Tag: #FightingRacismWorkshop

To learn about White Supremacy one can start by studying the treatment of African Americans, from 1619 until the present day. By doing so will learn about human beings that were kidnapped from Africa and brought against their will, in chains to a foreign continent. These human beings suffered every abuse imaginable. In your studies you will read about rapes, beatings, the humiliations of being examined and sold as property for the benefit of white slave masters. You will read about mutilations, trauma, and the overall exploitation of their lives, which continued even after slavery with a system called Sharecropping, and the Convict Leasing System, which was a system of legalized slave labor through the Penal System.

Another topic you can focus on is the constant terror that African Americans lived under wether from local militias or the Klan. How did events like the East St. Louis Race Riot of 1917, or the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 affect the African American community?

Be sure take to take the time to read about the Civil Rights Movement and learn how African Americans had to fight for their rights. In your studies you will come across the subject of Redlining and now ask yourself “how that has affected the accumulative wealth of African Americans and their life prospects in comparison to European Americans?”Be sure to ask yourself the question how did the crushing of movements like the Black Panthers or the killing of their leaders e.g. Medgar Evers and others affect African Americans as a community? Then ask yourself the question, as a percentage of the population, why are African Americans over represented in U.S. prisons?

What is the True Purpose

If you still want to know more about White Supremacy, then I would suggest that you should take the time to study the Cold War and the proxy wars fought in its name. Would the millions that died in those proxy wars be considered BIPOC? What about in recent wars, are these Black, Indigenous and People of Color dying in these modern wars? Why?

White Supremacy is when you know they would not dare shoot tear gas canisters at Canadian women with babies, if for some reason they ever had to flee their homes and seek refuge elsewhere, unlike the similar incident that happened in November 2018 on the U.S.-Mexico border.

We Must Learn Our History

Germany’s National Socialists were intrigued by certain U.S. policies e.g. Immigration Restriction Acts. They knew the history of the United States, they knew exactly how the U.S. attained its Lebensraum (Living Space). It is a story of European Settlers dehumanizing and then killing or expelling the Native Americans and placing them in reservations. The National Socialists were also highly conscious of how badly African Americans were treated, and were curious about U.S. Anti-Misegenation Laws that banned interacial marriage.

As you continue to study U.S. history you will come across subjects like the One-Drop Rule, that stated that one drop of black blood made a person non-white. The Racial Integrity Act of 1924 labelling races white or colored, so as help ban intermarriage between the groups. the Cable Act of 1922 would deprive women of U.S. citizenship if they married a man from a foreign country. You would come across so-called Better Breeding Pseudo-Scientific ideas of the Eugenics Movement, and read about the History of Forced Sterlization in the U.S.

Don’t forget to learn about the Bath Riots of 1917, and the history of people being deloused at the U.S.-Mexico Border. You may also learn about what happened to Gee Jon in 1924, and how he was killed by gas in a lethal chamber.

Also feel free to further your education, and read more on the subjects of genocide, imperialism, K.K.K., Jim Crow Laws, the lynchings, the Japanese American internment camps, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, napalm, Agent Orange, COINTELPRO, Forced Sterilizations of one third of Puerto Rican women of child bearing age, Their Involvement with the forced sterilization of Peruvian women in the 1990’s, Syphilis experiments on Guatemalan women, the Tuskegee Syphilis experiments, The experiments conducted at Holmesburg Prison, the cancer cell experiments conducted on Puerto Ricans, the countless race riots, the bio weapons, suppression of labor, mass incarceration, For Profit Prisons, The School to Prison Pipeline, even recent events for example, read about how today they may be labeling kids”Black Identity Extremists” for having the audacity of saying, “Black Lives Matter.”

What I Learned in School Has Taught Me To Beware of What Information is Omitted

As a child I was taught that all men are created equal, but then I learned about what happened to Emmett Till,  and how his killers walked away, free of any charges. In school I learned that Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream, but then I learned about Bombingham, and about the fate, of the 4 little Girls killed in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, in Birmingham, Alabama.

I learned about how the back of the bus was reserved for Rosa Parks, because of the color of her skin. I learned how they gunned down Fred Hampton, and Mark Clark, I learned about Bobby Hutton, I learned about Malcolm X, and asked myself, why African American leaders are always murdered?
They told me about the Pilgrims, but then I learned about The Pequot Massacre, The Trail of Tears, The Long Walk, Sand Creek, and Wounded Knee.

I learned about the Repatriation of U.S. Citizens of Mexican descent that started back in the late 1920’s and into the 1930’s during The Great Depression, I learned About Operation Wetback in 1954,  I learned About the Crimes of the Texas Rangers. I learned About the Zoot Suit Riots, and the crimes against Mexican Americans.

I learned about The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and stolen land, and then I thought about how my people are being treated today in Immigration Detention Centers.

Why Speak Out

I am criticizing the country I was born in, because I want the U.S. to be better, and to live up to the standards, we all believe it stood for, we want the country to be good, and that is why sometimes you have to speak the truth, even if some people do not want to hear it. We cannot change U.S. history, but we can fight to make sure, that the countries future is better, and can stand for freedom and justice for all.

Recommending Reading:

1. War Against All Puerto Ricans – Denis A. Nelson
2. The American West and the Nazi East – Caroll P. Kakel III
3. Hitler’s American Model – James Q. Whitman
4. The Nazi Connection – Stefan Kühl
5. Medical Apartheid – Harriet A. Washington
6. War Against the Weak – Edwin Black
7. Imbeciles – Adam Cohen
8. Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee – Dee Brown
9. A People’s History of the United States – Howard Zinn
10. The Bomb – Howard Zinn
11. The Black Panthers Speak – Philip S. Foner
12. Killing Hope – William Blum
13. Rogue State – William Blum
14. The COINTELPRO Papers – Ward Churchill
15. The Autobiography of Malcolm X – Alex Haley
16. The Nazi Hydra in America – Glen Yeadon and John Hawkins
17. Ringside Seat to a Revolution – David Dorado Romo