Thoughts on Endemic Cruelty in American Society
Yesterday I spoke with Lance Preston, founder of Rainbow Youth Project. (podcast will drop Sept 4, 2023). He was in Florida working on a legal case against a school board there where forced outing and don't say gay rules are harming innumerable LGBTQIA+ kids.
Our conversation brought home to me in a very real way how cruelty is baked into American culture, at least among a good chunk of the population. There's no reason to deny gender affirming care, force kids to be outed against their will, or condone the bullying that's going on across the country. In fact, this isn't about LGBTQ+ kids or adults at all, except in the way that this group is the most vulnerable, and thus the most targeted. And how this targeting serves to make members of this group individually miserable and collectively targets of hatred.
White Colonists' settlement in the "New World" was predicated on the murder and genocide of 95% of the native people throughout the Americas. 95%. White colonists designated Native people as savages, subhuman, and therefore fair game for murder and torture.
As many as 15 million Native American people are estimated to have been living in North America when Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492. The so-called Indian Wars devastated indigenous people. By the close of the 19th century, fewer than 238,000 Native Americans remained. (Equal Justice Initiative)
In the same way, the transatlantic African slave trade that started in 1619 was based in the cruelty of slavery...but not the kind of slavery the world had seen up to that point...this kind of slavery created 2 things that hadn't existed previously. First it created Whiteness and Blackness as distinct castes that people could not change, and second it created chattel enslavement, meaning that every enslaved person's children were born enslaved, and their children's children would be born enslaved, and forward until emancipation. But slaves were expensive, so what was the easiest and cheapest ways of creating new wealth for the White oligarchs? It was rape and forced birth, because any child born to an enslaved person was themself enslaved and considered Black (as opposed to mixed-race or part white, no matter how many White men contributed to their gene pool).
The chattel slavery system. The practice of exploiting and violating the bodies of African American women with impunity is an ancient one. During America’s chattel slavery system, white slave owners freely and legally raped the women whom they enslaved, often in front of their families. They used rape to assert their power and authority over their property without accountability. The offspring of enslaved women were then also considered their master’s property, giving these men more economic power and further stripping African American women of the rights to their own bodies and babies. (American Bar Association)
Recently I saw a post by a white guy on social media asking why have we gotten so cruel? And this is a ridiculous question, because we've always been so cruel....only White folks were insulated for the most part. After emancipation, Whites continued to target Black Americans with violence, cruelty, second class status, and lynching. The KKK re-formed in the early 20th century, instituting a reign of terror on Black Americans throughout the country and including Jews in their range of targets. All along, queer men and trans folks were targeted with violence. Gay sex was against the law, and trans people faced violence and murder. Chinese exclusion in the 19th century, Japanese concentration camps, anti-Semitism mixed in with anti-Black racism, Homophobia, Islamophobia, all existing in every era up to the present. So, no, the United States hasn't become crueler. It's always been a part of our makeup, and it's time we looked that in the eye no matter how uncomfortable it makes White Cis Hetero Christian folks.
It is apparent, however, that public cruelty has made a comeback that started with Trump and has reached new levels with MAGA, especially as states like Florida, Texas, Arkansas, Indiana, Tennessee, West Virginia, and more are trying to compete to see who can implement crueler policies the fastest. Anti-trans legislation forbidding kids to transition, or be called by a nickname in school, or forcing them out of the closet put them at risk for bullying, violence, and even death.
Abortion bans force little girls to carry pregnancies, and force women whose pregnancies are wanted but dangerous to carry dead fetuses within them until they get sick enough to almost die before they can be treated. And razor blades on bouys maim immigrants and little children who are trying to find a better life for themselves and their families. Not to mention the fact that fascist MAGA politicians blame immigrants for a fentanyl crisis in which American citizens bring most fentanyl into the country through legal points of entry.
And MAGA fascists want to put guns in the hands of as many white people as possible, kicking mothers silently protesting gun violence out of statehouses while letting armed Proud Boys roam free in the same statehouses. No, America hasn't gotten crueler...it's just celebrated now, instead of hidden. MAGA has made it a mark of honor to be as publicly cruel as possible, and turning compassion into a disadvantage. All the while the media tiptoes around the central issues with horserace coverage and tepid coverage that describes lynchings like the recent shooting of 3 Black people in Jacksonville Florida by a White Nationalist as “racially motivated.”
The only way we're going to stop this is by fighting to elect democrats every day, standing up to cruel discrimination and bullying, and realizing that MAGA wants all of us to suffer in the service of keeping White Christian Cis-Het Men at the top of the societal heap and making the wealthiest among them more wealthy and more powerful.