An Unwavering Stand Against Racism

I find that I should write a blogpost as a response to the small minded nature of the times we are living through here in the U.S. A time when those delicate unable to cope with the changes and shifts in American society are seemingly spouting rhetoric revealing thoughts unhealthy and unwise owing to a sense of fear rooted in the history they themselves created. Concerns for loosing their second amendment, a disregard for the truth, embracing alternative facts, ethical considerations now negligent and racism alive and well seem to be the calling of this time.  And now this narrative has become inhumane and immoral since there is little to no concern for morality. While there are those of us who think this new narrative a dangerous one and that it will mark the U.S. like the holocaust marks Germany, realize that many people only care about losing their sense of entitlement, privilege and supremacy.

In a recent YouTube video the commentator was commenting on the second amendment and how it protects white people from the violence which may be inflicted upon them. That this how a sense of control is maintained. I suppose if you had a dark history, one predicated on the enslavement of the African, the genocide of indigenous people, the Chinese exclusion act of 1882, Jim Crow, and  myriad of other injustices, just to name few, I imagine you would need to protect yourself from the descendants of people murdered, hung from a tree, discriminated against and marginalized for your sake. The NFL debacle is one more instance of profound injustice as the voice of the players has been marginalized for the sake of so called patriotism at the insistence of the president and profit margins.  

My spiritual mother showed me pictures from a flea market in Amarillo, TX, where crosses, made out of guns and bullets, formerly, a symbol of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the foundation of the Christian faith are used as props for the second amendment. Some things should be out of bounds. Then there is The World Peace and Unification Sanctuary in Newfoundland, PA, a congregation which seemingly loves the second amendment so much that some were remarried to their spouses while honoring their AR-15 gun. This is a seriously ludicrous church event. They say that God gave them their guns.  “The AR-15 is their golden calf” as commented by Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks. The majority of the congregation had AR-15’s supposedly unloaded.  Some serious idolatry going on in this church.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VdqrLEi-yY 

Guns, an icon of strength, protection and power, for people in fear of black and brown bodies, is one icon among many whose purpose it is to enforce a narrative of white entitlement.  One more icon was the Roseanne Bar sitcom which was cancelled due to the star of the sitcom putting out an abhorrent racist tweet on twitter calling Valerie Jarrett, one of President Obama’s key advisors, an ape. Of course this wasn’t the first time she had done this.  She had also called Susan Rice, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations who became President Barack Obama's national security advisor in 2013, a man, using vulgar and extreme derogatory language. She had sung the National Anthem at a baseball game in such a way that it was disrespectful to all Americans while a black man cannot kneel in respect of the flag remembering the injustice that flag also represents. That said, many people are asking the question, “Why did ABC let her do the show in the first place?  We can never discount the profit motive when addressing huge corporations such as Disney.  I think, and this is just my thought based on the various media both left and right, it is because of her controversial stance on race, as a fundamental discourse in the Make America Great Again movement, in particular, which got people, particularly the Trump supporter, to look at the show making it the top show on ABC. I think for ABC there was a line drawn in the sand and she crossed that line and lost her show. The question that has come up is, “How strong will the backlash be?” or “Will the show get picked up by another network?”

What we have are a people frightened of the history they’ve chosen to create. It is a cautionary tale that one must be aware of the long term implications of one’s actions at the moment of decision. This would seem to be the case of those who have built up whiteness, giving it a luster, even a shine rooted in the oppression of those black and brown. Of course those who lift up whiteness are the latest in a long procession of the those who oppress for sake of social and cultural sensibilities, profit and privilege. That said, those who hold on to their second amendment and a strange unjust faith, are a detriment to a nation divided as they fuse their fear with notions of white nationalism.

While I am very much aware that many people don’t like putting injustice in racial terms because it makes matters worst or it puts up a block, etc. we must acknowledge that racism as a fundamental part of the problem.  I get it, we want to communicate but without actually sharing the hard truth of the matter we do a disservice to a movement of justice for all. People say, put it in terms of class, education or anything else but not race. It’s hard for me not to consider race as a fundamental concern as it is the initial building block of American injustice. Police brutality, red lining, school to prison pipeline, don’t begin with a person’s class, education or politics but their race. Yes the issues are larger than race but we should not push race aside saying, “It’s not pertinent to ongoing issues of social and economic justice. 

 We must say no to racism in all its forms and iterations.  To do anything less is a condoning of injustice. We must stand strong and unwavering in the face of a resurgence of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia and other forms of hatred and bigotry. I think the actions of corporate America like Starbucks and ABC whose parent is the Disney Co., might be some examples of standing and fighting against racism. We cannot compromise on our stance against the ugly underbelly of America. Even if it means a so-called double standard which they base on their belief that they are not heard or don’t have sufficient voice in the public square. Fact is, they have a significant media complex which makes the voice heard. Fox, Talk radio, the President of the United States, both houses of congress.  Yet they say their voice is not heard.  Give me a break from this nonsense. One more fact is, the victims of right wing populism and its rhetoric, after centuries of injustice are finally gaining some voice which begins to compete with those who have historically been the perpetrators of that injustice.  Times have changed and we will not go back.

WE WILL NOT GO BACK!!

 

A Reflection on Dispossession:The Performative in the Political by Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou and Terrorist Assemblages by Jasbir K. Puar

As part of a larger discourse on how hospitality can engage biopolitics, this reflection will engage Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou's Dispossession: The Performative in the Political  and Jasbir K. Puar's book, Terrorist Assemblages.

Dispossession is movement and a limitation of space of the other at the hands of a biopolitics which commodifies for the sake of profit and progress, writing here of western perspectives and concepts of empire. It is the beginning of terrorism as it struggles, as an appropriate response, to the sodomization of communities terrorized.  

From the beginning, Athena Athanasiou, in conversation with Judith Butler, says that dispossession is a troubling concept.[1] One must sit with this carefully with intention mindful that dispossession is a logical even rational performance within a discourse on materiality. Materiality, experienced as a moving force of progress becomes the embodiment of capitalism and empire. It is within this construct that one’s humanity, as a performative endeavor of the soul, becomes dispossessed. Dispossession, a causal of commodification, affects the humanity of those oppressed as well as the oppressor. So, dispossession is not only physical territory, it is also a dispossession of one’s humanity.

That said, it is as the one who’s humanity has been raped from their soul which becomes a reaction to the penetration which seeds certain and unavoidable contempt for many, not all western perspectives. I reflect on friends lost on 9/11 at the hands of people who became terrorist to react to American foreign policy.  In this context the terrorist was the precariat, they were the disposable, as they struggled against the forces of American empire.  To a large extent I suggest that the terrorist is the victim, a person seeking to hold on to whatever humanity they have in the face of so called progress and the primacy of economy necessary to maintain such as illusion. In the face of empire and an ignorance which dispossesses, they are a non-person, a non-entity.  The are a body dispossessed.

The question posed by a body dispossessed is, “How many times must it be raped and how long?”  In the face of American foreign policy, the terrorist says, in their queer performative way, our bodies matter. Perhaps I am off base with this thought, yet it is the sacrifice, in this instance, that draws attention to the plight of the black and brown body.  Yet, to be seen, as a black or brown body, opens those bodies to profiling and discriminatory practices for the sake of a narrative of white sensibilities and their fragility.  Metal detectors, TSA, ICE, DACA, and cameras, etc. are, to a large extent, reactions of this narrative with a sub-discourse of safety, roots of outrageous arguments, at least to this writer, on the second amendment. American foreign policy as an extension of whiteness and its ascendancy[2], a resurgence in the face of globalization, inclusive of its imagination dispossesses for the sake of its sensibilities and fragility.  Puar’s inclusion of Chow[3] begs the question, “Who or what is terrorizing?  

Dispossession is a radical dismembering of identity with implications toward fracturing. It is at times deadly, a reality of the body with implications to the psyche and the soul. I reflect here on the histories of genocide, enslavement, colonization, apartheid and Japanese Internment, capitalist alienation[4], to name just a few. Dispossession is movement and this movement, regardless of limitation, is a performance compelled by neoliberal ideology and its economy[5], performing as a narrative agent of white desire. Considering the compelling, the terrorist would seem to be performing a peculiar yet necessary type of protest, rooted in religious and social responsibility.  The terrorist is subversive, they are a precariat, representing a community of vulnerable dispossessed bodies foreign as well as domestic. They are a consequence of U.S. exceptionalism, a product of white desire.  Of course, there are different types of terrorists and terrorisms depending on the contextual injustice. There are those for example like the 9/11 terrorist and Palestinians living under Israeli apartheid supported by a U.S. foreign policy.  

I receive these terrorist, reminiscent of Che Guevara, the Black Panthers, and many other freedom fighters, as a vivid and profound reaction to the rape of bodies foreign and domestic. Taking terrorism to a more intimate space, those who deny control or detention of their humanity, as a space of performativity, this in a political sense, to the narrative of U.S. exceptionalism, would be considered terrorist as they terrorize a people produced by and through Foucault’s biopolitics, which emerges as a regulatory regime for the normalization of a society. There is a compelling notion in Puar to reflect on an imagination curtailed as a society under regimes of normalization, becomes an imagination only in terms of commodification and its regimenting narratives of surveillance.

Looking at the Lawrence Case[6], which was about sodomy, from a perspective of regulation, and a means to surveillance, the matter of the performative and commodification would seem to regularize, and in this sense normalize, which necessarily affirms a notion of coming out of the closet. The Lawrence case challenged long held believe systems and imaginations thus intensifying those culture wars which so beset American society today. Dispossession was and still is at the core of distinct, coherent and competing American narratives. Each narrative, to some extent, seeking to deny or alleviate certain sexual and political dispossession and particular imaginations, terrorizes the other, creating a provocative space or environment of a precarious relationality.  The question becomes, “How do the political and sexual regimes, as agents of a biopolitics, address the dispossession of the other? Can the opposing narrative and their disciples see and encounter the injury of the other, whether political or bodily, in relationship?

In closing Dispossession: The Performative in the Politcal and Terrorist Assemblages, engage a difficult and challenging tension which characterizes the coming out of the U.S. as a primary participant in rape culture, terrorizing communities of the dispossessed.  This rape culture, as exhibited in Abu Gharib and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba exist as parts of a biopolitics which denies the humanity of its victims who seek to have their voice heard.  In this sense terrorism should be considered a performative tool of the dispossessed for recognition and survival. It must considered as a relevant a response to a rape culture which dispossesses because of biopolitical interests.

Finally, if hospitality, as a means to address Foucault’s biopolitical concerns, is going to make a difference in the aforementioned human affairs, it will have to begin by addressing the ascendency and resurgence of whiteness, in the context of Foucault’s Order of Things, while at the same time listening to the voices of the victims of that whiteness whether black and brown bodies or the very people who would be considered beneficiaries of that whiteness.  This form of hospitality is risky yet what is real hospitality without risk.

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[1] Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou, Dispossession: The Performative in the Political (Polity, Malden) p.1

[2] Puar, Jasbir K., Terrorist Assemblages (Duke University Press, Durham) 24, 26

[3] Ibid., 26

[4] Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou, Dispossession, p.10

[5] Puar, Jasbir K., Terrorist Assemblages (Duke University Press, Durham), 26

[6] Ibid., 116