The attempted insurrection is not ahistorical

Photo Credit: Judy Adjua Williams

The nation’s attention is turned to the events that have been unfolding over the past days and weeks. Journalists, elected officials, security forces and the public have been trying to wrap their heads around how and why insurrectionary forces breached the Capitol Building in Washington, DC. And in the lead up to next week’s presidential inauguration and beyond, conversations are happening on how to prevent this from happening again. Like many, i have been consuming a ridiculous amount of news about all of this. Like many, i am feeling so many different things, going back and forth between mental analyses, guttural reactions, emotional angst and down right disgust. Disgust about the situation. Full stop. And disgust at the surprise articulated by many journalists, reporters and social critics that something like this could happen, as well as their characterization of the insurrectionists as bad apples. Like many whose direct, indirect and historical experiences with white supremacy and its systems of oppression, destruction, colonization and enslavement lead to completely different understandings, my eyes been rolling all around my head. Many of us know that this attempted coup did not emerge in a vacuum but was born out of a concrete set of historical forces and cultural processes, as were the insurrectionists leading the fight. Historical forces of colonization and enslavement emerged from a class of white Europeans who were determined to accumulate wealth and power by feeding off the blood and labor (physical, sexual, emotional) of Native/Indigenous and Black people, stealing lands and destroying the environment. They cultivated complicity among the poorer of their race by tossing crumbs their way in the form of jobs, false notions of racial supremacy, encouragement to steal, subjugate, abuse and experiment on Native/Indigenous and Black people’s bodies, communities and lands; and in addition to all of that, they have received a unique kind of protection under the law. And indeed, history provides countless examples of white supremacists as policy and law makers, implementers and enforcers.

The insurrectionists seeking to overthrow the government in this current moment are logical products of history. It would seem as though their actions resulted from a sort of righteous indignation that reflects apparent (as opposed to actual, because it hasn’t happened) diversification of wealth, power and leadership in this country that undermines their sense of entitlement and positionality at the top of a race-class-gender-human species hierarchy. Unfortunately for all of us on this earth, the American educational system has perpetuated these notions of supremacy and hierarchy by advancing narrow, misleading, destructive and outright false histories and being grounded in racist methodologies and pedagogies. And the impact this racist imperialist hierarchical thinking has had on the world’s peoples, environments and climate is profound. Profound in many ways, including how justified the insurrectionists feel in their current efforts to unseat a democratically elected President through violence. And how much apparent support they’ve had by elected officials and state police. Unbelievable. But believable.

We clearly need change. Not moderate change that seeks to preserve hierarchies, but perhaps in more just or less harmful ways (whatever that means). Not surface-level change that places brown faces in high profile/visible positions to suggest an end to white supremacy. Rather systems change that roots out the causes of white supremacy in essence and appearance within the very fabric of society, including the prevailing white male ruling class ideology and its reflection in the economic, political and social institutions. Now is a time for many solutions to come forward. Solutions that value the lives of all people and not whites over everyone else. Solutions that value the Earth, sacred waters, lands, trees, animals and other forms of life with which humans share this planet. Solutions that both address the symptoms of the problem and the problem itself. Solutions that have varied origins leading to progressive ends. Solutions that we try, test, learn from and retry when failures come, which they do.

I am but one person who is doing what i can. And together we are many who can affect much greater change. This excites and inspires me. And it is one of a few places from which i draw energy to get up each day and continue my life’s work. In the midst of these challenging moments lay tremendous opportunities to advance fights for progressive change. And this is one. Let us lean in together to bring about a world that values us all.

Thank you for reading.