I've just watched the first series of videos. I feel overwhelmed and helpless at the scale of the issue of racism, how deeply it runs and the many many ways it plays out over the entire planet. I notice I'm experiencing this sense of overwhelm through some kind of emotional distancing as I watch the footage and I'm surprised at how little I feel on an emotional level. I have a certain amount of grief and rage in response to these events portrayed in the clips but this is shockingly disproportionate to the actual outrage I know is possible and appropriate and waiting to be accessed in me. I'm wondering, or telling myself, that it must be something in the way these historical events are being 'reported on', the news-style production that is leaving me feeling 'untouched'. However, I'm sure there is much more to it than this - why I don't experience the atrocities that are happening to other people with an immediacy that feels closer to home as if those people were me or mine.
The tutorial on the origins of Law and Order feels very valuable in terms of deconstructing a social norm I've taken for granted. Although I personally have awareness that the law system is antiquated, hierarchical, power over, I hadn't understood this aspect of 'policing'. It's useful to know where 'policing' comes from. I can see now how it's the sharp end of the laws that were based on false science to maintain the power of a few over the many. I feel very very sad about the culture of incarceration and how it is the same story of slavery repeating itself. What I see is systemic trauma and all the manifestations of that being passed from generation to generation. We MUST find a way to heal this exploitation and 'othering' that has gone on for centuries.
I have learned in this module how the historic portrayal of black people and people of colour has generated attitudes and behaviour that perpetuate oppressive systems. I can now see the 'loop' of bias, opinions and behaviours. I feel disturbed by some of the imagery, the violent and even some of the benign portrayals. Especially 'Mammy'. I used to watch that characature in movies as a young child and feel warmth and fondness and perhaps a longing to have contact with a mothering energy, especially the fierce loyalty presented as unconditional love. I can see now how beautiful human qualities and attributes have been used and manipulated to perpetuate something very demeaning . I find this is very disturbing, the extent to which this stereotyping is dehumanising.
I did not realize how the Native Americans were treated or the discrimination of Red-Lining. Are these practices derived from capitalism and our founding fathers--or is it inherent in human nature like the predjucies suffered by the Indian "Untouchables" and the pleasures enjoyed by the Brahmin class.