Early in February 2017, the administration of Donald Trump introduced the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act.

Americans of every political hue love their acronyms…

This was one of Trump’s earliest efforts to begin the “re-whitification” of the USA, by clamping-down on what is known as “chain migration”.

This is when members of a family attempt to join other members who have already successfully entered the USA.

A typical instance of this might be a male Syrian refugee who has successfully applied for asylum, and hopes to be joined by his family, who had been awaiting word back home regarding the likelihood of success if they, too, were to undertake the same hazardous journey.

The RAISE Act was intended to make such chain migration much more difficult, not least through instructing immigration officials to favor English-speaking applicants with money, education, and a high skill level.

While many would suspect that this act was explicitly designed to encourage the immigration of “white” people from places like the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa (not to mention Scandinavia and Germany where most inhabitants have a superb grasp of English), we can of course not prove such a motivation.

Considering that the modern GOP is largely comprised of habitual gaslighters, there is no point in putting the question to them and expecting an honest answer, either.

What this writer is more interested in, is the statement put out at the time by the co-sponsors of the RAISE Act, senators David Perdue and Tom Cotton of Georgia and Arkansas, respectively.

In this statement, we find the following passage:

The majority of [chain] immigrants are “either low-skilled or unskilled” and “threaten to create a near permanent underclass for whom the American Dream is just out of reach.”

I hope my gentle readers will read the foregoing passage more than once, in order to gain a full appreciation of what is being said here.

The GOP and GOP-adjacent types (like Libertarians) never cease in telling us that the USA, above all other places on earth, is the land of rugged individualism.  A place where anyone from any background with enough “gumption” and “get-up-and-go” can succeed.

Yet here we are being told straight-up that a lack of skills (aka education) might just consign a person to membership in “a near permanent underclass for whom the American Dream is just out of reach”.

But, but, bootstraps.  What about bootstraps?

Are the GOP actually openly suggesting that a certain amount of money and education might be necessary for lifting people out of poverty?

How are these then the very same people who made Betsy DeVos secretary of education in 2017?

A woman utterly dedicated to funnelling taxpayer dollars away from public education and into private schools?

To this point the Perdues and Cottons of this world might well reply “Hell, yeah. Go Betsy! The US taxpayer doesn’t owe anybody a full, decent education.  The taxes we give to private schools are just a little top-up, a tiny reward for all that private sector bootstrapping.  Make the American underclasses and penniless immigrants do unskilled sub-minimum wage work as long as it takes to pay for their own damn education.  Bootstraps, dammit!“.

But wait.  Didn’t they just say that unskilled workers are trapped in “a near permanent underclass for whom the American Dream is just out of reach”?

Yes, they did.  And maybe, for once in their life, these GOP senators are speaking the truth.

It IS rather hard, if not damn nigh impossible, to become a full-time plumber’s apprentice or attend college while working double shifts at Walmart and McDonald’s…

*****

Donald Trump‘s running mate, J. D. Vance, is of course the shining “exemplar”, who claims to have led the way in showing how to escape trans-generational poverty.

His “super-bootstrapping” secret?  A taxpayer-funded government education hand-out.  Which he got by joining the US Marines (a group also taxpayer funded, lest we forget).

Vance still hasn’t realised (or maybe he has?) that he’s a little pawn in a game being played by billionaires.

Betsy DeVos, by the way, is the daughter of a billionaire industrialist.  Over the course of thirteen years, her brother Erik Prince received over 2 billion! in government security contracts as the founder of Blackwater, a private military contractor involved in massacres in Iraq and more recent arms trafficking violations.

J. D. Vance spent his own “war” in Iraq as a writer, presumably working-out and flexing his authorly muscles for his early Magnum opus, the execrable and fake Hillbilly “memoir” which would propel him into the public consciousness (and into a senate seat).

The money splashed on Vance by Libertarian technocracy “bros” like Peter Thiel would make anyone with a moderately functioning brain suspect that Vance had been being groomed for office over many, many years, and his “Hillbilly” schtick was just part of a much larger ground plan being laid by anti-democratic forces in the USA.

But let’s set all of this aside for now, and make one thing 100% clear.

The party of Trump, Vance, Perdue, and Cotton knows the truth.  In the middle of trying to justify anti-poor and racist immigration policy, they were forced to accidentally speak this truth.

Trangenerational poverty is real.

They said so themselves.

The “American Dream” can remain forever “just out of reach” for many people.

They said so themselves.

It is lack of skills and a decent education which are most likely to consign people to inescapable poverty.

They said so themselves.

In their efforts to portray “certain” immigrants as dwellers on the nightmare fringe of The American Dream, in their efforts to portray “certain” immigrants as members of an unwelcome, permanent underclass, they inadvertently admitted to the real reasons for DOMESTIC poverty.

African-American poverty.  Latino poverty.  Appalachian poverty.

Black, Brown, and White poverty.

Use their own words against them.

Our transgenerationally poor brothers and sisters come in all colors, and are <almost> all equally despised by the ultra-wealthy.

 

I have been meaning to write something about identity politics (and its hazards) for ages.

Last night I dug out an old article from 2002, published in a well-known left-leaning newspaper, in which the writer asserted baldly that Elvis Presley had appropriated the songs of Black artists such as Little Richard and Chuck Berry “and got rich and famous off others’ work“.

Hip hop artists like Macklemore and Public Enemy went further, with the former calling Presley out for being “so plastic, you’ve heisted the magic“.  In 1989’s “Fight the Power“, Chuck D went straight in, calling Presley a racist.

While there’s a lot to admire from both artists, their knowledge of history and grasp of social nuance was sadly lacking in the case of Presley.

Chuck D comparing Presley to John Wayne in the same song – the latter a man who made explicitly racist remarks on the record – is almost unforgivable.

I’ll explain more in my next post, but for now here are some thoughts which I hope might spur some healthy and open-hearted discussion about a complex issue.

*****

All of us should keep developing and changing right up to the day we die.

Having said that, as someone now in their 7th decade on this earth, there are a few – just a few – personal truths which have stood the test of decades.

One of these truths is that every human being wants to feel a sense of control over their life and destiny.

Some people achieve this sense of personal control and agency through personal development.

Some choose to place their fate entirely in the hands of their God (or they pursue their own human desires, and later claim “Divine Agency”).

But other people come to believe that the easiest, best, or only way to achieve a sense of personal control and agency is through the control of other people.

They want power.

*****

Almost every single negative aspect to life as a human dealing with other human beings can be traced to someone’s lust or desire for more power.

At the most basic level, most people simply want enough power to resist those who attempt to impose their power over us – this is the basic desire to not live in fear.

Even though this writer can be called a “Leftie” for most practical conversations, on many fundamental levels I find myself often at odds with what might be termed “Academic Leftism”.

This is the type of Leftist politics so common today (especially online), in which “enemies” must be identified – quite literally – by giving these enemies an “identity”.

In this way of viewing the world, certain “identities” are often framed as “natural enemies” of social justice and equality and must be called-out or “cancelled”.

In other words, we are supposed to disempower our “enemies”.

At the same time, we are supposed to support any measure which further empowers our “allies”.

No real discussions can take place within this paradigm, because actually trying to understand why others think and say the things they do gets shoved aside.

We become hyper-vigilant in our search for signs of bad faith.

Understanding gets set aside in favor of measuring people against various ideological “purity tests”.

These purity tests include checking whether people buy into the entire “Leftist Ideological Kit”.

Failure to tick every box without question can mean being labelled an “enemy” instead of an “ally”.

I learned this last year when I wrote a piece about Buffy St. Marie being “outed” as a non-Indigenous person claiming Indigenous ancestry.

While certainly not condoning cultural appropriation, I had argued that St. Marie was the inevitable product of the racism deeply embedded in American society over centuries.

This invitation to imagine being another person, and to consider empathy in place of condemnation, did not go down well with some.

Black is Black, White is White, and identity, far from being a complex and mutable interplay between ancestry, cultural upbringing and lived experience, is a line in the sand between “The Good Guys” and “The Bad Guys”.

*****

When we simply look at the “usual suspects” in power today, and create an “enemies list”, we are in danger of playing the worst kind of identitarian politics.

We are fighting symptoms instead of the cause, or putting the cart before the horse (pick your idiom).

COERCIVE AND UNJUST EXERCISE OF POWER IS THE ULTIMATE ENEMY.

And it occurs at every level of society, among all genders, all economic classes.

A working- or middle-class mother psychologically bullying and traumatising her 8-year-old child is committing the same crime as an authoritarian dictator – it’s simply a question of scale.

Both involve the unjust and coercive exercise of power.

Colonialism, racism, patriarchy, misogyny, homophobia, bigotry, white Christian nationalism – name your poison – ALL are SYMPTOMS of the underlying problem.

I have spent years trying to explain that racism did not lead to slavery.

The selfish quest for money/power led to slavery, and racism is the “justification” which got tacked-on later.

The same formula works when explaining patriarchy. An insecure man wants the power to control a woman. Women’s “shortcomings” or “inabilities” are the “justifications” for a patriarchal system tacked-on afterwards.

Identitarian, academic Leftism doesn’t take into account one of the oldest facts of human existence.

This fact is the existence of greater and lesser power hierarchies which cross and pervade all social categories – men, women, children, and fellow animals.

In my younger, coarser days, this was simply called the “shit rolls downhill” theory.

Company owner wants a new car.  Sets unrealistic sales targets for management.  Rank and file workers are made to work unpaid overtime.  Man goes home and shouts at his wife.  Stressed wife is short-tempered with the children.  Damaged kid goes outside and kicks the dog…

A child slapped around by its mother sees matriarchy, not patriarchy, from their position in the greater hierarchy.

*****

The problems of this world will not be solved by placing people into neat categories of “enemy” or “ally”, or as “oppressors” and “victims”, based on terms, catch-phrases, or identities neatly laid-out in someone’s academic thesis.

Diagrams showing “intersectionalities” can sometimes appear very 2D in a 3D world.

We are all oppressors AND victims in some way, somehow.  Again, it’s always a matter of degree.

Sometimes I think of the shaken young gunman in the 1992 film “Unforgiven“, as the kid sought to sooth his own conscience and justify his killing with the remark “Well, I guess they had it coming“.

Clint Eastwood‘s character William Munny replied “Kid, we’ve all got it coming.”

For every “old white guy” out there wielding power unfairly today, there will be an “old white woman” (or Black, or Asian, or Latina woman) happy to do the same tomorrow, if we ignore the underlying truth that the desire for power, and the temptation to wield it unjustly, crosses all ethnic, religious, economic, and gender boundaries.

None of the foregoing is intended to suggest that we shouldn’t be fighting for an equitable society, or indeed, calling-out the various symptoms.

But sometimes it seems as if The Left has descended into arguments about the best cough remedy, when what the patient really needs is to shut down the coal-fired power plant belching out smoke next door.

At its deepest core, it’s a power (and class?) struggle, not a struggle between identities.

And Elvis wasn’t a “white guy appropriating Black culture”.

More anon…

 

There is a trend, particularly widespread among the amateur genealogical community, to share historical photos which have been colorized.

There are a myriad reasons why this practice is at best misguided, and at worst, a vector for ethnic whitewashing.

Most non-professionals probably assume that cameras and video recording devices are inherently “neutral” instruments for collecting visual data.

From the advent of photography during the mid-1800s up to the present day, this has never been the case.

The very chemicals used to produce and develop early color film were optimised to capture the shades and skin tones of “white” European faces.

The Kodak film company was well aware of this technical bias, yet steadfastedly refused to reconfigure or reoptimise its film manufacturing process (to enable it to capture dark skin tones properly) right up until the 1970s.

Even then, Kodak only relented under commercial pressure from furniture and chocolate manufacturers unable to create appealing advertisements for their products using standard film.  The complaints of Latino and Black Americans throughout the 1950s and 1960s had gone unheeded.

In the days before color film, photographers and camera operators had quickly learned that judicious use of makeup, set lighting, and other factors could be employed to radically alter the ethnic appearance of actors.

This technical application of “colorism” during the earliest days of black and white Hollywood films had allowed many people of color or mixed ethnicity to “pass as white” in order to win more of the parts available in movies.

But do not think that this is all ancient history.

Facial recognition software, the cameras on our smartphones, the very algorithmic systems which surround us in this Brave New World of AI, are constantly encoding the multitude of social biases and inequalities present everywhere in the real world and on the internet, and baking them into the new digital reality.

Many law enforcement bodies and jurisdictions are already employing facial recognition software which has been regularly demonstrated to have profound data set problems when attempting to identify “non-white” faces.

Which brings us back to our initial point about colorizing old photos.

Most colorization is now being done with the help of AI systems, and as such, these systems are currently utterly incapable of the nuance required to assign a “color” to people of complex ethnicity.

My own mixed-ethnic ancestors (the Melungeons of Appalachia), do not typically show strong sub-Saharan African facial features, even though many are of very dark complexion, and count African-Americans among their forebears.

A deep historical understanding of the origins of these people is required to even begin to hazard a guess as to how they might have looked “in living color”.

AI colorization systems, however, regularly portray these people as being of a broadly “white European” appearance in terms of skin tone.

With the plethora of colorized photos now being shared online, I am beginning to wonder if this ahistorical “whitening” suits a certain section of Americans…

I’ve shared five images of the celebrated Black American actress Lena Horne.

One is a Hollywood publicity still, which through lighting and makeup manages to intentionally downplay Ms. Horne’s non-European features.

Three other images show her being represented somewhat more accurately.

The last image is the black and white publicity photo put through a standard AI colorizing system.

While it is tempting (and exciting) to believe we are getting a more accurate glimpse of the “living past” through the process of colorizing, what we are actually getting is Eurocentric “colorism”.

 

In US history, it’s called “genocide by paperwork”.

An Indigenous woman becomes consort to a frontier settler or wealthy planter.

She is given a “Christian” name – maybe that of a neighbor or local preacher.

Her husband/partner calls her “white” in census records to protect the rights of his mixed-ethnic children.

Later historians scan records, see the surname “Campbell”, and see the entire household enumerated as “white”.

And just like that, another piece of Cherokee, Pamunkey, Catawba, Tuscarora, Choctaw, or Shawnee history is “disappeared”, tallied as yet another “white Scots-Irish pioneer woman” of the American frontier.

Most Americans today have no comprehension of the society-induced shame and self-loathing which led generations of people to destroy photos attesting to their “non-white” family’s past.

Unambiguous, testifying photos are treasures, scarce as hen’s teeth.

Loss of language and customs, changing of name and religion, inaccurate census descriptions, destruction of photographs, and non-inclusion in the official story of “white” settlers.

Cultural genocide by paperwork is real.

Image: attributed as Jeanette Campbell, born 1817

 

#papergenocide #indigenouswomen #history #appalachia

Hi!  My name is Kristi Noem.

You probably already know me.  I’m the governor of South Dakota, where we like living right and being free.

This great ol’ state was built by decent Christians like my great-grandpa Edward Arnold, who arrived in South Dakota in 1887 with his daddy in a boxcar on the brand new railroad into Indian country.

These heroes of the Old West were poor immigrants from the Old World, living-out the American Dream.  They pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps by courageously squatting on some land just taken from the Isanti Dakota people – non-Christians who totally deserved to lose their land, by the way…

Don’t think for a minute that getting free land gave my great-grandpa any advantages in life!

Anyways, there ain’t a day I don’t thank my grandparents for handing-down the traditions which made this country great.

Like hard work, or knowing when to wear a cowboy hat or wave a gun for press photographers.

And not being afraid to make tough decisions.

Like knowing when a puppy is just so dang disobedient, the best thing is to drag it on out to a gravel pit and put a bullet through its stupid little head.

Well, I suppose The Lord has His reasons for why some will thrive while others must perish.

And look how good things turned-out in the end for the Indians!

Don’t you ever question American decency, whatever them coastal Commies say in the Lib-run media.

We Dakotans still sent missionaries out to save Indian souls, even though their grandparents LITERALLY tried to shoot our brave pioneer forefathers!

That’s true Christian forgiveness right there.

We built nice Indian Boarding Schools, where they could learn to speak a normal, civilized language, and even learn to do figgers.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why people who’ve been given a reservation AND the gospel (with baptisms thrown in!) still keep standing in the way of progress and arguing about oil pipelines.

Anyhow, gotta run now. Still waiting on a phone call from Donald…

C’mon there, Grasshopper.  Heel! I said heel, dammit!

 

#history #satire #beforewewerewhite