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ahA few things get to me this morning because I went to bed thinking about them, but also because I was awakened by novel examples this morning.
America is in vortex, we are falling. Controlling parties are losing control, too much is being revealed about their methods and schemes (a major change from the past), and their traditional principles are failing to protect THEM. Calling for police reform isn’t enough, especially when the principles instilled in THEM come from leaders above THEM in both the civilian and military branches of government. I won’t repeat myself again, but assassination, law versus military, or military versus oligarchy are the only ways for JUSTICE to lead to PEACE. Peace will never lead to JUSTICE because it doesn’t need it. You are at peace with whatever the condition is.
There is an issue that becomes positive in this moment -- COPS have used NONLETHAL means to disperse both violent and nonviolent protests and riots, and very few COPS or civilians have died. This shows America that there is no need for live ammunition or assault rifles, much less handguns. That’s a huge win! And taking away a majority of law enforcement’s TOYS is great punishment for a 250-pound OBESE WHITE COP dragging, jumping on, and beating a young, peaceful, female protester; or a cop pointing a shotgun at a child on her father’s shoulders. I thought wife-beaters and rapists got it worse in prison, yet we’re “protected and served” by some, and our country is run by the others. Let’s use yard rules here because we’re in PRISON. Imprisoned.
Nonetheless, without lethal weapons we stand a chance. And by “we”, I mean those of you marching in nonviolent ways. I am by no means a nonviolent protester, which is why there must be patience for some of us, as a premature reaction to destroying the State would be wildly crushed without more support. I encourage any protest, any catharsis, any rage, any injustice or oppression or subjugation or violation to be directed at your government as a whole, including police officers, soldiers, and all levels of government officials like mayors, representatives, senators, governors and PRESIDENTS. The ones called POLITICIANS, and who spend their lives RUNNING. You cannot manage people, you cannot police the polis in a DEMOCRACY. They must do it themselves. Remember, there are only 700,000 active COPS (but include sympathizers of “law and order”, not JUSTICEmpathizers) and about 2,000,000 active duty military. We have nearly 2,000,000 confirmed SARS-CoV-2 cases and about 111,000 deaths, so that leaves 900,000 with an anti-government sentiment already biologically-placed inside them.
The only way for US to change everything is to come out in droves, and be unafraid to fight back, be beaten, or be killed. Some have already died for a cause, but which?
My cause is simple. But RACE isn’t. The thought that swirled and lambasted my head before bed was this idea of kneeling or lying down in honor of George Floyd. It’s impossible for me to empathize with Floyd for numerous reasons, but posthumously, I would never demand people kneel or lay on the ground out of reverence for me or to fight INJUSTICE. I would ask them to STAND and FIGHT, I would ask them to remember me as a football player, a rapper, an amateur porn actor, and as a daddy. Not as a black man who can’t breathe because I’m going through cardiac arrest from all the drugs in me, plus the weight of 3 grown men on my torso and neck. I don’t want to see WHITE men on one knee, looking exactly like DEREK CHAUVIN, posing for a camera, knowing the BLACK man under my knee is an acquaintance who worked Twerk Tuesday and is probably gonna die right now because he isn’t drunk, he’s toasted.
Ok, so then the knee is in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick’s movement as a way for BLACKs to protest WHITEs through active negation of the national anthem and much of the systematic oppression of African Americans since 1609 or whenever most people think WHITE AMERICA began. Burn a flag, it’s less loaded and screams, “FUCK AMERICA”. There’s nothing self-proclaimed PATRIOTS hate more than to see foreign protestors burn US flags. Or follow Tommie Smith and John Carlos, and raise your fist with your COLOR on hand. Or stay sitting. Or cover your face like Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, formerly Chris Jackson. But kneeling is for the WEAK, for those who DEFER to those they see as greater, as omnipotent, as in control of their fates. Kaepernick knelt during a football game from a REVOLT for abhorrent policy, and now the symbol is different for different groups. Chauvin knelt out of respect for policy HIERARCHY, and now a man is dead. Believers kneel to their chosen GODs, and the world changes around them as they wait for ascension, but maintain their arguments to organize through FAITH.
Have faith in one another, that’s all we’ve ever needed. Once you defer to an nonhuman force, all is lost. My name is micah. What’s yours? If they can’t respond, then you know. Como se llama? Mi nombre es micah. Or point to your chest and say “micah”. Response? No? They’re fair game if they look like you. 1:1!
When I discuss race in my classes, I interpret it in two ways.
First, I use anthropology and genetics, as to follow evolution, natural selection, migrations, archeological findings, and modern biological techniques for identifying homologous characters. Race by these methods becomes “exclusive reproduction of genetically-similar groups”, but can be clarified by saying that ALL anatomically modern humans (AMHs) are racial hybrids. AMHs developed ~200,000 years ago (ya) in Africa from a single male and 3 females (or from the identifiable genomes of them and their ancestors, or us) which further divides into 7 haplogroups in Europeans, for instance. But other maternal haplogroups subdivided from the initial 3 earlier, as I would most likely be from the C or Q, and R haplogroups, also considered Na-Dené or Amerindian, and Western European with lineages tracing back to African from ~62,000 to ~15,000 ya in awesome and interesting cultural ways. This definition of race tends to include differentiating physical features like skin color (value and chroma), hair color and texture, height, weight, eye/nose/jaw shape, head shape and disease. Any other characteristics or “traits” like orientation, intelligence, abilities, etc. are subject to environmental influences and epigenetic changes following conception and during prenatal development, and they tend to show insignificant heritability ratios (such that height is 90% inherited, while intelligence is only 50%, meaning it can or can’t be genetic). Image 1 is race face. Image 2 is Carleton Coon’s racist 1962 typology. Image 3 is an AMH haplotype rendition from the 21st. Image 4 is the Albert Munsell’s color system, with attention paid to changing value and chroma; no human is value 0, which is “black”; “black” according to physics is a lack of light, or no color; true black doesn’t exist beyond theory, look up “vantablack”. Image 5 is Britannica’s skin tone map from 2012, followed by the earth’s solar map a year later in Image 6; uncanny resemblances. Image 7 is a summary map of AMH migratory routes. Image 8 is the same map designated by haplogroups. Image 9 is melanin as a chemical formula and a micrographed pigment (by Nephron, 2010).
Second, I focus on the socially-constructed definitions for race. These are many, and are still what we disagree on today. In the 1950’s Mamie and Kenneth Clark deconstructed “stigmatization” by designing a study showing African American children often chose “white” dolls, toys or objects because of their associations with “goodness” and “purity” at the time, while the “black” dolls were perceived as “bad” or”evil”. Of course, these findings set a precedent for desegregation, but as we see, another form of stigmatization has always been with us, and it’s this form which needs further deconstruction.
With that, critical race theory is perfect. Two important frameworks come from Hazel Rose Markus, a pioneer of critical race theory, and Derald Wang Sue, whose inclusive work with diversity and microaggressions is leveling the psychological warfare playing field. Rose Markus defines race in two ways, both of which are relevant, but one of which I prefer. The first is “an asymmetry of power and privilege between groups”. A great definition but not exclusive to race, perhaps a better defining principle of any “-ism”, the absolutist’s ideological suffix. The only one I define is anarchism. Anyway, the second definition is “a dynamic set of historically derived and institutionalized ideas and practices”. This suits our critical and deconstructive needs much better because it’s practical and changeable. Unfortunately, it must be individually-learned and it’s time-consuming. Discrimination as a survival tactic always TRUMPS the motivation and work it takes to learn as you age. Nonetheless, Rose Markus outlines racial and ethnic characters as they pertain to a sweeping process she calls a “social matrix”, dynamic and embedded. As for Wang Sue, he and others outline a model of modern American racism, laying out a spectrum with two principles in mind: 1) modern race is covert and disguised, and 2) modern race has evolved into ambiguity and unidentifiability. As for microaggressions, Wang Sue and others outline 3 major classes and 9 specific sub-types with examples. See the papers here: