While watching the segment on the removal of Native American children from their families -- something you'd LIKE to believe was long past -- I couldn't help but think of the current day Latino children being taken by ICE from their immigrant parents. No profit motive this time, but still "in the children's best interest". And almost certainly with the same detrimental results.
We may get to it later in the examination of systemic racism, but I'm not seeing references to the part that some organized religions have played throughout time in creating "us (the chosen) vs. them (the heathen)" schisms, giving societal racism the appearance of having moral grounds.
One side effect of the "Law and Order" disparity is seen in domestic violence cases where neither party views an intervening officer as a "good guy there to help". This can leave an abused woman in a desperate place.
Two sections really made me think: Bias, and the Jim Crow Museum.
The bias section more positively, because I was able to draw from my own family's history of parents/aunts/uncles raised in Arkansas and Texas who moved north and raised children unexposed to Jim Crow and who now actively work against racism. Down side to that is that my cousins and I tend to be unaware that our personal attitudes can't affect much while the system is still broken. Also, I can think of my personal ability to reject the halo effect for people I admired at first for a specific intellectual characteristic/accomplishment, but then discovered serious flaws -- Charles Lindbergh, Henry Ford, Nathan Bedford Forrest. And the attractiveness bias I had seen confirmation for in my own experience -- I'm married to a 6'5" white cis-gender male software engineer. Mild-mannered and polite to a fair-thee-well, but when he talks, PEOPLE LISTEN. The Jim Crow Museum segment was far more disturbing. I was raised without exposure to physical violence, and I've been blessed with a life with few incidents. I found the the idea that Jim Crow could not have existed without the constant violence or the threat of violence, or without pervasive caricatures -- and the fact that this is STILL TRUE -- to be very distressing.
Linda,
Thank you for this thoughtful response. I do want to bring your attention to the current day family seperation policies used by ICE. There is a profit motive, as many of the detention centers that these children are held in are run by for-profit goverenment contractors, and the facility, and most of its personnell and services (food, mental health, medical) are provided by contractors. So there is a huge profit to be made. One investigation found that the cost per child for these detention centers is thousands of dollars a day. That's a lot of profit.
Using stereotypical and derragtory images and representations does indeed extend well beyond news coverage or politics. Jokes, games, cartoons, educational material often replicate these biases to further support the powers that be.
The emotional impact of all this is significant and part of the process. We all have to work through the new knowledge and realizations it brings in our own time and way, which is why we enourage reflection and dialogue. Hopefully you will continue to engage in the process and become stronger and more comforatable in your allyship.
Thank you for bringing out the connection between Native children and the children now being separated by ICE. In the 70s I had the honor and very humbling experience of holding space for adult Native Americans sharing their experiences of being torn from their families and placed in boarding schools. Jump to the near present, I was in another country reading research articles on ICE separating children from parents. I could not believe this was happening. I wondered what the US was doing. Returned to the US after years away and found it to be true. Separating the family unit once again and educating the young. Something I have to sit with for awhile.
I also found parts of Module One quite distressing, the Native American segment in particular. I agree, it's quite reminiscent of the current American policies toward Mexican and Latin American immigrants.
Yes, I, too was especially struck by the segment on Native American boarding schools. As a lifelong Montanan whose dad farmed what had once been Blackfeet land, I eventually heard about the schools when I got to college, but not about the adoption policies. The segment on how different groups of immigrants were labelled "illegal" at different times also resonated, in light of the despicable policies in place now at the border-- especially the family separations. Hearing that very word , "illegals," in the mouth of the current administration is chilling. Additionally, the information explaining environmental racism was enlightening. I had been aware of the people of Flint's plight, but the statistics cited regarding the link between "race" and income and how both predict a person's likelihood of having to live in polluted neighborhoods were new to me.