and other oppressed communities around the world to speak truth to power... a collection which stil provides a decent historical overview for a situation that remains largely unchanged... and now, over the past year of protests and global awareness in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, we have witnessed a focus on the issues that pertain to the the issues of white privilege & systemic racism in the USA, and particularly the treatment of Black people [for which i will provide links to in the third section of this post... and which of course also relates to intersectional oppression, all over the world].
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"Think of how 500 years of genocide, colonization, residential school, forced assimilation, cultural appropriation, and land theft and destruction would affect you. Think of the break down of our houses, our families, and ourselves, and how you would deal with that. PTSD is a reality, suicide affects us all daily, violence against our women, human trafficking of our children, alcoholism, drug abuse, and murder are our daily battles, add to that trying to survive everyday and the state of being on our own homelands, poverty stricken, oppressed, and marginalized people that are considered wards of a colonial crown. Supporting indigenous causes isn’t pretty or something to add to the activism resume, it often means accepting fierce strong humans at face value, saying you are in solidarity with indigenous people and sovereignty means you accept our laws and reject the illegal laws of the military state that is actively occupying our lands. If being disciplined or dealing with warrior justice scares or offends you then you are NOT ready to be an ally or to smash the system."
https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/everyone-calls-themselves-an-ally-until-it-is-time-to-do-some-real-ally-shit/
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“Certainly the timing (of burning churches in Canada) is unfortunate, given that it is a rather iconic Catholic Church in our community and with the timing of sad events that have been uncovered in the country, right now,” Bushell said.
...BUT, KEEP IN MIND...
“These are potential evidence sites,” (Noskey) told the Star.
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/06/30/another-canadian-church-has-been-set-on-fire-this-one-just-outside-edmonton.html
While many prepare to celebrate the patriotic plunder that is Canada and the US here are some words to consider before setting off your fireworks… The Natives are restless, sick and tired of systemic racism, the rape of Mother Nature, the lack of essential basic human necessities such as clean drinking water, access to education, the healing of century old wounds whose traumas are handed down generation after generation, proper care for drug addiction founded on empathy and love rather than torture and incarceration, the list goes on and on. Perhaps burning haunted churches is the fire necessary to rebuild these structures into places of new found healing or perhaps it just stokes the flames of hatred and empowers the genocidal war industry whose advanced weapons of war we have seen used against the water protectors time and time again. Instead of protecting churches let's protect the native children of today, in the ways they need, in the ways that bring them joy and why not rebuild structures and make safe places for the indigenous where we can house the homeless and provide treatment for victims of rape and drug abuse, maybe even a place which can simply provide clean water, food, love and empathy for the suffering.
So here is my offering to the world, in solidarity with all the suffering on all sides of the spectrum, for all cultures, sexualities and ages… The artwork (used with permission from artist Gary Taxali) shows 215 drops of blood, one for each child found in the mass grave recently discovered at a residential school in Kamloops, who will be the one to give justice to these lost souls? Perhaps it can be you?
with love and light,
King Khan
https://khannibalism.bandcamp.com/track/a-history-of-lies-lives
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"Damn! This is not a walk in the park is it? But as my dad used to say back in the day, 'A habit is a cable: you weave a thread of it every day and it soon becomes so strong that you cannot break it.' So this habit of colonial amnesia is deep. It must therefore be traumatic for the dominant class to experience someone like me prodding the skeletons in the closets of history to enflesh themselves and reveal that as Shakespeare declared in Hamlet, via a speech by Marcellus, 'something is rotten in the state of Denmark.' The playwright was, clearly, very intimate with the truth about the lies.
Instead of the protracted denials of culpability however, wouldn’t it make more sense, in the interest of healing the breach and providing the elusive moral responsibility with some space to flourish, to just admit wrongs and seek mechanisms of social transformation?"
https://www.globalresearch.ca/euro-american-colonialism-racist-terrorism/5540183
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And when we are discussing one group that deserves reparations it is not to suggest that another group's injuries do not need to be addressed. In fact, beyond the First Peoples of the North, Central & South American continents... let us also consider the indigenous people in the rest of the entire world who have sufferred because of greedy Colonialist imperialists! Various perspectives on how to move forward could be considered... this is a deep & thorny field of inquiry... Besides reparations (which have been barely attempted & poorly executed), there are other strategic perspectives... such as truth and reconciliation commissions, as well as human rights & transitional justice in the wake of worldwide colonialization by industrial empries... here are some resources that come to my mind that address these concerns, but please lmk if you have any other resources or perspectives to share!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xXhHallb7HDdaiK5MrV3U9VzwUuoD4-VPe-0qyf_JzM/edit#
https://www.ictj.org/publication/strengthening-indigenous-rights-through-truth-commissions-practitioners-resource
https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IPeoples/EMRIP/3Rev1.docx
https://www.history.com/news/reparations-slavery-native-americans-japanese-internment
https://www.amnestyusa.org/issues/national-security/
https://aethyrflux.livejournal.com/238542.html#cutid2
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The marginalization of colonized peoples, women, LGBTQ*, and disabled scientists within the field, industry, and by fellow scientists are just some arenas where we can see the dynamics of science and social problems play out. These problems will not go away if we simply add woman, Black, Queer and then stir. These political problems within the science community and industry at large require that we as scientists take an internal (self-reflexive) look and re-evaluate the role(s) we have played historically and presently in society for us to prevent the same mistakes."
https://decolonizeallthescience.com/2017/06/15/d-a-t-s-ethics-statement-reading-guide/
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Indigenous peoples are certainly also not the only people who are oppressed... intersectionality has helped make people aware of the effects of discrimination towards a variety of sexes, sexual orientations, genders, and physical abilities, as well as genetics, age, class, language, education, height, country of origin, immigration status, employment status, criminal history, health status, psychological diagnosis, political affiliation, social minorities & spiritual practices or any number of different things that humans have used as factors in their oppression of one another...
"Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed afforded me deep insight into how people become oppressors within their oppressed group. As a Deaf person of color, I could be an oppressor toward another Deaf person of color or Deaf-Blind person or a Deaf-Disabled person within the Deaf community because of my privileges that were either earned or awarded. Owning privileges and keeping them in check through humility enables a person the ability to share power and relinquish a hierarchical power structure. This is achieved by harnessing the power of listening, solidarity, humility, mindfulness, words and intuition.
Without acknowledging privilege, people easily fall into a dynamic of lateral oppression within oppressed communities. For example, in my case, a Hearing Black person can choose to represent him/herself by using voice to overshadow a Deaf Black person such as myself. As such, I had to learn to be more creative in bringing a different narrative to the critical issues."
https://www.salon.com/2018/04/19/on-embracing-intersectionality-and-decolonization-to-foment-personal-and-societal-change_partner/
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If colonialism is ever acknowledged, it’s to say that it was not a crime, but rather a benefit to the colonized - a leg up the development ladder.
But the historical record tells a very different story, and that opens up difficult questions about another topic that Europeans prefer to avoid: reparations.
...The reparations debate is threatening because it completely upends the usual narrative of development. It suggests that poverty in the global south is not a natural phenomenon, but has been actively created. And it casts western countries in the role not of benefactors, but of plunderers.
When it comes to the colonial legacy, some of the facts are almost too shocking to comprehend. When Europeans arrived in what is now Latin America in 1492, the region may have been inhabited by between 50 million and 100 million indigenous people. By the mid 1600s, their population was slashed to about 3.5 million. The vast majority succumbed to foreign disease and many were slaughtered, died of slavery or starved to death after being kicked off their land. It was like the holocaust seven times over.
...Then there is India...
And we haven’t even begun to touch the scramble for Africa. In the Congo, to cite just one brief example, as historian Adam Hochschild recounts in his haunting book King Leopold’s Ghost, Belgium’s lust for ivory and rubber killed some 10 million Congolese - roughly half the country’s population. The wealth gleaned from that plunder was siphoned back to Belgium to fund beautiful stately architecture and impressive public works, including arches and parks and railway stations - all the markers of development that adorn Brussels today, the bejewelled headquarters of the European Union
We could go on. It is tempting to see this as just a list of crimes, but it is much more than that. These snippets hint at the contours of a world economic system that was designed over hundreds of years to enrich a small portion of humanity at the expense of the vast majority.
...We can’t put a price on the suffering wrought by colonialism. And there is not enough money in the world to compensate for the damage it inflicted. We can, however, stop talking about charity, and instead acknowledge the debt that the west owes to the rest of the world. Even more importantly, we can work to quash the colonial instinct whenever it rears its ugly head, as it is doing right now in the form of land grabs, illicit financial extraction, and unfair trade deals.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/nov/27/enough-of-aid-lets-talk-reparations
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Although it is important to note that colonial mercantile imperialism has transformed into neo-colonial finance capitalism through the international military industrial complex
https://www.globalresearch.ca/evolution-of-capitalism-escalation-of-imperialism/5539936
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In order to address this complex situation properly, I believe it is important to consider the massive transformation that corporations have undergone in their relatively recent appearance in the world... from colonial servitors to self-perpetuating juggernauts
http://www.tripzine.com/listing.php?id=corporate_metabolism
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"One thing that I think would be a really important move - and it has to be done tactfully - is indigenization of industry: any company that decides to come and invest in a country, local folks have to be majority shareholders. I think that would be a good start."
https://geezmagazine.org/magazine/article/race-class-and-reparations
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On a related note, the U.S. Supreme Court has recently ruled to return more than 3 million acres of land in Oklahoma to the control of indigenous people...
Mar 18, 2021: "The Most Significant Indian Law Decision in a Century," by Robert J. Miller
https://www.theregreview.org/2021/03/18/miller-significant-indian-law-decision-century/
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This collection of Scaffolded Anti-Racist Resources is simply the most
amazing collection I have ever found!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PrAq4iBNb4nVIcTsLcNlW8zjaQXBLkWayL8EaPlh0bc/edit?usp=sharing
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The 1619 Project is an ongoing project developed by The New York Times
Magazine in 2019 with the goal of "refram[ing] American history"
around slavery and the contributions of African Americans. The project
was timed for the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first
enslaved Africans in the Virginia colony in 1619, and suggests that
this date represents the "nation's birth year"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_Project
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Please allow me to a reference to Orlando Jones' *fire & brimstone* monologue (set in 1619) as Mr. Nancy, in American Gods, based on the book by Neil Gaiman... Mr. Nancy’s thundering speech is an essential reminder: it paints a current-day portrait of slavery’s legacy for black America, explicitly linking it to everyday forms of oppression like poverty, racial profiling, and police brutality. It’s a call to remember the shameful parts of America’s past, and to understand their living impact today.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/american-gods-delivers-a-powerful-black-lives-matter-message
https://io9.gizmodo.com/this-unbelievable-mr-nancy-scene-is-why-everyone-needs-1794840915resources
Yet, just a few months later... after heavily contributing to the development of the American Gods series, Mr. Jones was unceremoniously fired under the auspices that his character did not play a part in that section of the story arc (but it was also communicated by the white showrunners that the particular *fire & brimstone* style of Mr. Nancy's message was deemed too dangerous for black americans to hear in the current socio-political climate)... the irony was impenetrable!
"American Gods" Crucified Black American God Mr. Nancy
https://www.facebook.com/aethyrflux/posts/10157228881642886
In a double-whammy of ultimate karmic justice, though... the American Gods series was cancelled after the third season... & not only that... but now it has been announced that Orlando Jones will be triumphantly returning to portray the character of Mr. Nancy in an adaptation of the Neil Gaiman book from which he was borrowed: Anansi Boys!
https://ew.com/tv/neil-gaiman-anansi-boys-series-amazon/
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There is a quote from James Baldwin which seems to have been echoing
throughout every form of media, recently:
“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be
changed until it is faced” ...which is mighty profound on it's own...
however, when taken in the context of it's original writing, it's
important to consider what comes afterwards, as it is at the very end
of a profound essay, which was actually specifically about the future
of post-WWII American literature:
"Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be
changed until it is faced. The principal fact that we must now face,
and that a handful of writers are trying to dramatize, is that the
time has now come for us to turn our backs forever on the big
two-hearted river." - AS MUCH TRUTH AS ONE CAN BEAR; To Speak Out
About the World as It Is, Says James Baldwin, Is the Writer’s Job As
Much of the Truth as One Can Bear (January 14, 1962, Section The New
York Times Book Review, Page BR11)
http://tweetsofanativeson.com/pdf/As-Much-Truth-As-One-Can-Bear.pdf
This big two-hearted river is a reference to a 1925 short story
written by American author Ernest Hemingway, in which a veteran
suffering from (what we now would refer to as) PTSD goes to seek
sanctuary in the pastoral wilderness. This was what many of the post
WWI "lost generation" of writers attempted to do... and while it may
be debatable if any of them actually found solace in nature, at that
time... it was definitely a failed strategy for post-WWII writers to
attempt to do the same.
Baldwin appeals to his reader to locate precisely, the American
morality of which we boast... and to consider what the (Native
American) Indian, Cuban, Chinese, &/or Negro thinks about it... "Our
own record must be read."
We still have yet to do this accounting.
Perhaps we need to conduct something along the lines of what South
Africa attempted, in their Truth and Reconciliation Commission...
which was certainly not perfect (neither was the US participation in
the Nuremberg Trials, as James Baldwin so rightly points out), but at
least they tried! I believe that this is what people are asking for
when they refer to a need for reparations...
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Many people have suggest that we need reparations, in order to move forward; but what is meant by this?
Please consider this profound essay by our celebrated contemporary writer, Ta-Nehisi Coates:
The Case for Reparations
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
"And so we must imagine a new country. Reparations-by which I mean the
full acceptance of our collective biography and its consequences-is
the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely. The recovering
alcoholic may well have to live with his illness for the rest of his
life. But at least he is not living a drunken lie. Reparations beckons
us to reject the intoxication of hubris and see America as it is-the
work of fallible humans.
Won’t reparations divide us? Not any more than we are already divided.
The wealth gap merely puts a number on something we feel but cannot
say-that American prosperity was ill-gotten and selective in its
distribution. What is needed is an airing of family secrets, a
settling with old ghosts. What is needed is a healing of the American
psyche and the banishment of white guilt.
What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past
injustices-more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant
bribe. What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead
to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot
dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage.
Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a
Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American
consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great
democratizer with the facts of our history."
--
Trevor Noah concluded a particularly profound segment about the recent
protests by asking viewers, especially those who are white, to put
themselves in the position of people who have protested in the last
week. “They were destroying the contract that you thought they had
signed with your society,” he said. “Now, think to yourself-imagine if
you were them, watching that contract be ripped up every single day.
Ask yourself how you’d feel.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/06/trevor-noah-george-floyd-protests
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Almost a week after George Floyd's murder, Obama stressed how crucial it is to keep our elected officials accountable... and he also pointed towards his own 21st-century policing task force report (@obama.org) as well as the organizations Campaign Zero, Color Of Change & My Brother’s Keeper
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/barack-obama-speech-transcript-on-george-floyd-death-protests
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But immediately after George Floyd's murder (5 days before Obama finally made a speech), Killer Mike made a viral speech in Atlanta that is one of the more profound & passionate extemporaneous speeches I have ever witnessed... If you have not seen it, I implore you to watch it now, but here is his crucial opening statement & a link to the transcript:
"I’m duty bound to be here to simply say that it is your duty not to burn your own house down for anger with an enemy. It is your duty to fortify your own house so that you may be a house of refuge in times of organization. ***Now is the time to plot, plan, strategize, organize, and mobilize.*** It is time to beat up prosecutors you don’t like at the voting booth. It is time to hold mayoral offices accountable, chiefs and deputy chiefs." - Killer Mike (***my emphasis***)
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/rapper-killer-mike-speech-transcript-during-atlanta-protests
Also in that same speech, Killer Mike also stressed the urgency for each person to immediately fill out their US census form. He called for the return of community review boards for the police. And he encouraged people to get together with 10 friends, to come up with their own solutions & then implement them in their own communities.
In his follow up interview with Stephen Colbert, Killer Mike indicated that the anger people are feeling needs to be channeled in productive ways. He shouted out several organizations that he believes are doing great work, among them The New Georgia Project, Live Free, The Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, Movement for Black Lives, and Next Level Boys Academy. He said, “I am a mobilizer. I will try my best to mobilize people to get into action. But the organizers are on the ground where you live. Those organizations that I named, and many, many more across the country, need your help. They need boots on the ground. There’s nothing wrong with having the anger and emotion and passion overspill what we saw. Because that needs to happen to ignite. But now that you’re ignited, I need you on a weekly and daily basis to join a grassroots organization wherever you are. He also spoke to white Americans on the essential nature of participating in the ongoing struggle to manifest real equality in all of our everyday lives:
“Get your butt down there, and help those organizations in the physical. But, what I need white America to do beyond right now, is understand that right now is always. It isn’t just helping in the now. It is being a part of fixing it always.”
And he gave some homework, particularly for white Americans, to spend one hour watching Jane Elliott teach people. She's not just speaking, but she's teaching people about the racism that is given to them, that they aren't even aware they have...
A Class Divided (full film) | FRONTLINE
The day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, Jane Elliott, a teacher in a small, all-white Iowa town, divided her third-grade class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups and gave them a daring lesson in discrimination. This is the story of that lesson, its lasting impact on the children, and its enduring power 30 years later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mcCLm_LwpE&t=5s
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Here is a preliminary list of deaths that occurred during the protests after the murder of George Floyd & against police brutality, in general... As well as countless injuries
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/06/dozen-deaths-tied-ongoing-unrest-200603162256559.html
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Advances in communication technology has at least allowed us to more expediently hold law enforcement accountable for abuse of authority & use of unnecessasry force... consider that in 1991, the world had to wait until the following evening's nightly news broadcast on KTLA-TV to air the video footage of the police brutally assaulting Rodney King. And even though four of the officers who assaulted him were immediately charged, the riots started after a rigged judicial system acquitted the police... which led to President H. W. Bush calling for the Justice Dept to consider indictments against the 4 officers in question, which resulted (almost a full year later) in 2 of them getting 30 month sentences, which was widely considered far too lenient (yet, even when the judge was ordered to reconsider sentencing, he refused). And by that time, most of the US populace was back to being far too distracted by bread & circus, to make much of a fuss about it.
But, in the current era of social media, how long does it take for us to actually bring any of this current police brutality to justice & how will the public response to the sentencing be organized? (It took 13 months to sentence the cop that murdered George Floyd's).
Even though we can now witness many of these horrifically tragic deaths in practical real time; bringing the murderers to justice is still a lengthy & challenging process, to say the least. And now that protests in the US have obviously become a deadly affair, again... What can we learn from similar scenarios that have occurred around the world for more than the past decade of people seeking liberty from tyranny through technologically enhanced revolution? Here is a related essay I wrote during the Iranian Summer, which proceeded the Arab Spring...
https://aethyrflux.livejournal.com/185384.html
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Here is a retrospective of how this situation has evolved since then:
Timeline of Race, Racism, Resistance and Philanthropy 1992-2014
https://web.archive.org/web/20181221144927/http://racialequity.org/docs/CIF5Timeline.pdf
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These inforgraphics from 2017 are disturbingly stark
https://policeviolencereport.org/
2017 Police Violence Report
Comprehensive review of over 1,100 killings by police in 2017.
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Here's an article that addresses the issue directly of how police brutality is in fact disproportionately affecting black men in the USA
https://www.propublica.org/article/yes-black-america-fears-the-police-heres-why
Yes, Black America Fears the Police. Here’s Why.
Shots were fired in Long Island, but there was no rush to call 911. It made perfect sense to ProPublica’s Nikole Hannah-Jones.
--
Consider this info from the FBI about hate crime being disportionately vs. african-americans https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/fbi-blacks-most-often-targeted-in-hate-crimes
FBI: Blacks most often targeted in hate crimes
An estimated 260,000 suspected hate crimes happen in the U.S. every year. More than 50 out of every 1 million black citizens was the victim of a racially motivated hate crime in 2012, the highest of any group, according to FBI data.
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White Supremacist Infiltration of US Police Forces: Fact-Checking National Security Advisor O’BrienIt’s more than “a few bad apples”
https://www.justsecurity.org/70507/white-supremacist-infiltration-of-us-police-forces-fact-checking-national-security-advisor-obrien/
Just how bad is systemic racism in US law enforcement? Unfortunately, no matter how bad you think it is, it's probably worse!
--
It can only help improve the situation for white supremacists to be shamed by public figures who epitomize the real American hero!
Arnold Schwarzenegger to white supremacists: 'Your heroes are losers'
https://www.businessinsider.com/arnold-schwarzenegger-trump-the-united-states-no-place-for-nazi-flags-2017-8
--
“We are Witnessing America as a Failed Social Experiment” - Dr.
Cornell West Preaches on the System
https://youtu.be/cs3jdyfx_fo
--
Throughout the years, Dr. Cornell West has often referred to this
quote from W.E.B. DuBois
“How shall Integrity face Oppression? What shall Honesty do in the
face of Deception, Decency in the face of Insult, Self-Defense before
Blows? How shall Desert and Accomplishment meet Despising, Detraction,
and Lies? What shall Virtue do to meet Brute Force? There are so many
answers and so contradictory; and such differences for those on the
one hand who meet questions similar to this once a year or once a
decade, and those who face them hourly and daily.”
--
"...integrity, honesty, decency & virtue..."
Chris Hedges and Cornel West in Conversation - Wages of Rebellion |
The New School
https://youtu.be/3g_zSvtSs-A
--
"I would prefer that our revolution eschew the poison of violence,
which I know too intimately from my two decades as a war
correspondent. But I also know that when everything around you
conspires to crush you, the only way left to affirm yourself is to
destroy, not only the structures and institutions that have oppressed
you, but often yourself. I saw this when I lived in the impoverished
neighborhood of Roxbury in Boston and when I worked as a reporter in
Gaza. This understanding was something Malcom X, who came out of
poverty, always understood and Martin Luther King, a product of the
black bourgeoisie, learned later.
It is ultimately the ruling elites who will determine the mechanics of
resistance. When they close every escape route, when they speak
exclusively in the language of force, then the language of force
becomes the only form of communication. Trump’s demand that states use
the National Guard to crush the protests and threat to deploy the U.S.
military in the streets of American cities only heightens the anger
and frustration that led to the uprisings.
The ruling elites are, at the same time, desperately seeking
scapegoats. The idea that antifa, which on the spectrum of terrorist
groups would rank alongside the Boy Scouts, is behind these clashes is
as ridiculous as the idea that Russia is responsible for the election
of Trump. This desperate search for explanations that absolve the
ruling elites saw Susan Rice, who was Obama’s national-security
adviser, blame the violence on “foreign actors,” adding that “this is
right out of the Russian playbook.” This trope is always trotted by
despotic rulers to discredit dissidents who are branded as the enemy
of the people.
The longer the ruling elites refuse to address the root causes behind
these protests, the more they loot the treasury to enrich themselves
and their fellow oligarchs, the more they engage in futile and absurd
efforts to deflect blame, the more unrest will spread. The last
desperate resort by the oligarchs to save themselves will be to stoke
the fires of racialized violence between disenfranchised whites and
disenfranchised people of color. This, I fear, is the next chapter in
this saga. I saw this tactic used to deadly effect in the former
Yugoslavia. These are dark times. They are about to get darker."
Chris Hedges: The Treason of the Ruling Class
https://scheerpost.com/2020/06/02/the-treason-of-the-ruling-class/
--
To be clear, i am not trying to say that the current "rioting"
should/will continue unabated for an interminable time... I am
suggesting, based on analysis of historical precedence... that there
will be cycles of its return until the underlying causes are treated
appropriately (much like a "disease" will plague a population, until
the underlying causes are treated appropriately)... and to further
that metaphor, that this is a particularly acute syndrome showing
pronounced symptoms after a long series of chronic cycles. Again, I
never said rioting was a viable strategy; I just said that it was
likely to continue if oppressed people feel that their voices are not
being heard... And perpetuating this kind of cycle only leads to what
Emilie Durkheim referred to as "anomie" (complete breakdown of any
moral values, standards, or guidance for individuals to follow in a
society)...a cancerous condition that has only metastasized in the
more than a century since Durkheim published his foundational studies
on the Sociology of America.
American Anomie | Chris Hedges
https://youtu.be/VeR-pPfnrF0
--
--
George Floyd and What Martin Luther King Jr. Really Said about Riots
and "the Language of the Unheard"
https://fee.org/articles/george-floyd-and-what-martin-luther-king-jr-really-said-about-riots-and-the-language-of-the-unheard/
Some have taken to quoting MLK on riots as the "the language of the
unheard," of the oppressed and downtrodden. Let's be crystal clear
then, as well, about his thoughts on the matter, as fully expressed in
his "The Other America" speech from 1967. His entire point in the
relevant section was that riots are counterproductive-but that we must
recognize the grievances over injustice expressed in them, the violent
conditions suffered that create them. Some seem to leave out the
counterproductive bit, and others the injustice bit.
...
Police unions, qualified immunity, unjust laws criminalizing peaceful
activity and voluntary enterprise, plus denial of opportunity through
barriers to entry in legal market competition… All these issues are
suddenly on the lips of people having these conversations in a
meaningful way. At last, we have a chance to forge this rage into real
change-if we choose to. Looting and rioting, no matter the source,
must be condemned so that we may reach those who need to be reached,
to bring about the changes we seek. And what violence may this
violence beget, in an age of militarized police? The total violence of
the state. We’d do well to remember King’s example, and focus on
building this energy from the peaceful majority of protests into real,
lasting change-for all of our lives, yes, but particularly for the
black lives so threatened by a broken social order.
Where do we go from here? I won’t pretend to have all the answers. No
one can. But here’s a starting point: organize, formally, around
specific causes. This is a complex matter, and we each have different
causes under this umbrella that we care about; the pain is real but
can’t be addressed until the points are thought out and articulated.
I’d like to begin with these six points:
* End qualified immunity. If the Supreme Court won’t, it can be done
with legislation, like Congressman Justin Amash’s bluntly named End
Qualified Immunity Act. If police face no consequences, there is no
accountability.
* Stop subsidizing police abuse by putting the taxpayer on the line
for payouts. Like any other professional facing these kinds of risks
based on their actions, police should carry liability insurance. As
their risk increases, so too would the cost of insuring them. Should
they persist and continue to abuse, harass, etc., they’d become
uninsurable, and thus unemployable.
* End the drug war, end sex work prohibitions, and the general
criminalization of peaceful commerce. The fewer points of contact
needed with the police, the better for all parties. The essence of
police work is legitimate force, so let them focus on where that force
needs to be applied (murderers, rapists, etc.) and let us hold them
accountable.
* Demilitarize the police. Military equipment is looking for a
military response. Cops aren’t soldiers, and we’re not enemy
combatants.
* Empower independent, non-police investigators for allegations of
police misconduct.
* Create a database of decertified officers. The insurability
mentioned above provides a good incentive structure, but it should
also be clear to every police force that officers who lost their jobs
for these reasons are not to be rehired in a new city.
--
Meanwhile, direct action gets results! In this regard, I highly recommend the
writing of Gene Sharp, particularly his 3-volume encyclopaedic work:
_The Politics of Nonviolent Action_
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Politics_of_Nonviolent_Action
--
Here are some more historical articles...
Institutionalized Racism: A Syllabus
https://daily.jstor.org/institutionalized-racism-a-syllabus/
--
Speaking of history, it looks like it's long past time for us to write more children's books about cultural evolution! Many institutional forms of white supremacy are hidden in religious justifications, such as the denial of evolution & other scientific disciplines.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/denial-of-evolution-is-a-form-of-white-supremacy/
--
This study suggests that existing knowledge of the belief in a just world reflects a "white" experience of the world traceable to the neglect of blacks and Latinos in past research.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/42864385
--
This is a decent selection of crucial articles that can lead to a variety of further sources of education!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Anti-black_racism_in_the_United_States
--
Also, White Supremacists are now considered terrorists in the US
https://www.facebook.com/aethyrflux/posts/10156983841037886
In the commentary, there is also extensive discussion of class war within ethnic groups, etc.
Dept. of Homeland Security Names White Supremacy a Domestic Terrorist Threat
After increasing pressure from extremism researchers, the DHS finally admits fighting white supremacist terrorism is a priority
--
_BlacKkKlansman_ is a hilarious & disturing film, which is also based on some real life incidents (which have been dramatized in order to frame the story as a movie)... but the infiltration of law enforcement by white supremacists was very real in that time, as it still is to this day
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlacKkKlansman#Historical_inaccuracy
BlacKkKlansman is a 2018 American biographical black comedy crime film directed by Spike Lee and written by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott, and Lee. The film is based on the 2014 memoir Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth.
--
Specifically regarding talking about racism with racists...
(something I have done quite a bit of in my time, not the least of
which was in the late 80s & early 90s, chasing the Neo-Nazis out of
Austin with Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice & our off-duty military
friends breaking up KKK skinhead gangs)
...I absolutely must reference the philosophy of Daryl Davis
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/the-audacity-of-talking-about-race-with-the-klu-klux-klan/388733/
Talking About Race with the KKK
Can conversation help end bigotry? One black musician decided to find out.
"The most important thing I learned is that when you are actively learning about someone else you are passively teaching them about yourself. So if you have an adversary with an opposing point of view, give that person a platform. Allow them to air that point of view, regardless of how extreme it may be. And believe me, I've heard things so extreme at these rallies they'll cut you to the bone.
***Give them a platform.***
You challenge them. But you don't challenge them rudely or violently. You do it politely and intelligently. And when you do things that way chances are they will reciprocate and give you a platform. So he and I would sit down and listen to one another over a period of time. And the cement that held his ideas together began to get cracks in it. And then it began to crumble. And then it fell apart."
--
These days, I feel like it is also important to celebrate every victory!
...From applauding some of the greatest successes of the US civil rights movement...
This graphic novel, _March_ was co-written by the late great US Congressman John Lewis about his experience of the US Civil Rights Movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_(comics)
.. to recognizing some of the more recent successes in reforming commercial brands to be more sensitive to BIPOC issues that can affect early childhood development...
Crayola Unveils New Crayon Pack of Skin Tone Colors From Around the World to Promote Inclusivity
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/crayola-unveils-colors-of-the-world-crayon-pack/
--
FWIW, here are some of my more anthropological resources on universal human equality, which perhaps may seem somewhat naive, when faced with our current issues of institutionalized racism? But it may help you understand the paradigm I was raised to believe?
One Race: The Human Race
https://aethyrflux.livejournal.com/187648.html
So, yes... I grew up to be somewhat of an idealist, but now I realize we still have a long way to go in order to share this world in fairness & equality, without exception to anyone!
https://aethyrflux.livejournal.com/238542.html
--
Ultimately, I recognize that I only have control over myself (just like everyone else). And I will struggle to the furthest extent of my abilities to protect my & every other human's own agency, individual authority & self-sovereignty.
As our lives meet one another, I would like to pose this consideration...
Q: "What possibilities can we think of for us to work towards contextualizing a diversity of cultural norms so that we can stand together on a more stable & mutually respectful socio-economic foundation in the modern intersectional space?"
https://aethyrflux.livejournal.com/566754.html
A: "Contextual Normalcy:" now with life-affirming processes!
When he died, last year... David Graeber was still fighting a battle that was at least a century
old (which also echoes the 5000 year old battle against "Debt" that he
wrote his first book about)... In the last piece he finished for
publication before his death (from an introduction for the
republication of _Mutual Aid: An Illuminated Factor of Evolution_ by
the famous anarchist Kropotkin 1842-1921), he cited this famous
passage:
"It is not love, and not even sympathy (understood in its proper
sense) which induces a herd of ruminants or of horses to form a ring
in order to resist an attack of wolves; not love which induces wolves
to form a pack for hunting; not love which induces kittens or lambs to
play, or a dozen of species of young birds to spend their days
together in the autumn; and it is neither love nor personal sympathy
which induces many thousand fallow-deer scattered over a territory as
large as France to form into a score of separate herds, all marching
towards a given spot, in order to cross there a river. It is a feeling
infinitely wider than love or personal sympathy - an instinct that has
been slowly developed among animals and men in the course of an
extremely long evolution, and which has taught animals and men alike
the force they can borrow from the practice of mutual aid and support,
and the joys they can find in social life. . . . It is not love and
not even sympathy upon which Society is based in mankind. It is the
conscience - be it only at the stage of an instinct - of human
solidarity. It is the unconscious recognition of the force that is
borrowed by each man from the practice of mutual aid; of the close
dependence of every one’s happiness upon the happiness of all; and of
the sense of justice, or equity which brings the individual to
consider the rights of every other individual as equal to his own.
Upon this broad and necessary foundation the still higher moral
feelings are developed."
https://truthout.org/articles/david-graeber-left-us-a-parting-gift-his-thoughts-on-kropotkins-mutual-aid/
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Here are the rest of my collected resources & notes that will be incorporated into the above narrative as time permits...
--
Howard Zinn may have his own biases; but here, he shares a curious point that we may do well to remember... racial prejudice, and general ignorance of the indiscriminant & insatiable capitalist hunger only ends up serving the ends of the rich, no matter what country they are in or what the color of their skin is... and some people are ok with that being some kind of modern version of the law of the jungle... other people would prefer that the scales were balanced a little bit more heavily on the side of social welfare... YMMV
--
W. E. B. Du Bois, saw the late- nineteenth-century betrayal of the Negro as part of a larger happening in the United States, something happening not only to poor blacks but to poor whites. In his book Black Reconstruction, written in 1935, he said:
"God wept; but that mattered little to an unbelieving age; what mattered most was that the world wept and still is weeping and blind with tears and blood. For there began to rise in America in 1876 a new capitalism and a new enslavement of labor."
Du Bois saw this new capitalism as part of a process of exploitation and bribery taking place in all the "civilized" countries of the world:
"Home labor in cultured lands, appeased and misled by a ballot whose power the dictatorship of vast capital strictly curtailed, was bribed by high wage and political office to unite in an exploitation of white, yellow, brown and black labor, in lesser lands..."
Was Du Bois right-that in that growth of American capitalism, before and after the Civil War, whites as well as blacks were in some sense becoming slaves?
https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnslaem10.html
--
"NO SYLLABUS CAN REPLACE ACTION!" But the first step towards responsible action is a healthy education... and good golly, I am in love with this research on the background of #LovecraftCountry "...much like Misha Green's sentiment about reclamation, our syllabus will focus exclusively on the Black innovations and Black history mentioned in each episode."
https://www.facebook.com/aethyrflux/posts/10158008613627886
Jaenelle Monae finale
https://www.facebook.com/aethyrflux/posts/10158081218477886
How racist was HPL
https://www.facebook.com/aethyrflux/posts/10157949513027886
--
Space Traders
https://www.facebook.com/aethyrflux/posts/10158668765197886
--
I am reminded of a quote by Margaret Atwood "Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them."
But if we dig deeper into the reality of this comparison, there are issues so awful, most humans are not willing to even consider the implications... and who among us is willing and able to tell these awful truths today, as Zora Neale Hurston was more than 80 years ago?
https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/zora-neale-hurston
--
Ibram Kendi, one of the nation’s leading scholars of racism, says education and love are not the answer
https://theundefeated.com/features/ibram-kendi-leading-scholar-of-racism-says-education-and-love-are-not-the-answer/
--
Obviously, there is still an uphill battle, even in scholarly publication & academia in general...
The lack of diversity and inclusion in scholarly communications is increasingly well-documented. As the recent Workplace Equity Project survey shows, we are an overwhelmingly white and cis-female industry, with a leadership that is disproportionately white male dominated. And this isn’t just the case in scholarly publishing. There’s a “diversity crisis in academia” according to Times Higher Education; “a feedback loop in scholarship that privileges and publishes the majority voice, which is often white and male,” per College and Research Libraries News; or, as Safiya Noble put it, writing here on the Kitchen, “the whole system reproduces and consolidates power among a relatively small group of people.”
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/09/13/eight-ways-to-tackle-diversity-and-inclusion-in-peer-review/
--
*whitesplaining is completely obnoxious* ...and to further emphasize this with facts:
"Sociological research confirms that greater diversity improves scholarship."
https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Whitesplaining-of-History/242952
--
Random Acts of Flyness: Jon Hamm "White Thoughts" (Season 1 Episode 1 Clip) | HBO
https://youtu.be/6m0oMrMUiWQ
--
As a potential example to herself & others, I had some hope that Chelsea Handler might learn some important lessons through her process; but alas I have heard that even her attempt to understand her own (as well as others') white privilege was "well-meaning, but misguided" (& the brief clips i have seen so far are ultimately kind of a train wreck)
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjw78m/chelsea-handlers-new-netflix-special-proves-she-still-doesnt-understand-white-privilege
--
"42 years of this thing and I said... I hated to see them still there, you know? But it's good to be home. It's good to be home. It's good to be with family, with friends. And put that activity, that prison activity behind me. I'm glad. I'm ready. ... [You'll never be back at (Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution at) Dallas?] ... I told, I told Chaplain Hoke: *I'll be back to free somebody else!*"
- Delbert Africa, January 18th, 2020
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/dec/07/40-years-a-prisoner-tommy-oliver-move-nine
“Of course I wanted to be free, but knowing what it would mean to him,” (Mike Africa, Sr.) says, referring to his son who campaigned his entire adult life for to his parents’ release. “I don’t want his whole life to be just trying to free us. I’m glad that me and his mom are out, not just because we are free but because it freed him.”
--
(Also, do not miss the continuation of this discussion in the comments below... Too much info to fit in one post!)