For this blog post on healthcare
and an accountability to history, I am using law enforcement as a means to make
clear that an accountability to history prevents or makes challenging the idea
of transforming the U.S. healthcare system because of an allegiance or affirmation
of historical norms. These historical norms inform the discourse and engagement
of the subject in question necessarily challenging progressive, visionary
movements. Simply stated, it’s about power.
It is unfortunate that people,
communities and nations seldom, if ever, fully break from their history. History,
considered by some in the academy to be a structure, is the embodiment of
communal and national discourse, it is a mixture of the complex, complicated
and the uncanny, even absurd. It is queer and seldom understood without
controversy, and that is the history occupied by the people of America. History,
at least from the perspective of this writer, would seem inescapable. I guess
at some level we are all accountable to history, and this would seem to be our
collective identity and destiny. Accountability
within the context of this piece on history is the idea that actions of the personal-intimate,
structures, systems and their institutions emerge of out a reckoning or
affirmation/allegiance with the past, with history. History requires an answer,
an answer, for example, regarding American Slavery, Jim Crow, segregation or an economic system detrimental to millions or a healthcare system which would seem to be more about wealthcare than healthcare.
Another example from a different prospective might be, I know that African
Americans were lynched in certain parts of the south and therefore my actions
are informed by that sorted history. History, more often, than not, requires an action
which may become the answer.
This post on accountability and
history became more evident after seeing the victory party at the White House on
May 4, 2017, after the House GOP passed healthcare legislation harmful to
millions of people. The lack of diversity at the victory was astonishing
particularly after an administration as diverse and progressive as the previous
administration. Yet there it was plain to see, the very history my parents,
grandparents and great grandparents had fought to escape, at least, overtly.
Considering this present moment in
history, with its alternative facts, a truth contested, the absurd and
outlandish run amuck, with literally millions of lives at risk, my accountability
to my history, the history of the African American, and gender and sexual
minorities, is not only central but crucial in the maintenance of hard-won
freedoms. As I write this post, I find that history itself to be contested
space, for it is the historical space from which power and its actions emerge. An example of history as contested space is a
2014 CBS article entitled, Rewriting History? Texas Tackles Textbook Debate. There
were significant arguments about some people and their narratives getting more
attention than others, this argument came from both the liberal and
conservative historians.
Jacqueline Jones,
chairwoman of the University of Texas' History Department, said one U.S.
history high school book cheerleads for President Ronald Reagan and the
significance of America's free enterprise system while glossing over Gov.
George Wallace's attempt to block school integration in Alabama. She also
pointed to a phrase stating that "the minimum wage remains one of the New
Deal's most controversial legacies."[1]
"We do our
students a disservice when we scrub history clean of unpleasant truths,"
Jones said "and when we present an inaccurate view of the past that
promotes a simple-minded, ideologically driven point of view."[2]
Objections such as
Jones' were the most common, but some conservatives complained that the books
marginalized Reagan and other top Republicans, even as they heaped praise on
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.[3]
"I guess
Ronald Reagan did nothing in two terms," scoffed Republican board member
Ken Mercer of San Antonio.[4]
History presents this writer with a
human narrative of contested space as various opposing socio-cultural-educational-politico-religious
and economic forces use history to inform their identity, position in society,
economic status, social status, and actions.
Regarding identity, the construction of race in the U.S., is integral to
regimes of power, imagination and economy of which law enforcement is a
critical component of demarcation. Considering
the aforementioned, as an African American transgender woman, because of the
history of my people in the U.S., I conclude that my people will probably never
be treated fairly by law enforcement. The historical origins of law enforcement
in places like the colony of Carolina, as slave patrols with slave codes[5],
would seem to affirm my conclusion as the origins of law enforcement still to
some degree dictate the relationship of law enforcement and the African
American community writ large. Think
about that, when some law enforcement officials see an African American,
particularly a Black man, I use the word, “Black”, intentionally, the runaway
slave narrative is running in their mind either consciously or
subconsciously. Yet the narrative has
expanded as communities of people not African American encounter, rather abruptly,
this cruel ideological narrative.
There are some law enforcement
officers who engage the African American community from the historical
narrative of a runaway slave. Considering
the aforementioned, it is rare that those with preconceived notions of the
runaway slave engage the African American community consciously in the present
historical moment. I would not call this
racism, per se, although there are implications. More so, I would say it is a
lack or rejection of currently historical knowledge. Said another way, the
election of Barack Obama, a Black Man, to the office of U.S. President, the
most powerful man on the planet, two times had a severe psychological impact on
many, particularly some in Law enforcement.
The words of Minnesota
State Representative Ilhan Omar, the country’s first Somali-American Muslim
legislator, speaking out about an incident in Minneapolis, MN, where a white woman
from Australia who called police about a crime that she thought was being
committed was gunned down by a Somali policeman, speak to the reality of an accountability
to history and a devastation heaped on people at will. She says, “The idealist in me continues to be
surprised, but I know this incident is another result of excessive force and
violence-based training for supposed peace officers. ... Changing the body
camera policy won’t solve the inherent problem. The current officer training
program indoctrinates individuals of all races into a system that teaches them
to act first, think later, and justify with fear. It’s time we explore
solutions beyond improved training and cameras to capture evidence. We need to
look at a complete shift in the culture of the police department, away from the
use of lethal force and deadly weapons."
Of course, along with this history
is the conditioning which maintains the imagination which inhabits the mindsets
of many people. If, for years, your family consistently said derogatory things
about black and brown people this would be conditioning which could eventually
lead to racist attitudes.[6]
Conditioning, that is significant influence on or determinant of mechanisms,
i.e., the construction of race as a supporting system for a capitalist economic
structures as well as constructing a narrative and various forms of oppression
to include slavery, and Jim Crow, were all put together to create, maintain,
and secure conditions which would be favorable to white supremacy, power and
privilege which even now their descendants benefit from, though more and more
begrudgingly.
Now, looking at the healthcare
debate from the perspective of history, I can understand why healthcare is such
a tough issue. Fact is, an historical
analysis of the socio-cultural and economic conditions and privilege associated
with such would seem to reject or at least put off a system of healthcare which
seeks to care for all. Yet, here we are and so, as the Republicans spend more and more of their political capital having spent years seeking to
repeal the ACA or Obamacare, to reclaim the mantle of power given to Barack
Obama by the people I suspect the issue has never been about healthcare at all, at least not exclusively. but more so, it’s about historical precedent, that is,
power and its definition.
[1]http://www.cbsnews.com/news/rewriting-history-texas-tackles-textbook-debate/
accessed July 18, 2017
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4]
Ibid.
[5] http://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-and-origins-american-policing,
accessed July 18, 2017.
[6] http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-black-men-threatening-20170313-story.html
