America: it's not us, it's YOU

Every now and again, I'll see a meme and it will remind me clearly why I generally can't stand 'em. The oversimplifications are always breathtaking. Take this popular one for example........

I feel like there are facts of history, you remember those? facts, that should be unchangeable. Their siginificance may certainly be open to interpretation, but the facts themselves remain whatever they are. They are incontrovertible. Sadly, that's not where we are these days. Were that the case in these Untied States (yeah, I said "untied"), this meme and the thinking behind it, would not exist. Since the meme does exist somebody's gotta try to explain why it's stupid. Enter Elle. It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it. I'm volunteering.
So here's my explanation:

The meme is right about one thing, and one thing only: no White person alive today ever owned a slave. Absolutely correct. Go to the head of the class. That aside however, every last White person alive today has benefited directly from the enslavement of Black people. And no, no Black person alive today was ever a slave, but generations of post-Emancipation re-enslavement (have you seen 13th?) have served plenty of us up on a platter to exploitative state and county systems. 

So stop trying to obfuscate reality by wailing, "Slavery is over, let's move on!" and talking foolishness about not "living in the past". That's not what this is about and you know it. And if you don’t, your head is firmly embedded in your posterior and there are doctors who can help you with that. I cannot.

Moving on.

This battle that we're fighting against the alt-Reich, a greatly revitalized neo-Nazism and their various symbiotes isn't exclusively about enslavement. Certainly, there was a period when the primary battlefield was the plantation and the cause célèbre was the lawful - if clearly immoral - enslavement of millions, but that was never the sole battlefield. 

What folk refuse to acknowledge when they create, post and endorse asshatted memes such as this is that enslavement was only a part of the story. The greater part of the story is the hatred of all things Black, all things ‘other’. Anti-Blackness, it's a thing. Look it up. 

Anti-Blackness and anti-otherness are the themes that enlivened Native genocide; African enslavement; the Knights of the KKK; the Confederacy; and twentieth century confederacy apologists. Anti-Blackness, and anti-otherness more broadly, are the philosophies that underpinned every law I cited in earlier writing (see We Ugly As Hell), they are the philosophies that caused us to codify ignorance and bigotry (and to continue doing so), and they are the philosophies that most threaten who and what the Founding Fathers dreamed America could be.

In every instance where we have a flare up of racial ugliness, at the heart of it is anti-Black/anti-brown/anti-other sentiment. Oh, and White insecurities. Oh and White push back against "others'" progress because of those insecurities. A large part of the performance of American Whiteness is terror that they who have sowed the wind will finally reap the whirlwind. I guess those insecurities really aren't so unreasonable.

Policing Black feelings and demanding that POC 'get over' enslavement is hardly the issue. The issue is that ytfolx need to 'get over' their disdain for Blackness, their DNA-level disgust with non-whiteness and get a grip on the ugliness that they have done or that has been done to secure their wealth and privilege. The sooner performative American White privilege gets about the business of working vigorously to dismantle said privilege, the sooner all of us will be able to breathe more freely.

In this relationship, the problem ain’t us no matter how much some would like to pretend that it is. It's not us America, it's YOU. 

Keep your moral equivalencing to yourself. I ain't interested

Today, I'm thinking about moral equivalences and the idiocy of equating violent push back against oppression with the violence of oppression itself.

Over the last couple of days since Charlottesville, I've been in a couple of discussions in which the wholesale intellectual dishonesty of the moral equivalence argument has been laid bare. The argument pretty much has been going like this, "All violence is bad." Period. The end. 

All violence is bad? And yet, many of these same moral equivalencers have managed to equivocate when calling out the young man who drove his car directly into a crowd of counter protesters. These same types likewise managed to equivocate about Brock Turner's rape and they routinely manage to equivocate about every police officer who murders a POC. Whether that POC is nine or ninety, there's a reasonable explanation and a suitable justification. All violence is clearly not bad. Apparently, "All violence is bad" but some exclusions apply apparently. The all in "All violence is bad" has the same meaning in the all in All Lives Matter. Got it!

All violence is bad, and yet the United States' history of making war for all manner of reason doesn't meet the standard of universal badness because "USA! USA! USA!". Violence in support of loud and unthinking  patriotism is just fine. It's some other kinds of violence that are a problem.

All violence is bad and yet the truck (in Paris) and the car (in London) attacks are roundly and universally reviled by so-called 'conservatives' but the deliberate murder of a protester in Virginia, that can be explained away by "There's been violence on many sides"? Meanwhile there are six legislators - Republican naturally - busy bringing laws to the books that make just that kind of attack perfectly acceptable behavior because God forbid people express views y'all ain't like! Don't like a protest? Just mow 'em the hell down! 

All violence is bad and yet we've woven an entire national mythology around war. The national anthem glorifies bombing and Brian Williams famously had some kind of on air 'bomb-gasm' over 45's bombing of Syria. But when someone punches a damn Nazi, y'all got issues, because violence is bad? 

All violence is bad but the American soldiers who 'won' World War II are 'The Greatest Generation'? Never mind a goodly portion of them were probably referring to their brother soldiers by every name other than the ones their mamas gave them. All physical violence is bad except, yuh know, for the kind of violence that's great. Psychic violence, on the other hand, is never bad. 

The reality is that the only bad violence is violence that pushes back against oppression. The reality is that the only violence that offends some of y'alls sensibilities is the violence that shoves your nation's indecencies and hypocrises into plain sight.

Y'all are fine with violence. Y'all are fine with brutality, as long as it lines up with your political perspective, and as long as the brutalized look like me or are fighting for me. Once violence doesn't follow these rules, it's bad violence. Suddenly, you get all,  "Tsk, tsk, tsk! Turn the other cheek! Martin Luther King was all about non-violence!" Hear me well: (1.) I am fresh out of f--king  cheeks to turn. And (2.) MLK's non-violence got him violently killed, so shut yuh pie hole with that s--t. 

Your ancestors have been stealing, beating, raping, maiming and killing for nearly 500 years. Y'all ain't got no problems with that violence because it has brought you every benefit you now call your own. Oh and it's ancient history.....cuz yesterday is ancient to you. Hell, 8 o'clock this morning is ancient history for some of y'all.  

Now that POC are standing up (or kneeling down as the case nay be) and demanding equal treatment; now that ain't nobody got time to turn yet another cheek, y'all wanna morality police? Laughable. May I suggest that you fix the plank in your own eye before you come to get the speck outta mine?

Y'all running a morality deficit so deep ten lifetimes ain't enough to fix the karmic load y'all are carrying. That is why you feel compelled to police the morality of my response. That is why you need to claim an equivalence in the immorality of our violences. You need there to be balance between your visceral generations of odiousness and my generations late righteous responsorial rage. Go on. Play that game. Ima just call bullshit on that right here, right now. 

In We Ugly As Hell I used the phrase 'immoral equivalence' rather than the more common 'moral equivalence' because it seems more accurate. When folk use the phrase 'moral equivalence' they are contending that all violence is immoral and its use anywhere and everywhere is equivalently morally reprehensible. I hear that and I rebuke that with the same fervor I save for rebuking kale chips. 

Righteous anger leads to righteous violence. Had the people of Charleston, SC reacted violently to the work of mass murderer Dylan Roof, would that have been immoral? Had the enslaved massacred far more of their enslavers, would that have been immoral? Had Sally Hemmings savaged Thomas Jefferson would that have been immoral? Had the Natives dealt more brutally with those driving them on the Trail of Tears, would that have been immoral? 

While I'll agree that violence is not, in itself, the best way to resolve any difference of opinion, you best believe, if our difference of opinion - d. o.p - is on the value of my life; if our d.o.p is on whether or not I should been seen as human and worthy or valuable; if our d.o.p is on whether or not my brother, my sister, or I should be shot dead in the street for breathing while Black any presumption that I'm going to be willing or able to turn yet another cheek is entirely wasted. Save that up for something else. You might need it. I am out of cheeks. I have no plans to get more. My turning days are done. 

Pacifism is for use with governments and people who respect ones humanity. Has America yet consistently respected mine? 

Carry on.

We ugly as hell. It is time to stop pretending otherwise.

I saw this image online recently. It made me chuckle a little. "Become?!" I said to myself. "We've become some new thing? LOL" Clearly we don't know US history nearly as well as we should. 

Every January, we *celebrate* Martin Luther King Jr's birthday. Every January, folk quote the I Have A Dream speech (entirely missing the point of the words) because we don't really have any interest in facts that run contrary to the conclusions we have already formed. That and we don't really give a shite about the truth of our history. Here's the truth: MLK was much reviled in his day. Here's another truth: the same fools calling his name today, would have been screaming at Black folk back in the day. 

So every third Monday of January, we're all Kumbaya-ing and from the third Tuesday of January through the third Sunday of the next January, we go on out and act out our worst impulses on a regular basis. And then we have the temerity to pretend that what we're seeing in the US today is somehow new? Y'all need to stop playing. This is who we are. This is who we've always been. 

In the shadow of Charlottesville and the ugliness that occurred there, White America's rallying cry is, "This is not who we are!". Folkx are eternally confident - despite hundreds of years of evidence - that they nice. That "America is great because America is good". Lordt! What evidence supports this conclusion? Because all the data I've seen, and I've seen a fair amount, forces me to conclude that we ugly as hell and we need to stop pretending otherwise.  

Let's review some data shall we? For the purposes of brevity, I'm only hitting a few points of history. Lawd knows I could be at this for a week otherwise.

The Immigration Act of 1790, yes, I'm going way, way back, invited immigrants who were "free white persons" to become naturalized citizens of these United States after two years of residency. Never mind there were free persons of color here at that time, they were not invited to participate in America. No, this invitation was just for ytfolx, but somehow, today, hatred is not who we are? Exclusion on the basis of race - the entirety of what Charlottesville was about I might point out - isn't who we are? I must have missed something in my high school logic class, cuz that by my logic, it would seem to me that bigoted exclusionists is exactly who we are.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 successfully prevented Chinese people who had been living and working here, building this country's critical railroad infrastructure, from returning. Those who had traveled back to the land of their birth or who might need to do so, were free to leave. They just shouldn't expect to be able to return to America. This law must have harmed Chinese American families in incalculable ways but hey, who cares right? 'Murica! There's no arguing that this law had any basis in anything other than bigotry, and yet now after Charlottesville, we want to claim that we're not bigots to our core? Seems to me like this is bigots is exactly who we are. Y'all need to stop playin'.

In 1868, subsequent to the ratification of the 14th Amendment, Black men were entitled to the vote. They didn't much get it though. "Forces", most of them social (and violent) prevented their access to the ballot box. Lives were threatened, livelihoods were threatened. And yet now, after the ugliness is southern Virginia, we want to claim that bigotry isn't our stock-in-trade? LOL

And then there's the Immigration Act of 1917, also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act. Want to guess how that looked and who was most impacted by it? "One of the key aspects of the 1917 act was that people from what was called the Asiatic Barred Zone were restricted from entering the country....Any country not owned by the U.S. adjacent to the continent of Asia along specified longitudes and latitudes were restricted from immigrating." And yet we recoil in horror at 45's Muslim ban and bellow that "This is not who we are"? [see more here].

In 1965, fully 100 years after Emancipation, and 45 years after White women gained access to the ballot, the Civil Rights movement yielded the Voting Rights Acts of 1965. African Americans might have gained citizenship in 1868, with the ratification of the 14th Amendment; they might have been legally entitled to vote in 1870 (under the 15th Amendment), but it took one hundred whole years before they would be allowed to access that citizenship in relative peace. POC were supposedly free to access the power of the vote, in 1868 but it took the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to make it so. And yet this Monday morning, after Charlottesville, we want to MMQB - Monday morning quarterback the weekend's violence as if it were a series of new and inexplicable football plays? Y'all need to stop playin'!

Since the re-election of Barack Obama - in fact, since before his re-election - Republican state legislatures have been rolling out voter suppressive tactics as fast as their fingers can write the odious laws. The goal has long been to deny the rights of 'the wrong kinds of people'. But how is that any different from what America has been all along? *Hint: it ain't any different. Why do they do it? Because they're bigots. That is all. The end. 

In 2016, the Dakota Access pipeline was re-routed. Whether you believe the explanations as to why it was re-routed, one thing is clear: the new route, through sacred Native burial grounds is deeply problematic. No amount of protest could stop the pipeline's eventual construction. Why? Because #BigotsRUs. Because Native people don't have rights. Because Chief Justice Taney (1857) was clear, "The Black [and brown] man has no rights that the White man is bound to respect". And we wanna pretend like the ugliness in Charlottesville is new? Environmental racism may simply be a new form of odious White supremacy in action, but it ain't nothin' new. 

Folks out here chanting about blood and soil. Whose blood? More importantly, whose damn soil? You stole the soil, you stole people to work the damn soil, and you shed copious amounts of blood along the way. And now you wanna act like you own something and ain't nobody else got any rights but you? 

Meanwhile the pearl-clutching types wanna split hairs about who's more violent than whom and pretend that there's some kind of immoral equivalence* across types of violence? Nah son. Try that with someone who hasn't read a page or two of America's real history.

A woman on a FB thread this morning was trying to blame Wall effing Street and the Deep State (I mean seriously?) for the violence in Charlottesville. Someone else I encountered was trying to blame George Soros. And of course, Barry O'Bummer. Oh and Hillary!

Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the donkey, y'all need to stop f--king playin'!

Stop it! Just stop.

This nation? Born and bred in blood and soil. Forget Jesus and Christian values. Neither of those things applies. Soaked in the blood of the exploited and oppressed is what America is. Soaked in blood and lies and an unwillingness to own the cold ugly truth. Hence Charlottesville. 

You want to talk about blood and soil? Let's talk, but let's just be damn clear whose blood, whose soil and who did the spilling and stealing of same. 

* immoral equivalence: the suggestion that all violence is equally bad; the suggestion that the violence to put down bigotry is the same morally speaking. as the violence of bigots. If this is the case, why then do we so revere the so-called 'greatest generation' that defeated Hitler?