Dear Friends and Relatives,
This fall afternoon, I wanted to clarify my view on the relationship between race in America and the election of Donald Trump. There have emerged tensions throughout our country and these tensions have even emerged between us. Some have reached out, others haven't. These tensions, hidden and unhidden, must be reckoned with. So let us begin... First, I think it is important and crucial that people speak, write, express and act on their political thoughts and feelings in spite of the tensions.
At its core, politics is our relationship to power and government. There are proposals from the President Elect Trump website that promise to toughen on immigration and crime: for many, he means it: and for those who brush the world of criminality or immigration as Latin American, especially the non-white, these attitudes and policies are a threat and signal loss and pain. Through deportation, families have been torn and with Trump there is a promise of even more aggressive systematic deportations. And discomfort is inevitable and necessary when this hits too close to home, when those we love may be affected by this force.
Example of what is known as "scientific racism: Science in defense of American slavery from Types of Mankind, 1854
http://www.wm.edu/as/anthropology/research/ihb/scienceideology/
Second, I think it is important that I clarify a) my political concerns: resisting domination of all vulnerable communities, but seeing particularity white supremecy as one of the most continually neglected and brutal structures in world domination (most neglect by white people) and b) what the Trump election means to this structure of domination.
Thus, in listening to those affected, to speak of white supremacy is not generally to point to the KKK or Nazis (that is individual bigotry and hate), but to speak of an impersonal system and actions. This system started after the genocide, scientific racism, kidnapping and enslaving of black people. But the wounds have not healed, but hurt and mutate: sociologists have concluded that the biggest determinant of disadvantage across legal, educational, economic, and cultural lines is race.
Thus, for anti-racist activists and intellectuals, white supremacy is defined as a power imbalance: the economic, legal, the conscious or unconscious psychological and cultural structures that continue to privilege white people at the expense of people of color. This has been documented in the following: 1) The case for reparations here, 2) discrimination in the low wage job market here, 3) stereotypes in police visual processing and decision making here.
Confusion may arise about "black on black" crime and majority color police departments, but white supremacy can and is internalized by everyone, including people of color. The politics of respectibility (where as Arundhati Roy writes, some people are pardoned from oppression) means little because America did not heal the gaping racist wounds. It's tragedy is that our fellow human family, people of color, must reckon with a prison industrial complex with 2.3 million prisoners where they are unjustly over-represented, general power imbalance in economics and leadership, and cultural appropriation/exploitation/tokenism. Watch the film 13 for this.
The relationship to Trump. Trump is not the emergence of fascism, but it is the symbolic representation of white America. The domination structures have already been here. Neither the Left, nor the Right have addressed these structures sufficiently. But I still stand by the fact that since Nixon and Reagan, the right has instituted laws (war on drugs and militarism) continued by the left that hurt people of color. Backed by the largest white majority, the right has been the mastermind and supporter of law and order policies that hurt people of color and across the seas:
whether we write of ALEC orchestrating and furthering the prison complex or the conservative commitment to expanding the military budget and thus the military industrial complex. Trump, his words, spirit, website policies, track record, and the recent criticism of Trump by the Black Lives Matter Movement show that Trump has and will most likely continue "making things worse." This is specifically because his constituency, overwhelmingly white people (as opposed to the democratic party) and he himself has not reckoned with racial justice: the opposite.
I urge us to think about this deeply especially when we are not the most vulnerable. Furthermore, as much great writing has shown, we white progressives have failed. And I take some responsibility for not resisting this enough. We have failed at stepping down and making sure we share and give up power that is often in place for us in some way. We have failed at securing reparations or making it a conversation. We have failed at being in relationship with oppressed, minority, vulnerable communities. We have failed at being in relationship with all white America, holding it accountable. I would argue, being educationally privileged, we may have othered and even participated in the classist marginalization of whites who are stuck in poverty.
Thus, again, there is work to be done. Most importantly, how to reconfigure relationships and power in our life to the service of the WHOLE. This does not mean centrism. This means working to dismantle white supremacy with our whole being, listening, losing jobs, sharing of resources, and giving up leadership positions. Let this letter serve as my hand reaching out to EVERYONE, a pact to listen to each other and especially transform this lisenting into understanding, growth and new action.
With justice and love and peace,
Konstantin
