Rage
Rage.
Rage for me is a sense of helplessness, of banging my head against a wall, of having arguments in my head with people who are not present.
Rage for me is a kind of insanity internalized from living in a deranged world.
Rage often comes from the kind of systemic gaslighting, the hypocrisy and audacity of trying to pretend that being anti-abortion is about being pro-life. That it is about babies, or some kind of religious or moral high ground, when clearly it is not.
We just did this for gun control, let’s walk this through shall we?
The origin story of this country (this country not this land) is one of attempted genocide, enslavement and colonization.
The project, the so-called “experiment” was one of wealth building. As Chenjerai Kumanyika says in Seeing White Part 2 - “the mission was exploitation.”
One big obstacle to wealth building was a labor shortage.
In 1662, Virginia enacted a law stating that if an “Englishman” begets a child of a “Negro woman,” the child will take on the woman’s status, e.g., that of a slave; this law makes slavery hereditary.
Up until then, and based on centuries of English common law, children took on the status of the father. On this basis, Elizabeth Key, the daughter of a white legislator and an unnamed African woman, won her case for freedom in 1655, frustrating the ruling elite and resulting in the new laws to close this loophole (see Seeing White Part 3).
Note the specific gendering of this law though - this is about an “Englishman” and a “Negro woman.”
You don’t think white women would be allowed to pass on their status to children with non-white men do you?
Of course not.
Laws were simultaneously passed prohibiting white women from having relations with enslaved or Native American men.
As Kendi said in this episode, “it then gave white men the ability to basically have intercourse with everyone, but then white women and non-white men could not.”
And so it was that a continued supply of labor was secured.
The constitution wasn’t written until over a hundred years later in 1787, but as we know, slavery was alive and well at that time and would live on for almost another hundred after.
A majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and nearly half of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention owned slaves. Four of the first five presidents of the United States were slaveowners. (See The Founding Father’s View of Slavery.)
So what might the historical and systemic foundation against abortion be based on?
The need for an enslaved population to provide the labor needed to build power, wealth and domination.
Who made up that enslaved population?
People of African descent.
Why?
Because it was a convenient and effective way to justify slavery.
This was deliberate, intentional, and strategic.
Oppression isn’t even the goal, it’s the strategy. The goal is power, wealth, dominance, control. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for a very select few. This is literally what the entire system was constructed for, with the constitution being one of its keystones.
Powerful white men have always and will always continue to be able to end pregnancies that are inconvenient to them and get in the way of their quest to hold onto and accumulate yet more power.
Meanwhile, white women will continue to be up in arms about reproductive rights without understanding the connection to white supremacy. Just like gun control. Just like climate change. Just like everything in this country.
Why does everything have to be about race?
Because that is how people who decided to call themselves white designed this country, that's why.
“But this is all history, this is in the past!” you might say.
The constitution isn’t in the past.
The Justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade did so in specific reference to the constitution.
A constitution written at a time when women and people of color did not have rights.
Rage is a good catalyst, but it isn’t a strategy.
I’m not saying don’t be angry. It’s important to create space for our emotions, because when we suppress them they are more likely to erupt sideways and cause more harm to ourselves or others.
Truth telling, acknowledgement, analysis, a focus on self-identified needs, gathering of feedback and input from those impacted by decisions, aligning actions with values and intentions, measuring impact against those intentions - these are important components for shifting culture and driving change.
What is your strategy?
Banner photo by Edward Kucherenko on Unsplash
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