As a new immigrant, Wisdom Amouzou quickly perceived the racial hierarchy of America’s past and present. Now he asks: does changing this “fluent bigotry” require violence?
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Learning the prejudiced grey as a new immigrant in a nation colonized by immigrants was pretty black and white. Within a few short months of being FOTB from Togo, the racial hierarchy was clear. The lines of alliances and betrayals were drawn and printed in my memory to ensure survival.
My English was weak but I quickly spoke fluent bigotry.
White > Asian > Latinx > then African/Black. That was the order, what scholars call racial hegemony. Occasionally, you might even put dogs or Ceciled lions before African/Black.
Native American? Cast as subhuman savages and systematically decimated then relegated to ‘sovereign land’ and trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty. Too complex to even put on the map and the perpetual forgotten minority.
There was just something about America’s history mixed with its unequal and unfair prosperity that made this dominance crystal clear the moment I settled into the melting pot. It was clear whose backs, fury, innocence and ignorance fueled the truths and falsehoods of the American melting pot. Each navigation, each interrogation, and each transformation requiring its own violent dance with the flames.
Cornel West quoting John Jay Chapman put it best: “White supremacy is like a serpent wrapped around the legs of the table upon which the Founding Fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence.”
It’s why even when the Red Cross tries to show kids of different backgrounds playing together, they still manage to depict the children of color negatively and the white children positively. It’s deep. I’m talking quantum physics with subatomic quarks deep.
Whether in swimming classes in public schools or in Red Cross’ boardrooms, any attempt at challenge this systemic beast requires restructuring. And restructuring requires violence. Sometimes, the violence is symbolic, physical, spiritual, or mental, but it’s always present.
Jesse Williams drops the mic with a gospel straight from the ancestors. Tomi Lahren does indirect violence to my consciousness with a plea for black entertainment to stop bashing white people.
Nigel Farage, leader of the far-right UK Independence Party, successfully engineers #Brexit by a narrow percentage. The faction of his supporters that are immigrant-hating and Islamophobic continue the restructuring momentum by spiking the rate of hate crimes to nearly 57%.
Teachers in Oaxaca protest the mandatory testing being imposed as part of Mexico’s education reform. Stones, Molotov cocktails, Riot police. 6 die,“53 civilians, 41 federal police agents and 14 state police agents [are] injured.”
Change requires violence. Do you agree or disagree? Let me know in the survey and drop a note in the comments.
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