(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Hating Haitians is No Accident [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-09-14 I do not think we are talking about this enough. Anti-immigrant (and never stop telling people that the Haitians in Springfield are here legally; this is not an issue of undocumented individuals having entered illegally) hatred from our lessers on the right is nothing new. Caravans, Mexicans are rapists, blah blah blah. It's an endless torrent of "Only *I* can protect you from THEM", and as long as "racist" is a key demographic for conservatives this language will pollute our political dialogue. The hue of the hated has shifted recently, however. For years now we've been directed to look southernly when the right wants us to imagine who is coming to take our jobs, rape our women, and murder our sons. They say Mexicans, but of course most migrants are fleeing the South American countries in which our disastrous colonial meddling still unfolds. Accuracy in matters of national taxonomy is frivolous when you've got a racial panic to whip up for an election, and so the rhetoric shape shifts into whatever best takes root. Then along came Kamala. Accomplished, affable, and, despite Trump's insinuation otherwise, undeniably black. When the Orange Stain tried to generate controversy by questioning the credentials of her melanin, what happened? The right was confronted again and again with her black (and this is important) Caribbean heritage. I am not a conspiracy theorist. Conspiracies are how one organizes and explains a chaotic system that escapes immediate understanding. However, I also believe there are certain systems, predominately the media and politics, that seek to imply a veneer of being organic in order to be more effective. In that way, motivations are hidden or not easily discernible in order to make the narrative seem natural. Commenting upon that is not necessarily implying a vast conspiracy, but instead recognizing how the system, and those trained to exploit it, elevate and amplify certain narratives in order to gain advantage. And that is why I believe it is no accident that six weeks after a black woman of Caribbean descent has risen to the head of the Democratic party the movement that propelled itself to dominance using the machinery of xenophobia is demanding we persecute a population of black Caribbeans. For a generation we were to fear the brown because we had been told so often how southern immigrants and their descendants would make us whites into a minority-majority. The loss of power, and the knowledge of what we whites have done to POC while we were in power, was a powerful motivator for a group of whites that vote out of fear and anger. Now we have a black woman who fended off attacks on her ancestry by proudly owning her Caribbean heritage. She has become a pronounced threat to the avatar of white supremacist patriarchy, and now the party fueled by racism wants us to hate and fear a population of black Caribbeans? That is no accident. And it needs to be called out with force and confidence. The attack is not just casually racist, either. The very imagery of a black body consuming a pet in violation of deep social norms is some Rudyard Kipling era "the savages are less than us" kind of racism. It's a disgusting elimination of Haitians' humanity, and a purposeful likening of them to a predator with no regard for human, much less modern, sensibilities. It's absolutely vile, and speaks to a primal element of the white supremacy bred into us whites. And they want you to think about Kamala when you think about that. The sheer savagery, and Otherness is a direct attack on her charm. The idea of an alien, menacing black body from the Caribbean stringing up Sparky like they are field dressing game is a direct attempt to negate her warmth, her affability, and quite frankly her quirky normalness. The revulsion, the imagery, the audacity is a rapid fire campaign to Other a woman who just really reminds us all of the kind aunt, the bad ass office lady, and the good boss. I'm not sure JD Vance and the other vectors for this social pathogen purposefully chose this narrative because of how it can be used against Kamala on a deep, existential level. That would imply some consciousness and strategy they have not displayed so far. Be that as it may, this interpretation of their choice of narrative must be stated forcefully and without equivocation. The right is choosing to attack black Caribbeans, after a long history of choosing brown South Americans as their victims, because they are running against a woman with black Caribbean ancestry. And that choice, even if not the conscious, is not accidental. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/9/14/2270352/-Hating-Haitians-is-No-Accident?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/