When I see things like, “Three Mexican countries…” often I hear people discuss how ignorant people are.
“How can you have power and be so ignorant to not know the name of countries?!”
I am not sure if the people saying these things are saying them, because they too are playing the game. I hope that they are, I hope they know this is not just a game, but a war.
The war of grasping the narrative.
The Internet has made most facts pretty easy to obtain, but they have always been easy for the privilege to obtain, but some facts the rich, don’t care about, because they feel they don’t need to.
Part of the US right’s playbook is controlling the narrative.
The narrative is you are not a human being. The country you are born in is not real. Your culture is not real. You are not human and you exist to serve. And not even serve like a dog, they like dogs, but you, they don’t like you. They view you as a broom, a hammer, a sex toy, a soda dispenser. You aren’t real. We aren’t real. We are things to them. We are when we get out of line broken toys or collateral damage.
They are not ignorant when they call El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, "Mexico". They are calculated.
They are not even being funny, not funny the way we view funny. Their humor is part of how they swing their power. Like a bully tripping you in the hallway or calling you a racial slur and then saying, “I didn’t know or it was an accident or a mistake.”
They do it to show that they can disrespect you, to tell everyone else, to not respect you. They demonstrate to their base how they can call you out your name and how you will still accept their apology by accepting them in a position above you.
Every “joke,” every comment that is hidden under the guise of ignorance is them demonstrating their power over you to take it and to keep taking it.
It’s a signal to the people who admire them - of their power and a signal to their minions who to harass, discriminate against, and murder with few consequences.
The white, rich, and powerful, they are not ignorant, they know exactly what they are doing, they always have.
Lark Lo produces and owns Black Kids in Outer Space
Follow Lark Lo on Twitter @VELO_NYC
The four permutations don’t leave much wiggle room for understanding :
ReplyDeleteBlacks make typos > white supremacist legacy,let them use Ebonics in education/exams etc
Blacks don’t make typos > succeeding in spite of a White supremacist system
Whites make typos > white supremacist , errors made to be derogatory
Whites don’t make typos > beneficiary’s of white supremacy in education/exams