The opponents of critical race theory, not more than a handful of months ago, were telling us it was a damn shame that Dr. Seuss was being cancelled for racial caricatures in a handful of nearly-forgotten children's books (yes, I do believe the Venn Diagram there is exactly a circle) but I wonder what they would say about the banning of books by Black authors in a school district in Pennsylvania. To me, it looks an awful lot like my impression that the criticism of CRT is actually a way to demonize a very specific kind of Black history (the kind that comes from Black voices and is heard from even when it isn't February) is pretty much the mood being catered to.
The reason certain people want CRT to be minimized, want to discredit the 1619 Project, want to talk about All Lives Matter instead of why Black lives need to be discussed, why Latino/a/ex lives need to be discussed, why Asian lives need to be discussed, all within their contexts, is because the context doesn't show white culture in a positive light. Because it shouldn't.
In discussing policing in the US, it's hard to divorce law enforcement from the slave patrols charged with keeping the peace (for a very racially-biased version thereof) in our early history, and about as hard to separate our Border Patrol from the same.
So when right wing people talk about caravans and the gathering of Haitian refugees (just like the "threat" of Syrian refugees) and think of course violence will turn them away because who even are they? I don't think my eyes deceive me. I see human beings who deserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But I know those other folks don't and I see what they are, too. And it's not so much that I want to emulate our nation's founders--I think we could do better.
We are not free if we don't believe in these principles for all. All. One runny pimple on Montana's ass just got upset at the notion of a mere 75 Afghan refugees resettling there, some very small quantity of a huddled mass of people yearning to breathe free. Sure, 75 human beings, with hardly nothing to their names, women and children included, are going to overrun your whole dumb gun-toting red white and blue-blooded state.
I'm not a Christian, but I believe what you are willing to do for the people with the least is your whole job as a human, because you need to know that could be you, too. Politics and weather and poverty and all the shit fate throws at you permitting. But there's a very good label for what my eyes see when I see CBP deploying whips (or whatever your sensibility prefers to call the lash or the strap) on Haitian asylum-seekers.
And it's the very word the anti-CRT folks want to pretend very much the US isn't about anymore, but you know what? Maybe we still live with that history and need to recognize and confront it. And we shouldn't fear people fleeing from danger so much as to hate, revile, and punish them on top of their own tragedy.
2 comments:
Weather, “climate”, the atmosphere, the thin layer of potentially toxic gases we live in that envelopes the only ball of rock we know of we can live on, does not recognize the boundaries of “nation/states”. Ask the Neanderthal.
It is beginning: I have harped on this for years, it’s the climate not conflict that’s driving the migration. We’re not going to stop the migration. It can’t be stopped.
We’re not going to stop millions or tens of millions, perhaps even hundreds of millions, of people determined to leave someplace that has become uninhabitable by just saying “no”. That is without a doubt the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. A part of the world is rapidly becoming uninhabitable, and the people are leaving.
We’re not going to stop it. We won’t stop it. It can’t be stopped.
And it is playing out equally on both sides of the planet ~ When we look to the middle east and beyond the wars over oil and religious insanity we find drought. Mega-drought, rapid desertification, and the outright theft of one nation/state’s water by her neighbor to the south. And famine. That population is fleeing north. It can’t be stopped. It won’t be stopped.
So too on our side of the pond, something I’ve been pointing to for several years but only recently catching the attention of the mainstream with the advent of drumpf uck’s ooga-booga caravan of Central American refugees fleeing not just crime and violence but drought. Mega-drought, rapid desertification and famine. That population is fleeing north. It can’t be stopped. It won’t be stopped.
You can’t stop the migration. Weather, “climate”, the atmosphere, the thin layer of potentially toxic gases we live in that envelopes the only ball of rock we know of we can live on, does not recognize the boundaries of “nation/states”. Ask the Neanderthal.
A lot of people who pretended that climate change wasn't real knew it was, but convinced themselves it was only happening to "other people", and equally told themselves a lie that it wouldn't matter, it wouldn't catch up to them, no one would knock on their door and say a bill was due for the pain caused. A lot of people are at the door now, and yes, they all matter. Does this mean the same people will now learn we live on one planet and share the fate of it--
Probably still not for a lot of people. Like ants fighting over a spat-out peppermint. But I think some people will get it. Or I hope, anyway.
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