I read a philosopher say two things the other day which really shook my perspective:
1. The US south, through gerrymandering and voter suppression is in essence not a democracy, but a single party system. 2. Jim Crow was a fascist system, within that non-democracy.
Since then I’ve been wondering if the US has been on this edge for a long time. That maybe large parts of the population has never lived in a democracy.
Whiteness is not a magic armor. You are a woman and in this system that will mean you will never be worth the same as a white man. Maintaining and perpetuating this system is maintaining and perpetuating your own subjugation, your own dehumanization, your own lack of full personhood.
I guess that’s why certain parts of society feel so threatened, because instinctively they know this. They feel the threat. They know that their children wouldn’t support this. So they must not be taught.
People voted for this. White women voted for this. For this. For the recreation of the part of the system that made it so their husbands couldn’t be convicted for raping them all the way to the early 90s. They chose that. I don’t understand.
Norwegian trying to parse the US: The more I learn about US systemic racism, the more it lands how it is a system created and maintained specifically to dehumanize. And that dehumanization is necessary to create a society and a financial and political order where exploitation and violence is rationalized and condoned.
How on earth can they deconstruct this system if they refuse to learn about how it was constructed and maintained? American history can only really be understood through the perspective of black Americans.