Any efforts to actively confront racism and its root causes triggers legal and political violence, to shock and overawe those activists who seek to bring meaningful progressive change. If we try to make the USA a better place, we will be beaten, teargassed, and arrested—or even killed, slaughtered in the streets by agents of the state, without mercy. The ruling elite desperately—savagely—defends and embraces racism as if those in power cannot survive without it. We see now racism is not just endemic, but a necessary tool of oppression.
The ultimate irony—enough to make angels weep—is racism solves nothing. Not a damn thing. This is the true malefic such noble souls as Martin Luther King tried to dispel, that racism itself is but a symptom of a greater evil, not a cause in itself. I do not have a label for this deeper corruption of our souls, that fuels the engines of war and hatred and contempt, and such labels readily available only serve to misidentify and distract.
The best way to address these cruelties, these institutional barbarisms, is to cast out fear. And the greatest fear among the oppressors is the loss of identity as a master race, as the work to eliminate racism is to also eradicate the concept of race itself—and those who rely on racial superiority to define themselves stand to lose the most in such a time of liberation and equality. Cast adrift, these racist bigots will resort to violence unimaginable. Compromise in any form will be viewed as treason to racial purity and superiority.
Although racism itself—and the regressive policies supporting racism—solves nothing, the solution for racism is found in addressing its underlying causes. My hope is we can make racism unnecessary, to make the myths of racial superiority collapse like the over-inflated balloon it is.
No comments:
Post a Comment