An Underlying Notion of Superiority

 

An Underlying Notion of Superiority

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best; 

they're sending people that have lots of problems...

they're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They’re rapists.” 

Donald Trump during his first presidential campaign.

It always starts with an assumption that your race, religion or ethnicity is superior and filled with entitlement. It is followed by epithets of derision and denigration of those outside that “superior” circle, which in turn is followed by actions ranging from discrimination and separation to out-and-out slavery, exploitation and even genocide. It can be the 20th century hellish view of Japanese believing their emperor was a god and that all on earth were there for Japan’s entitled exploitation. The rape of Nanjing – which Japan denies to this day – was very intentionally perpetrated to terrify the Chinese into submission. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese died there. They did not submit!

WWI Turks annihilated Armenians (a genocide that killed somewhere around two million people). Turkey officially denies this every happened to this day. Nazi persecution of Jews and other “undesirables” led to the torture and murder of thirteen million innocent human beings. Imagine Europe with Nazi or Fascist names, heroes and statues. Recent genocide has embraced Serbia/Bosnia, Rwanda and most recently the Rohingya in Myanmar and Sunni farmers in Syria. It happens every day… somewhere.

Our own history with slavery and the Jim Crow era carries a shame that we politely avoid discussing. The Confederacy was helmed by former Union soldiers, like General Robert E. Lee, who were sworn to support the nation and the Constitution, placing them somewhere between traitors and domestic terrorists when they went over to the other side. Yet they continue to be honored in name and statue. Lincoln did not prosecute them in an effort to reunite a divided nation. Not exactly like the post-WWII Nuremburg trials.

There was no surrender document. No “never again” pledge. The Union did not want to sign a treaty that would effectively recognize the legitimacy of the Confederacy as a nation with the right to sign a treaty. Has the Civil War ever really ended? The Trail of Tears force marched eastern native American tribes, killing thousands as they were driven against their will from their treasured lands to be “resettled” in several Western states. How many Americans know that? 

Only one nation on earth has recognized and apologized for its genocide. It has admitted fault in its textbooks, required reading for all of its students, and no one can graduate from high school without an actual visit to one of the death camps preserved to remind the nation of the horrors of racial, ethnic and religious “cleansing.” Germany has become a bastion of racial and religious freedom and equality, the poster-nation for a true multi-ethnic democracy. No wonder they recoiled in horror as Donald Trump campaigned that undocumented Mexicans crossing the border were “rapists.” Or that that that he believed the white supremacists marching in Charlottesville in August of 2017 were “fine people,” looking a lot like the 35,000 KKK members marching down Constitution Avenue in August of 1925. Both are pictured above, along with a Confederate flag carried inside our own Capitol by one of the January 6th insurrectionists.

Racism is alive and red, red, red with rage. It is embodied in those who believe removing tributes to American traitors to be “cancel culture” or that allowing a full and accurate presentation of historical facts about racial, ethnic and religious suppression and discrimination should not be taught in American public schools. Anything that criticizes such American shame is heaped into a notion of “critical race theory,” believing that the civil rights Supreme Court rulings and statutes ended racism in the 1950s and 60s. Republican dominated states have taken to passing laws against such teachings. Whitewashing on steroids.

Texas has become both a theocracy – catering to the religious dictates of its minority white evangelical base – and a bastion of denial of the truth of racial, ethnic and religious suppression and discrimination. Texas is one of those red states that has statutorily banned “critical race theory” (CRT). In an October 19th OpEd for the Los Angeles Times, LZ Granderson examines that law and just one example of how Texas school districts are implementing that ban: “Can you think of an opposing view on the Holocaust that isn’t antisemitic? A school administrator in Texas seems to think so.

“Gina Peddy, the executive director of curriculum and instruction for the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, Texas, was caught on an audio recording telling teachers to ‘make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.’…  I hope she wasn’t proposing that teachers supply students with neo-Nazi propaganda.

This all started with Republican lawmakers in Texas looking for ways to have teachers talk about American history without making white people look bad. I kid you not… When hysteria over critical race theory became all the rage in the past year, the Texas Legislature came up with House Bill 3979 — a great whitewashing effort that instructs teachers who choose ‘to discuss widely debated and currently controversial issues’ to ‘explore such issues from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective.’

“Of course, before the CRT ‘threat, Texas conservatives were already upset, because the state’s new history standards point out that slavery played ‘the central role’ in the Civil War — 155 years after the end of the Civil War. Until the 2019-20 school year, students were taught that the war was caused by sectionalism and state’s rights, with slavery merely a third factor.

“The political sanitizing got a booster shot with the passage of HB 3979, which prohibits any teacher from being trained on an issue ‘that presents any form of race or sex stereotyping or blame on the basis of race or sex.’… Can you think of a way to talk about American slavery without the role of race? How do you have an intelligent discussion about women’s suffrage without addressing the role of men? You don’t.

“And that appears to be just fine for the 100 Republicans in the state Legislature — 95 of whom are white, and only 13 of whom are women. In a state that is more than 50% female and more than 56% people of color, HB 3979 is more like a bunker for the insecure than a thoughtful approach to pedagogy.” But this is not about Texas or even the red state anti-CRT surge. It’s really about the fact that so many Americans, many in the bluest of blue states, either agree or simply do not care enough to scream.

I’m Peter Dekom, and… well… I am both ashamed of my country and… I am SCREAMING!