Red, White, & Hate

Hate is rampant in America. I repeat, hate is rampant in America. The hatred that I thought was the dark underbelly of mankind's history has again arisen to the surface. Growing up attending Catholic school, I read about this hatred in the account of the enslaved Jewish people and their subsequent exodus from the land of Egypt. In high school, I read about this hatred in the account of the Christian Crusades against Islam and in Hitler's legal extermination of six million Jews. In college, I read about this hatred in the account of the genocide of Native American people. After college, I read about this hatred, in greater detail, in the account of the global enslavement of my African ancestors. I watched this hatred in grainy black and white videos of dogs attacking black Americans during the Civil Rights movement. I watched live as this hatred toppled two iconic towers and reduced them to a mountain of rubble in my hometown. And in the Year of Our Lord, two thousand and seventeen I am alive to experience the continued resurgence of American hate.  

You see, these accounts of mankind’s well-documented history of hate is something I had only previously read about in books. This hatred always seemed removed from my reality; I could empathize with it but could never see it firsthand. As I write this piece, there is outrage all over the nation and the world in protest of the Trump administration's hateful agenda against immigrants and people of color that is masked under the guise of “keeping America safe." This false fear tactic, used to continually divide us, has been used throughout the course of human history and is as old as the day is long. However, in the last ten years, I’ve come to embrace the painful reality that these attempts to divide us are America's modus operandi; this is who America has always been and who she will likely always be.

In my youth, I believed that this nation was a place where, the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, the homeless, yearning to breathe free could find “golden” opportunities to work hard towards achieving their dreams on this land. At face value, these ideologies of American lore sparked within me feelings of national pride as the story of the immigrant is my father's story which began in Grenada, West Indies. My mother’s father was also an immigrant from Cape Verde, so the narrative of the immigrant resides within my personal American history. These ideologies were also reaffirmed in classrooms and on school trips to visit the Statue of Liberty.

With broken chains at her feet, torch in her hand, and the date of the Declaration of Independence etched into her tablet, Lady Liberty was gifted to America by the French and has been a staple of the New York City skyline. However, don’t be mislead by her false virtue or her charming prose, Lady Liberty was never intended to be a symbol of freedom for people of color or women. At the time of her dedication, in 1886, women didn’t yet have the right to vote and people of color were under siege of racial terrorism while being marginalized by newly passed Jim Crow laws. This juxtaposition is symbolic the “American values” I have come to experience in a nutshell:  hypocrisy wrapped in an enigma and covered in patriotic wrapping paper.

Muhammad writes in the Holy Quran that, “If Allah should aid you then no one shall overcome you…” Similarly, Paul writes in the book of Romans that, “if God is for us, who can be against us.” For those of us that see beyond the anti-Muslim rhetoric, we know that these two religions share theological similarities as they both stem from the Abrahamic tree of Judaism. So for those of us that understand that, it's easy to see beyond the rhetoric against our Muslim brothers and sisters and see the hate for what it is. I am reminded of this in my moments of fear and sing to myself the words of that old Negro spiritual, “We Shall Overcome.”

I have yet to find solace in the words of that spiritual and I am deeply fearful that the seeds of hate that have been sown will soon be harvested. It appears that the Western world has unleashed an attack on Islam and has relentlessly continued it's disenfranchisement of people of color. If one were on the cusp of becoming radicalized then the rhetoric that this administration has been spewing will likely push that person over the edge. Living in a major city that has been attacked twice in my lifetime, that rhetoric scares me. But who am I to speak of that fear when America has engaged in relentless bombing campaigns in cities across the globe with the intent of spreading American imperialism under the flag of democracy and freedom.

Our last two Presidents subscribed to partisan party politics but are in agreement that Islam is a peaceful religion and billions of Muslims around the globe should not be targeted in spite of the actions of a select few. However, this external focus on Islam and people of color shrouds one of the problems that we have right within our borders. We seem to easily make that distinction between Christianity and radical Christian terrorists, but don’t seem to give the same leeway to Islam. Radical Christian terrorists don’t exist you say? See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

In light of this startling history, there have been no calls from the government to regulate white males or their access to weapons. In fact, we’ve done the exact opposite and have overlooked this problem and increased the scrutiny of our most marginalized communities. I believe the reason for that has always been to preserve the white patriarchal "American values" at the demise of whoever is obstructing that agenda. So the legacy of unbridled terror continues unabated and this unjust legal agenda against immigrants and people of color will continue but what else should I expect from a nation that has always been fueled by Red, White, and Hate?