Life over here has been forever changed ever since the first US government has been established. Anybody that has a “different” belief system, a “different” color of skin, “different” hair textures or styles, is of a “different” sex or gender, or has “different” sexual preferences, has been colonized into a world of racialzed-gender violence, faces colonization, sexism, racism, genocide, shame, verbal and physical abuse, including rape and sexual harassment, discrimination, slavery, reproductive punishments, has been and kept oppressed, including systems of economic violence, and prevented from rising above the very same obstacles that the Europeans sought to run from in the first place.In Andrea Smith’s essay, Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy: Rethinking Women of Color, she explains how we tend to presume that certain communities (specifically, people of color’s) have been impacted by white supremacy in all the same ways; this is not true. Different “colored” communities have been impacted in different ways since the beginning of their interrelation with the white supremacy system of North America.
Native Americans have been dehumanized and redefined ever since the first European white men first came to America, settling in with their family, bringing their Christian beliefs, weapons, violence, and power (due to their weapons and violence) with them. In the Christian belief system, a patrilineal hierarchy system tends to be practiced, whereas in a native culture it is a matrilineal system that is practiced and both genders have power in the decision making.Because of differences such as these, and more, Europeans decided amongst themselves that the natives of this land must be assimilated to become more “civilized” to their own practices and beliefs. Many people fought back but the white people needed the land for the growth and expansion of their new freedom, and after the Revolutionary War these so-called “God-fearing” Christians decided then that they would offer the American Natives a “deal” by providing treaties that were unjust and unfair, and oftentimes the Native peoples did not know or understand what they were signing, even giving up their land rights.
When some natives refused the offer placed before them, European men simply used their superior military power to evict them (http://www. studymode. com/essays/West-Begin-19501. html), but not before such things as even raping the women and girls before killing them. According to Andrea Smith’s essay Not an Indian Tradition: The Sexual Colonization of Native Peoples, as white Californians described in the 1860’s, Native people were “the dirtiest lot of human beings on earth,” and that because Indian bodies are “dirty,” they are considered sexually violable and “rapable.
”That is, in patriarchal thinking, only a body that is “pure” can be violated (p. 72-73). In today’s society, our Native American people, are still in the hands of the US government and still being treated like dirt. Immanuel Wallerstein argues that “racism is meant to keep people inside the work system [at a state of marginalization], not eject them from it” and yet in the case of Native American peoples, whose unemployment rate on reservations reach as high as 90%, the intent of racism is to Exclude them.
It is also not any kind of accident that 100% of ALL URANIUM PRODUCTION takes place on or near Indian land. Nor is it a coincidence that Native reservations are often targeted as toxic waste dump sites and that military and nuclear testing also takes place almost exclusively on Native lands. Indian people face skyrocketing rates of cancer, miscarriages, and birth defects due to these things. Through the rape of the earth, Native women’s bodies are raped once again (Smith, 81-82). The White European man is still trying to take over the little bit of land that they have left..
.We need to fight back! Stand together in unity for equality in humanity—not equality! If a person truly cares about the injustices in this country, more action needs to be done. Write to our legislators…. not just once either. Talk loudly about it…not just enclosed behind the school classroom walls. If people stare, speak a little louder.
Just as the Native Americans were forced to move and to assimilate to the European way of life or die, so did the African Americans have to survive in what the white man forced upon them.Although slavery must have been no less than an equally devastating experience to both the men and women alike, the circumstances surrounding each sex had their differences and today, slavery still exists, and women specifically, are being kept oppressed for no reason other than the fact that the US system is based off of a white supremacy. During the original form of slavery, the black female was forced into sexual relations for the white slave master’s desire and financial success. It was a financial gain to the institution of slavery but a sorrowful part of slavery for the victimized woman, who had to live in silence.After all of the torment that they had to endure on the slave ships, they were expected to reproduce for the plantation. [bell] hooks writes, “Breeding was another socially legitimized method of sexually exploiting black women” Rape was also a method used as a weapon of terror that reinforced the white man’s domination over their human property; it was a weapon of repression, whose covert goal was to extinguish slave women’s will to resist, and in the process, to demoralize their men.
Slave masters would send their friends and sons to “have their way with the female slaves, justifying it as “boys being boys.”Out of this terrorism came the idea of the sexually loose black woman who desired sexual relationships with white men (www. anotherfeministrevolution. com/slaveryandwomen) and also set some of the standards for the rape culture that exists in our society today. Slavery still exists.
Although the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude, it does not for punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, by the House on January 31, 1865, and adopted on December 6, 1865. On December 18, Secretary of State William H. Seward proclaimed it to have been adopted.
It is no big secret that well over the majority of the people that are incarcerated are of the African-American descent, and that roughly only ? of all inmates are incarcerated for violent offenses. This is especially rough on all of the women who are being charged and locked up for non-violent, drug crimes and then released back into a society where the post-conviction penalties continue to keep them repressed for life.Not only does this affect the women, but often times there are children involved who then have to suffer the consequences also. In Patricia Allard’s essay, Crime, Punishment, and Economic Violence, she speaks of three specific post-conviction penalties that help in the repression of women for life.
These are: the federal ban on receipt of post-secondary financial aid, the lifetime ban on receipt of welfare benefits, and the public housing ban—on women of color with drug convictions, whether it is misdemeanor or felony (p. 157).What I am trying to understand is how these penalties are helping these women (and their children) get out of the very situations that probably put them in the position to be around drugs in the first place. How do these penalties help women get out of poverty level situations that force them into the belief that the only choice that they have is to sell drugs to provide better for themselves or their loved ones? How do these penalties keep a woman from using drugs in a poverty stricken atmosphere to try and escape the pain and turmoil that she feels and witnesses her loved ones going through on an everyday basis?I believe the only thing that these penalties do is cause the woman to go right back into the environment where she had the feelings of needing to be around these drugs in the first place, for whatever reason, and it is not only effecting the women, but also their children that innocently become involved in this vicious circle of oppression. They too, are a part of the white patriarchal hierarchy and the prison industrial complex form of slavery. There is just no winning with these post-conviction penalty concepts.
After a woman has served her sentence, her sentence should be “as” served…. the innocence of a child should not have to take part in a post-conviction penalty for a non-violent mistake that his mother made. Although European people themselves immigrated over to North America in search of a better life, for some reason today, our system of white supremacy carries over a traditional belief that includes forced rape, humiliation and violence to generate a form of population control.For some reason they have the belief that they “own:” the land we all live on, the land that we all pay for or have paid for in one way or another, the land that they stole from the Native peoples….
and even took from such people as Latino/a’s during the Mexican-American War. In Sylvanna Falcon’s essay, “National Security” and the Violation of Women: Militarized Border Rape at the US-Mexico Border, she explains that US-Mexico border militarization rests on two key elements: the introduction and integration of military units in the border region (the war on drugs and national security concerns provide primary justification for involving military units…reeeallly?And what about Canada and the war on prescription drugs?? ); and the modification of the Border Patrol to resemble the Military via its equipment, structure, and tactics with Sociologist Timothy Dunn drawing on low-intensity conflict (LIC) military doctrine to contextualize the militarization of the US border and emphasizes “controlling targeted civilian population” (p. 120).LIC can be more fully defined as: Low-Intensity Operations is a military term for the deployment and use of troops or assets in situations other than war.
Generally these operations are against non-state actors and are given terms like counter-insurgency, anti-subversion, and peacekeeping. However, it has been brought to my attention long ago that even prior to the Vietnam War, rape has been an unwritten, systematic tactic used to debilitate people viewed as our seditionists.First of all, who is our wonderful system to control any type of population when the original beginning of the system itself overpopulated the origins of the American land, and secondly how can LIC be defined as a “military term” for the “use of troops in situations other than war? ” Any time that the troops are involved, and as Sylvanna Falcon’s essay insinuates, there are two key elements that the US-Mexico border militarization rests on and one of them happens to be the war on drugs (p. 119).
