The United States is an icon driven culture. On the side of angels, we have the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. whose name and image are invoked as the emblems of the Civil Rights Movement. It was a long and deep struggle before another icon, Rosa Parks took her seat on the bus. Millions of school children have been deprived of the real history of the interminable sacrifices made for Civil Rights, as well as the true history of the United States. Those children have grown to become uninformed adults.
On the side of depraved indifference and pernicious intent, the current “leader of the free world” is not alone in his pursuit and propagation of humanity’s demise. When referring to “our friends on Wall Street” he reveals and reminds us of the legions that by shadow manipulate his flesh. There have always been idiots and despots among the brilliant and the brave. 45 is the distraction from the entrenched evils that hearken back to the romanticized period of our very foundation. Fourteen of the Founding Fathers were slaveholders; the ambiguity of their legacy never fully shut the door on patriarchal white supremacy as the dominant feature of U.S. politics. What distracts us now from the bigger picture of our original and ongoing infamy is a soulless puppet on whom we can focus our rage while the puppeteers keep shortening the strings.
In a recent ad, Dove Soap felt entitled to scrub a Black woman into whiteness. There is no acceptable apology for this - how was this even possible? What was that "creative team" thinking? Did anyone say NO? And if they did, where are they now? In history as in advertising, there are people behind the scenes we never see; the rebellious and the compliant. The dove icon has always been white, as if the black dove did not exist. From Woodstock to peace movements, to representations of the Holy Spirit; even good people fall for the insidious nuances of white supremacy. Take it from me, the perennial black sheep of my family.
Iconic summaries have by omission resulted in a sound bite vocabulary of a generalized and revisionist history lacking both content and context. A truncated education, reinforced by corporately controlled media, a popular culture of rabid consumerism and a sentimental patriotism that ignores our maltreatment of veterans and manipulations of the altruistic and the poor, have exponentially inflated the ranks of the blindly obedient. A cracked monocultural lens has by inference, exclusion and erasure, reinforced the counterfeit ideal of white supremacy.
Previous White House administrations got away with murder and now they can make themselves look good by hugging a Puerto Rican or other hurricane victims. Current leadership is such an abomination that even George W. Bush looks good by comparison. Wall Street and Big Banks got away with murder. They are the oil spills that lit the faces of the poor on fire. Murder by intentional negligence and inefficiency are now evident in the federal government’s response to Puerto Rico.
Don’t get distracted. Don’t forget. Thousands of freight containers of urgently needed food, water and medicine sit on the San Juan docks and tarmac - as American citizens die on our watch. Refuse to be a victim or an accomplice. Widen the lens and shine light where shadows rule.
Hold all elected officials accountable; its a start.
On the side of depraved indifference and pernicious intent, the current “leader of the free world” is not alone in his pursuit and propagation of humanity’s demise. When referring to “our friends on Wall Street” he reveals and reminds us of the legions that by shadow manipulate his flesh. There have always been idiots and despots among the brilliant and the brave. 45 is the distraction from the entrenched evils that hearken back to the romanticized period of our very foundation. Fourteen of the Founding Fathers were slaveholders; the ambiguity of their legacy never fully shut the door on patriarchal white supremacy as the dominant feature of U.S. politics. What distracts us now from the bigger picture of our original and ongoing infamy is a soulless puppet on whom we can focus our rage while the puppeteers keep shortening the strings.
In a recent ad, Dove Soap felt entitled to scrub a Black woman into whiteness. There is no acceptable apology for this - how was this even possible? What was that "creative team" thinking? Did anyone say NO? And if they did, where are they now? In history as in advertising, there are people behind the scenes we never see; the rebellious and the compliant. The dove icon has always been white, as if the black dove did not exist. From Woodstock to peace movements, to representations of the Holy Spirit; even good people fall for the insidious nuances of white supremacy. Take it from me, the perennial black sheep of my family.
Iconic summaries have by omission resulted in a sound bite vocabulary of a generalized and revisionist history lacking both content and context. A truncated education, reinforced by corporately controlled media, a popular culture of rabid consumerism and a sentimental patriotism that ignores our maltreatment of veterans and manipulations of the altruistic and the poor, have exponentially inflated the ranks of the blindly obedient. A cracked monocultural lens has by inference, exclusion and erasure, reinforced the counterfeit ideal of white supremacy.
Previous White House administrations got away with murder and now they can make themselves look good by hugging a Puerto Rican or other hurricane victims. Current leadership is such an abomination that even George W. Bush looks good by comparison. Wall Street and Big Banks got away with murder. They are the oil spills that lit the faces of the poor on fire. Murder by intentional negligence and inefficiency are now evident in the federal government’s response to Puerto Rico.
Don’t get distracted. Don’t forget. Thousands of freight containers of urgently needed food, water and medicine sit on the San Juan docks and tarmac - as American citizens die on our watch. Refuse to be a victim or an accomplice. Widen the lens and shine light where shadows rule.
Hold all elected officials accountable; its a start.
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