kriti ki kahaani

machistado:

I feel like I need to take a sedative each day after one of the classes I’m taking about race, ethnicity, and religion in the law and politics. Our class is pretty evenly divided between white and non-white students. When lecture is opened up to discussion, class often becomes a debate between the non-white students and the white students. 

To me, it’s pretty astounding how unaware the white students are of various issues. To them, inequality is a simple black and white issue but the various issues regarding inequality are so complicated and so difficult to solve that merely addressing them requires a significant amount of context deriving from a number of varying approaches.

For instance, after talking about affirmative action (which is always a hoot) a young man who sat two rows behind me suggested that if ethnic studies courses are allowed to focus on African/African-American, Latin@, and Asian studies, then courses should be offered that specifically focus on white history. I turned around and looked at him like “What the fuck did you just say?” All of the white people who weighed in on the issue said it was only fair if we’re going to have equality at all or establish an equal playing field. I and a few others tried explaining that white history is taught as standard history or by default. We already learn about white history. In fact, 99% of what we learn in school is white history. When we talk about history prior to U.S. colonization, we talk about Europe and any lesson which deviates from such is only briefly discussed. I explained that if we were going to even maybe try to incorporate equality into history education, we would need to teach the history of minorities just as much as white or European history. Native American history, slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, etc. wouldn’t be taught as a single unit within a larger course dominated by white history. Asian-American history would incorporate more than just the mention of Japanese internment camps during WWII and Latin@-American history would incorporate more than the mention of the Mexican-American War. There’s a whole wider world that we’re not taught, it’s erased, and white people should be angry about that because you cannot understand the world today without understanding the past.

Later, a Latino gentleman had the “audacity” to assert that Ronald Reagan was racist. A number of white people gave him dirty looks, some looks of amazement, and others voiced their disapproval. Aside from the Latin@ students, I think I was the only person who knew anything about Central and South American history beyond the fact that Incas, Aztecs, and Mayans existed. These students got really angry when I expressed my agreement with the young man who said Reagan was racist and added that he essentially committed state-sponsored terrorism. How often is it talked about that the Reagan administration was formally convicted of terrorism by the ICC and that the United States is the only country in the world formally convicted of state-sponsored terrorism? Even though it was only a few decades ago, when is what Reagan did in Central and South America ever mentioned? The people who were subjected to the brutalities brought forth by U.S. imperialism are still alive and they’re still being affected because the effects of the policies which were implemented and carried out are still on-going. The United States grossly exploited Latin American countries for its benefit and it justified such by dehumanizing Latin@s. If we didn’t consider them fully human, it would be easier to justify and carry out our policies. For instance, we sponsored the Contras against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, backed the Junta government in El Salvador, and sponsored paramilitary groups in Guatemala which committed genocide. Through Reagan’s efforts during his presidency, the United States was partially responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. We funded these groups during civil wars and military conflicts, knowing what results from warfare, and justified our interests in doing so by contending that the lives who were affected were not as important as fulfilling our interests were. In other words, the interests of a predominantly white country were considered vastly more important than the interests of non-white countries. That’s racism and we’re not taught about it. Why ever would a Latin@ find Reagan racist? 

It’s just so frustrating sometimes and I know I must frustrate others in the same way for my own ignorance. That’s pretty scary. 

Thanks for letting me rant.