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You
were not expected to aspire to excellence; you were expected to make
peace with mediocrity – James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
A
recurring theme, indeed the widely propagated reprise on racist
violence sustained by the practitioners of a centuries-old dark art
and by their media agents typically focuses on the palpable, the
ubiquitous, the conspicuous, the grandstander and cudgel variety of
violence designed to wound, enrage, demean and provoke further
corralling of the victims into a vicious cycle of reaction and
counter reprisals that leave the culprits unscathed, laying waste to
the ravaged. It is violence that assaults the visual senses while
bruising and maiming the physical ones. Murder is often thrown in for
good measure. It not only serves as a grim reminder of the source of
racist power that must remain immutable - and how its intrinsic
violence is dispensed - but a tacit warning of the assorted penalties
awaiting those bold enough to challenge entrenched supremacist
assumptions.
Not
to diminish the gravity of blatant hate crimes, latent
forms of violence are far more enduring and damaging,
wherein lie the daunting challenges of forging strategies of
confronting, denting and dismantling the supremacist systems, their
abuses and seemingly hardy and impervious barricades constructed to
postpone the humanness of those adjudged inferior. Hate speech and
meting out of bodily violence, including murder, are in theory –
but only so - subject to legal sanction. What have been characterized
as microaggressions,
symbolic or aversive racism is
in fact directly responsible for the collective deprivations of
People of Color in contrast to hate crimes.
There
are legally prescribed corrective measures that should, again
hypothetically, deter those targeting an individual or groups unlike
themselves from carrying outrages against their designated victims.
But when agents of law enforcement become the perpetrators of
brutality against fellow citizens, pursuit of justice is no longer
guided by legal subtleties.
Racist
cops murdering unarmed African Americans are far more likely to
escape punitive measures consistent with the gravity of the crime
than a thief who pinches a loaf of bread from a convenience store.
Racist, murderous cops are “suspended” from their jobs
only to land more lucrative jobs in private security firms or
rewarded with even more lucrative jobs as mercenaries fighting
America’s perpetual racist wars. They know full well that no
crime is grave enough for them not to escape censure upon their
return, get medals or presidential pardons after massacring women and
children. The inequities of law enforcement and dispensation of
injustice by the criminal legal system are race-based. For African
Americans and Latinos, it prescribes penal measures while Whites are
treated with kid gloves, receive suspended sentences or ordered
meaningless community service. Latent violence displayed in the
criminal and justice systems is like throwing People of Color into
rough seas without life jackets while their White citizens are
assured of salvation.
There
is an inevitable impounding of dreams of a meaningful future and
meting out punishment for the supposed skin-deep “crime”
of being. How can the killing of hope, the thwarting of desire for
upward mobility, aspiring to live as equals, the longing for
recognition of inalienable rights as humans, as citizens, become the
subject of legal sanctions? Yet all indicators of the quotidian needs
transcending the bread-and-butter issues, clearly show it is
non-Whites with Blacks and Native Americans at the bottom of the
pile. Such is the systemic nature of racism that is in place and one
that defines the dominant group’s supremacist ways. To resist
would be to dare to undermine established norms, a way of life that
has steered and informed White American and European imperialism for
a combined 500 years. It is a methodically choreographed plan
intended to dampen and nullify any daring or resolve to resist, well
before resistance is contemplated. It is nipping in the bud of
intentions, dreams, hopes, aspirations and resolve and has all the
hallmarks of a cruel, authoritarian and tyrannical dispensation of
power.
Any
perceived waning of the lopsided relationship between racists and
their victims is construed as a weakening of the dispensation of
White power. It is power derived from a rationale that ruthlessly
exploits differences
inherent in the natural order of human diversity - inseparable from
biological diversity - in justifying one group wielding the cudgels
of brute force in executing callous insouciance to equality of
opportunity, justice and fairness along with a refusal to acknowledge
the humanity of those adjudged as inferior. Concurrently, racist
logic will loudly proclaim these ignoble qualities as worthy of
adoption on a global scale by subjects regarded as inferiors –
who are often killed in their millions - but still in dire need of
White salvation. The instruments of institutional bigotry have busied
themselves with two-tiered, mutually exclusive sets of values: a
dominant one that boasts of a “civilization” and the
oppressed one that is berated as the “barbaric” Other.
The
crafted language of institutionalized racism assiduously labors at
smoothing the edges of the spiny rocks of bigotry into smoothened
pebbles to render them user-friendly to undiscerning, passive minds
and the gullible. When target consumers of weaponized semantics are
sold on the redemptive value of such drivel, it is testimony to the
enduring character of the authority that supremacist practitioners
unleash on their targeted victims. There must be no let up on these
recurring brutal reminders of who is in control.
The
collective will of the victims of racist praxis must be broken by
employing a species of violence that is meant to degrade followed by
an assault on their psyche and their humanity. It is the bigot’s
own double-edged shrill call for resistance warriors to surrender
long before they ponder waging a war against crude, barbaric
injustices that define their lot. The other edge turns to supremacist
devotees to mount their own resistance to calls clamoring for
justice. We all know what would have happened to BLM followers had
they breached security at the Capitol and what will not happen to the
vast majority of Whites who did. They were rewarded with selfies with
law enforcement personnel. Thus, therein can be found another species
of violence that of omission: remaining indifferent to supremacist
excesses and crimes.
A
continuing assault on intentions, an onslaught on hope and
dissolution of expectations is the bedrock of racism’s
preemptive
war against the Other. It is inter
alia,
a call to xenophobe rank and file alerting them to the imagined
threats to their way of life, their “values”, their
ethos, issuing from designated inferiors reclaiming a humanity that
racism has made a career of in diligently striving to degrade. These
are not vain words coined for cosmetic effect. They define Us the
master race, Them as our inferiors and the Us vs. Them paradigm that
informs the relationship that racist power wishes to oversee,
administer and sustain.
Oddly,
the possibilities can be endless regardless of your vantage point.
The perks of White power are as limitless as the prospects for
calamity and the evils visited on People of Color. To state that the
odds are stacked against supremacists giving way to righteousness and
decency, is to cheapen reality. They simply cannot and will not give
in to their habitual fake rhetoric of righteousness. How else will
the façade of virtue gain traction and respectability? After
all, who but the foolish among supremacists will snub divinely
ordained power by chosen ones over those destined to serfdom?
The
stage for divine intervention in matters of race had
been set two hundred years ago
with the pioneers of racial pseudoscience like Hinton Rowan Helper
and his “expert” Samuel George Morton to usher ballooning
studies of racial differences with one bias in mind: the inherent
inferiority of Blacks. Prejudice went desperately digging for data.
Then came Josiah C. Notts, Morton’s student, who put the racist
icing on the cake with his newly coined “polygenesis”
claiming God had made Blacks as a distinct species of humans far
beneath Whites among His creations. He labeled his new theological
branch of knowledge “niggerology”. Attempts at refuting
fake science would be wasteful and futile. On both aisles of the
racial divide there are enduring effects, the aftermath, of such
self-fulfilling studies, conditioning White psyches to accept
received “wisdom” as a blueprint for their actions for
years to come, no matter how falsely based, as self-evident. To
Blacks, the looming peril of disoriented bearings, collective or
individual, slowing down the path to full growth and assimilation is
subdued by (mis)rulers who will not back down.
White
power is of a unique trait, a peculiar attribute that could,
begrudgingly,
acknowledge the humanity of its nemesis only when it is exposed for
what it is: perceived, imagined, self-styled and illusory. There is
the inevitable cowardice that comes with the abuse of racism giving
it a dangerous streak: abusers have a morbid fear of their victims,
lest they rise against unceasing obloquies, condescension,
criminalizing states of being and marginalizing an entire group
solely on account of skin color.
Trump’s
U-turn soon after the January 6th assault on the US Capitol was
cowardice and cunning on steroids. He promptly disowned the very
group of his supremacist followers that he incited, condemned their
actions that he encouraged, falsely claiming he ordered the National
Guard to secure the Capitol. He made a 360-degree about turn,
throwing his supporters under the bus, hoping to salvage a modicum of
integrity with his sights on 2024. Trump’s renouncing of
violence does not tally with the continuing occupation of Iraq,
Afghanistan and Syria, his bragging of the assassination of the
Iranian general Soleimani, nor does it tally with his deafening
silence on the murder of unarmed African Americans by racist cops.
Members
of Congress were no less cowardly in their response to the security
breach on the Capitol. These guardians of the “seat of American
democracy” darted to the nearest object to hide under, fearing
the wrath not of Blacks but their own tribesmen. It bears mention
that many of these cowardly representatives have presided over war
after criminal unprovoked war that have sent millions to their deaths
and condemned millions more to internal or external displacement.
Semantic
ruses must not be allowed to supplant the inalienable virtues of
humanity of the victims that chauvinistic onslaughts have
methodically targeted for ruin. Effective resistance will require
extraordinary measures to manifest in a group whose morale has been
corroded by centuries of racist conditioning via its assigned
inferiority and man-made impotence.
The
victims’ commitment to the universality of their cause is what
must sustain their undying longing and struggle for what is
rightfully and inalienably theirs: justice, equality, full humanity
and fairness. That vow must begin with internal self-rehabilitation,
even before inviting outsiders or well-wishers to join in the effort
to reconstruct the dented esteems. It is the sufferers who best
understand the intensity and severity of their anguish and best
positioned to seek remedies, relief and renewal, not via the
unsolicited participation of those who brought about the calamity in
the first place. What is certain is that leadership must be generated
from within ranks of People of Color.
To
paraphrase Baldwin, White America quietly prescribes
expectations for their victims – a crucial weapon of latent
supremacist violence. It is a psychological straitjacket meant to
smother meaningful creativity; a life of fullness and fulfillment,
equal participation in society, equal access to the national pie and
staying free of imposed values that are incongruous to their
personalities, culture, sense of being and humanity.
To
this end, entire literatures, cultural icons, epistemic structures
packaged for assimilation by the vanquished, not for their salvation
but for their survival have been erected. Such a scenario breeds a
false sense of achievement at merely being alive while displaying the
motions of comfort, with the soul trapped in a vicious cycle of
distress, rage and frustration. An overwhelming array of systemic
forces has been aligned to rig the game in favor of a supremacist
project. Full membership to society for those targeted by racism
becomes remote, far-fetched and increasingly elusive. The dominant
entity shows no absolution in keeping their fellow humans
marginalized and firmly caged “in their place”.
Such
are the mechanisms that consolidate and distribute norms in
stratified fashion - limitless welfare for supremacist disciples and
crumbs for the rest. The crude violence on adults is a culmination of
a process that begins at childhood. Children raised in impoverished
and neglected neighborhoods will grow in an environment of
deprivation. Their schools remain in states of structural and
educational neglect where the prospects for development and growth
are stacked against children. Born into dereliction and dying in it
would be the natural, expected order. Put Whites in such willful
states of deprivation and diminished hopes and ask yourself if they
would be any different. Yet it is in these very conditions that many
African Americans and Latinos grow up in and yet still bear the brunt
of the endless game of victim-blaming. And therein lies the catch:
create an untenable situation, block all exits, then blame those
trapped for their inability to extricate themselves. There is a clear
parallel here in foreign societies victimized by America’s
perpetual racist wars: visit unprecedented violence on once coherent
and prosperous societies, kill massive numbers of innocents, bring
ruin to their societies, turn them into dysfunctional nations, then
block them from seeking safe havens in countries which perpetuated
the violence.
The
latency of violence continues to provide cover of ongoing inequities.
There may be no palpable pain for the inordinate rates of
incarceration of African Americans and Latinos, save for victims and
immediate kin. This over-representation of these groups in modern
supremacist corporate gulags are obvious; White power will resist any
measures that will reverse this trend. Thus, the urgent need for
People of Color to generate and resolutely clamor for community
policing, substantial investment of their tax dollars in educational
and economic opportunities. A non-aligned movement of peoples, not
countries, most of whose sovereignties have been eroded by systematic
pressure from America and other Western countries must be forged to
complete what the old non-aligned nations failed miserably to
achieve: rehabilitation of their collective dignity,
self-determination, economic independence, prosperity and equality as
humans. Supremacist evil intrigues have their designated inferiors
and their resources firmly in their crosshairs to keep them pegged in
perpetual states of stagnation. The fact that China has made
unprecedented strides in becoming an economic superpower, despite
racist reservations, should be a clear indication that White
Supremacist trash can – and should – be put in its place:
in the litterbin of history.
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