The best way to understand where we are in this moment is to look at our past. There’s been so much effort put into miseducating human beings in order to maintain control of the masses and build profit for the elite. Racism is an idea that was planted in our heads hundreds of years ago, and taught to us with vile deliberation by our education systems, our governments, our media and our medical systems. For hundreds of years, leaders in all of these fields made a point of dehumanizing non-white peoples, with special emphasis on black and indigenous peoples. This is the indoctrination that generations of white ancestors went through from an extremely young age – in the cartoons they watched, at the circus, at every level of school, in the public realm and inside their own homes. They passed these beliefs on to their children, and their children’s children.
If you think that in 2020 any of these institutions have moved beyond racism, you should check out this talk by Harvard PhD student Udodiri R. Okwandu on her paper A Study of Medical and Scientific Racism In America. White guilt means that this history has been left off most curriculums in North America so that we don’t have to confront the sickness that is racism and white supremacy. It also shows why the current pandemic disproportionally affects black Americans.
We’ve inherited an infected world – infected by white supremacy, capitalism, industry, genocide and destruction – and we need to cure it by cutting out the infection. Learning our real history is a good start. Teaching ourselves and our children what our education system refuses to teach us.
