First, this will be returned to because the biggest issue is first not approaching this from a human looking at an experience of human misery inflected on black people & Native people in the United States.
Below will be sort of a relearning of history that will make you questions what our history class was worth, and rethink when and how we tell it. In short, if you’re informed about this, consider waiting for Pt. 2… whenever that will be. Or check it our to verify what you’re reading.
I like to start by thinking of questions that only exist to say, “but,”. Not because their not useful, but to weed out those whom require a much greater cost (time, patience). If the only point of question is to ONLY bring up doubt without evidence, stop and disengage. The real issue is we’re all ego driven people whom viscerally believe ourselves over others by nature of being alive. In these tense and scary times, us humans can react emotionally and that can create some very divided beliefs. Even so, if we’re to have discourse and have a prosperous society, we must have institutions people believe in. For that to exist, we need to understand our history and the many mistakes that we can learn and correct our entire human experience… is how the argument goes. While the colonization of the Native people and the current day America’s (Central, North, South, or otherwise) is its own tragedy, the humanity stealing and raping white supremacists enacted on black people is unconscionable. In fact it is so deprived, they were in the dreams of what may be the purest form of evil with the systemic video biography and corresponding data the monsters of WWII tracked. Now lets level set.
Long ago in the 1960’s that interracial marriage was illegal. At this point only 51 or 52 years ago was this and a larger scope of corrective policies written as a start of righting the wrong of slavery.
Jim Crow Laws and their impact can only be measured after knowing the scope of impact. The only summary you can take away is the persistence of people who hold these beliefs to deny black people humanity. They’re so ingrained in almost every part of our world and experience. Central Park Karen knows exactly what to do to that would give any person of color an indication of how deep these thoughts are embedded and rot our society.
“The people who settled the country had a fatal flaw. They could recognize a man when they saw one. They knew he wasn’t anything but a man… the only way to justify the role this chattel was playing in one’s life, was to say that he was not a man. For if he wasn’t, then no crime had been committed. That lie is the Basis of our present trouble.”
Eddie Glaude, quoting James Baldwin’s “The White Problem”
The whole essay is entirely worth reading in full but James Baldwin is one of the best voices in precisely showing the links to the past and their effects on the structures build from them echo their very horrors to the present.
Last data point that needs to be shared before Pt. 2 is that prior to the Civil War, there was roughly 4 million black slaves in the United States (1860). To give that a scale of measure, today there are anywhere from 2-2.5 million people incarcerated in the United States. The very caveat of the 13th amendment; “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction,” and understanding that is also the first action of white supremacists answer to that amendment. They tried to create laws specifically to punish black people for the very reason of being black. Since the amendment allowed their to be an exception, they abused that to continue slavery masked under industry (prisons, private or otherwise). Sadly they were successful, but it doesn’t mean society today must accept their vile behavior. We must call it evil and condemn it out of our society.
Until next time~
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