I am writing this post from my home, which the law claims I own, but which has been from time immemorial the land of the Tohono Oʼodham Nation and Pascua Yaqui peoples before it was appropriated by the Spanish Crown, passed to the Empire of Mexico, and finally sold to the United States.
It’s not easy for me to work through my feelings and fears about the state of my country. I’m much better at perceiving the emotions of others than talking about my own thoughts and feelings.
But I am feeling deeply frightened. Some five years ago when he began his campaign, I was immediately struck by the implications of a president with no experience, no diplomatic skills, poor education, a narcissist, and the recipient of an enormous amount of privilege–white and economic.
My worst fears then have been exceeded by what is happening now.
his foment of racism, white supremacy, and nationalist rhetoric has created a USA I struggle to recognize. My Boomer Generation mother raised me with ideals centered around racial and gender equality, feminism, labor union-organizing, and the belief that the government existed to serve the people, not the rich.
However, I was raised in a bubble of whiteness. My public school education will show you some of the roots of our current crisis. In 9th Grade American History class, my teacher presented us with a 100% whitewashed and white-supremacist version of the story of our nation. He spent a HUGE amount of time indoctrinating us into a version of history where the Civil War was not about slavery–he repeatedly said that in front of the class like some kind of refrain–but was about states rights. That tells you so much about the false version of history so many white people still believe.
It’s a narrative supported by so many parts of American culture, like the movie Gone With the Wind which so many whites take as historically accurate when it is really a reflection of 20th century revisionist history and the rise of ‘memorializing’ enslavers through things like the Daughters of the Confederacy, the plantation as a place where enslaved people were happy, etc.
Let’s be honest. The United States of America is a nation founded on a principle it has never completely followed: Liberty and Justice for all. In each generation, we get better at it. We expand the circle of who is has certain privileges and who is disenfranchised. But we have never actually attained that principle. Why? Because although we are founded on that beautiful principle, our wealth and power as a nation was built on stolen land, on the backs of enslaved people who were kidnapped, trafficked, and subjected to so many forms of torture and abuse it boggles the mind. And most horrifical, forced into a system of generational enslavement based on the false and evil theory of white supremacy.
Dr. Joy DeGruy, the author of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, narrates how the traumas and social realities of slavery are extended in each generation and how they impact People of Color today. (This is a grossly oversimplified statement, but hopefully it summarizes the principle of Dr. DeGruy’s work.)
The traumas of slavery impact white people too. As the ancestors of people who committed such atrocities (whether or not our direct ancestors were enslavers or not), and as the recipients of a system that values whiteness and devalues People of Color, we have always tried to escape from the cognitive dissonance of thinking of ourselves as good, moral [and often, Christian] people while participating in and perpetuating, evil. Or, post-Civil War, of continuing the systems of oppression–the Jim Crow laws, end of Reconstruction which was a white abandonment of People of Color in the south, the KKK, voter suppression, the ‘war on drugs’ from which whites were exempt, and so many others.
Every white person in the USA, from the poorest to Elon Musk, is a recipient of white privilege.
I saw so many white supremacist symbols tattooed onto those domestic terrorists. On their clothes, hats, flags. But it’s also subtle. It’s the far more evil reality behind the flags that bear his name and “Don’t Tread On Me.” These symbols were visible on many members of this almost overwhelmingly white mob. If you say this isn’t about race, you are just wrong.
Statistically, if you add the collective memberships of white supremacist organizations, there are three Neo-nazis in the USA for every Jewish person. That makes me sick every time I think about it.
White America suffers from Post Traumatic Enslaver Syndrome. It’s a mental illness characterized by the belief in white supremacy, eugenics, inherited practices of violence toward People of Color, inherited cognitive dissonance between self-image and reality, inherited practices of segregation, narcissism, and supporting systems of oppression under the guise of reasonable language and law and order rhetoric.
We live in a nation where police can kill People of Color on the streets in public view, where Breonna Taylor can be executed in her own home for no reason at all, where peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters are arrested in their thousands, tear gassed, shot with rubber bullets, and beaten. And, where a mob of white people can storm the Capitol and be escorted out after they destroy it.
The domestic terrorists say they are patriots and stand for freedom. They don’t even know what that means. But their rhetoric is the cloak passed down by generations to hide the racism of white people–the language of reason used to support oppression.
I love my country and I am also angry with my country. As a white male, I disavow any solidarity with whiteness and white privilege. I stand as an ally to People of Color. I offer my small political power to stand against fascism and to stand for democracy.
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