What if this is exactly “who we are”?
The conditions in the detention centers, rightly labelled concentration camps by many, has shocked many Americans into action in recent weeks. There have been protests, vigils, and rallies all over the nation demanding an end to this behavior. One of the most common expressions at these events is the slogan, “this is NOT who we are!” The problem is that may be exactly who we are. There are many who will no doubt find this a very problematic claim, but nonetheless, it is true. If you are offended by this, you must have had shitty history teachers.
American history is rife with examples of oppression of atrocities, many of which are far worse by several orders of magnitude than the current crisis at the border. We are a country that murdered and displaced millions of indigenous people, stole their land, and branded them as savages. When settler militias and the U.S. government were done slaughtering Indians, they moved them on to reservations, denied their sovereignty, kidnapped their children, and tried to erase their culture. While the news media almost never reports on it, American Indians are still among the most oppressed demographic groups in the country, often due to direct action (or inaction) by the U.S. government.
We are a country that built much of it’s wealth off the labor of enslaved blacks. When, after 250 years, slavery finally ended, we became a nation of segregation for another century. Throughout this time we were a nation of lynchings and second-class citizenship for African Americans. After legal segregation ended, we became (and still are) a nation of de facto segregation. Over the last 40 years, we turned into a nation of mass incarceration, mostly targeting African Americans. The Unequal treatment of African Americans by our justice system, from policing to the courts to prisons, remains a huge problem to this day.
We are also a nation that treated women like second class citizens, denying voting rights, job opportunities, and giving total control of their bodies and lives to their fathers and husbands. After women fought for and won suffrage, they still struggled for other forms of equality in the home and the workplace. We are still a nation in which women are paid 30% less then men and nation in which women are still massively under-represented in government. We are still a nation in which a woman’s right to choose is being challenged on a daily basis.
We are a nation that has engaged in almost perpetual wars, during which the we are almost always the aggressor. There are have been countless wars waged against the Indians from this nations founding, using the power of the government to facilitate the dispossession of tribes and theft of land. From 1812 to around 1850, the U.S. expanded rapidly and military, at the expense of Spain and Mexico. By the late 1800s, we used our military to start building overseas colonies. Throughout the 1900s, we have used our military and covert agencies to overthrow governments (often democratically elected ones), occupy sovereign nations, and control natural resources. In recent decades, the we have used economic leverage to cut certain nations off from needed products, including food and medicine.
We are a country that has oppressed the working class and poor, allowed bosses to pay starvation wages, abuse child-laborers, and crack the heads the heads of those who tried to organize. We are nation that allows millions to live in poverty and food insecurity. We are a nation that determines access to healthcare based on their size one’s wallet, even allowing tens of thousands to die each year due to a lack of healthcare.
This is exactly who were are and who we have been since the very founding of our nation. None of this excuses or justifies what has and is being done. It is wrong; it was always wrong. But we do not do ourselves any favors by lying to ourselves. Say it with me: This is exactly who we are!
But, we are also the slaves who refused to accept their enslavement by running away, sabotaging plantations, and planning uprisings. We are also the abolitionists, both white and black, that spent decades organizing a movement that eventually ended slavery. We are women that spent 80 years organizing and marching to win their right to vote and the Civil Rights activists that stared down police, fire hoses, and dogs to fight for greater equality. We are the anti-war protesters that brought the Vietnam War to and end an the union organizers that fought for better wages, conditions, and treatment. If there is beauty in America, it is found in the resistance. When we see the crowd at a Trump rally attacking the black, immigrant, female Congresswomen, Ilhan Omar, chanting “send her back,” we should not lie to ourselves and say “this is not who we are.” Rather, we should acknowledge that this is a very big part of this countries past and present. But we should NEVER accept that this is who we will always be.
As the great American poet Langston Hughes put it in Let America be America Again,
O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath — America will be!
