You know that old saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same”? Well, one reason that happens is because we don’t learn from our history. We don’t learn from our history because it’s been white washed. There is a lot of hysteria from very right wing ultra conservative and white supremacist individuals over Critical Race Theory. It’s not taught in schools, although these conservatives believe it is, and they are hysterical about it because we learn just how unjust and cruel US history is – especially toward “others”, meaning other than White Anglo-Saxon Protestant males.
This past Saturday, May 14, 2022, an 18 year old white boy named Payton Gendron drove about 200 miles from his home to a supermarket in Buffalo, NY. He went there because it was in an area where people of color (blacks) lived. He wore full armor and a helmet, and he was armed with a rifle. He started shooting first at people in the parking lot. Then he went inside the store and began shooting it up. He killed 10 people and wounded 3. Eleven of the people were black.
What made this kid carry out such a horrible massacre? He’s a white supremacist, radicalized when he was 16. He was “bored” during the pandemic and went onto dark websites, learning about this bullshit “replacement theory.” It’s the paranoid belief white supremacists have that there’s a conspiracy to replace whites with minorities through intermarriages and immigration. This kid wrote a whole long manifesto and published it online before carrying out the massacre.
If killing wasn’t enough, he wore a camera so he could live stream the slaughter as he went around shooting people down. He also planned to go on to other places and kill more people.
One of the people he killed was the store security guard, a retired policeman. The guard shot at this kid but was unable to stop him because of the armor the punk wore. The guard wasn’t wearing armor and so he was killed, a hero who tried to save lives.
I might have thought to blame people like Tucker Carlson of Fox News or GQP legislators like Elise Stefanik, Madison Cawthorn, Marjorie Taylor Greene and other trumper types except that I started reading The Immortal Irishman by Timothy Egan last week. Almost right away I had topics in mind to write about: how some humans just seem to want to be inhumane against other humans and about the Know-Nothings, who seemed to be like today’s GQP.
And then the shooting in Buffalo with the ongoing reminder that white supremacy is rearing its very ugly head yet again. Then I thought: oh—white supremacy = GQP = Know Nothings! I had a five second course on the Know Nothings in school, probably high school. They were some political party that claimed to “know nothing” was what I got out of it. Ho hum. Well, reading The Immortal Irishman, I’ve been learning a hell of a lot more.
The Know-Nothings were a bunch of white men pre-Civil War that were angry about all the Irish Catholics coming to the US from Ireland during the Great Hunger (potato famine). They also didn’t care for Jewish people, other Catholics, and people of color. They were very violent about it, too, terrorizing the immigrants, burning their churches, homes and places of businesses. Some were killers. And if they were asked about their activities, they’d say “I know nothing.” Yeah. That’s where the name came from. The Know Nothings became a party of nationalism. Know Nothing politicians began winning elections. Gee, this sure does sound familiar, doesn’t it?
White supremacy is rooted right in the beginnings of this country with the earliest settlers. Colonies were led by white men. Women had no say in anything and people of color were slaves or servants or driven off their land (Native Americans). White supremacy is a disease of evil and hatred. The only way to get past it is to expose, look at it, feel the hurt and shame, make amends and then begin healing as a country.
We can’t do that because the GQP, trumpers and white supremacists don’t want to do that. They don’t want the shame of this country to be out in the open where everyone would have to deal with it. That’s why they are so against any kind of critical race theory (CRT) in education. Even though it’s not taught in schools, there’s a rabid reaction among these people to stop the remote possibility of it happening. We need it to understand the injustice and inequality still going on to this day.
I believe white supremacy goes beyond a hatred of “other” (races, religions, sexuality). I think the white supremacists are determined to subjugate women because they’re under the mistaken belief that they are supposed to be in charge. They want to control women’s health now but what’s next?
They’ll want to outlaw interracial marriage to keep whites “pure”.
They’ll want to outlaw all forms of birth control to keep women at home having babies.
They’ll want to outlaw same sex marriage and LGBTQ rights
They’ll want to end civil rights and other fundamental rights.
They are the Know-Nothings of this age. I believe this is so with Tucker Carlson pushing this vile replacement theory on Fox News everyday and GQP legislators either embracing it or looking the other way.
If we’d been taught true history instead of being fed a white wash, maybe we wouldn’t be in such a mess. Maybe we would have learned something?
Instead, we have more and more mass shootings based on racial hatred. Charleston. El Paso. San Diego. Philly. And against the LGBTQ community, Orlando. That’s just off the top of my head.
This can’t stand.
President Biden said, “We must all work together to address the hate that remains a stain on the soul of America.” Not a few of us, not some of us. All of us who believe that we all bleed red no matter our race or color and who believe that God created us all equal.
CNN just reported on the emotional speech President Biden gave in Buffalo. CNN quoted him as saying: "White supremacy is a poison, it's a poison ... running through our body politic," Biden said, adding that silence is "complicity."
"And it's been allowed to grow and fester right before our eyes. No more, no more. We need to say as clearly and as forcefully as we can that the ideology of White supremacy has no place in America. None."
He added, "In America, evil will not win, I promise you. Hate will not prevail. White supremacy will not have the last word. The evil did come to Buffalo and it's come to all too many places, manifested in gunmen who massacred innocent people in the name of hateful and perverse ideology, rooted in fear and racism. It's taken so much."
I say again that it takes all of us who believe we are all equal to speak up. If we look the other way, there’s just going to be another racially motivated mass shooting somewhere else.
No comments:
Post a Comment