Intersectionality...

 

Image Source: World Economic Forum

© February 25, 2023, the Griot Poet

1681,

The category of “white” was created,

After the Bacon rebellion,

A coalition of African enslaved people and European indentured servants,

“For the ways we have chosen to make our vast fortunes; this is not good for the sugar cane and cotton business.”

 

The plantation was their sprawling realm.

Old Europe had lords, and they were masters.

Old Europe had serfs and they had enslaved servants.

Old Europe had castles and they had mansions.

The US Constitution was based on the UK Magna Carta,

Thus, the New World was an analog of the old world their ancestors left.

This upstart colony, soon to be a nation,

Was determined to better King George, his empire, and their elder English statesmen,

 

So, plantation oligarchs created out of whole cloth,

“White” people, and 

Enslavement patrols: they gave them positions and power,

They had weapons and five-pointed star badges,

The plantation oligarchs were particularly frightened by the success of the Haitian rebellion.

So much so,

Their descendants would make it their policy to keep Haiti as an example of persistent depravity and poverty.

 

1790:

The date of the first American census,

Three years after the ratification of the US Constitution,

They made their purpose obvious and explicit, 

The US census was to count only so-called “white” citizens. 

Due to their prejudices and lack of Melanin,

Descendent of a Nordic bent.

Eventually, it included Czechs, Italians, Jews, and Russians,

Just so long as they treat with the same disdain,

America’s pariahs are put in the “others” category.

When they counted the 3/5ths, humans,

To calibrate their political calculus,

The enslaved numbered 33%!

The immigration population for Africans remained at zero until the 1970s, when their total population declined to 9%.

 

2005, 

The year of a study by Pew research,

Between 2005 and 2050, 

So-called “white people” in the US,

Will shrink from 67% to 47%, 

A numerical minority for the first time in the category by 2050, 260 years of existence.

How would so-[called] “white people” address this?

 

They might,

Want to break every treaty they have ever written with Native Americans,

“From 1778 to 1871, the United States government entered into more than 50 treaties with the Native American tribes; all of these treaties have since been violated in some way or outright broken by the US  government with Native Americans and First Nations peoples.”

“We don’t need no stinking history.”

Just ask Ron DeSantis.

 

They might, 

Through the Federalist Society, 

Stack the US Supreme Court with religious zealots,

Who lied in their Confirmation appointments,

“Stare decisis” is Latin for precedent,

But the pressing issue is existential:

Roe vs. Wade was overturned,

Because they’re not pro-life, they are pro-birth,

The closet had its function:

Many of those in power used it,

They procreated within sham marriages,

Hooking up on the down low in bathhouses,

You’re “taking one for the team” for the so-called “white” male cisgender hierarchy.

 

They might,

Want to repeal Affirmative Action practices,

In education and hiring,

 

They might,

Inaugurate the former Enslaved Patrols,

Give them badges and blue uniforms,

And the Orwellian motto, “protect and serve,”

With the wink and nod of understanding: the oligarch’s property,

 

They might,

Want to gerrymander congressional districts,

Set up by the racial apportionment,

Mandated every ten years by the US Census,

SPLIT the largest HBCU,

North Carolina A&T State University,

In TWO,

To dilute the votes of students at the college,

Along with Bennett Women’s College and Dudley High School,

That made sit-ins popular,

 

For a while,

My ancestors weren’t a part of that,

That 3/5ths fraction,

It was a compromise between the northern states and southern plantation owners,

The nation fought a revolution over “taxation without representation,”

While Africans toiled at chattel labor,

Working for centuries without compensation,

This fact is why reparations,

Is so fiercely resisted:

Like a key stitch in crochet,

Such an action unravels the knitting,

 

So, it all makes a kind of,

Sadistic,

Twisted,

“Logic”:

 

Like Covid-19,

Racism is a virus,

So are its byproducts:

Homophobia, misogyny, and xenophobia.

We’re not going to solve the climate crisis,

Or manufacture starships,

Nous Sommes Humain: we are ALL humans,

To survive, we need to cooperate.

 

If we’re arguing about which culture is “great,”

If we’re arguing over temporary mask mandates,

Or, the efficacy of vaccines versus the quackery of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin,

If you’re not a mule or a horse, I [would] not try it.

If we refuse to cooperate,

Like Octavia Butler said,

We’re “smooth dinosaurs” and our [own] Chicxulub meteors.

 

“The concept of intersectionality describes how systems of inequality based on gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, class, and other forms of discrimination “intersect” to create unique dynamics and effects.”

 

“Unique dynamics and effects,”

This statistic means a coalition that numbers 53%,

And 53% is greater than 47%.

 

But,

“I don’t like those,”

African Americans,

Asian-Pacific islander Americans,

Hispanic/Latino Americans

Immigrants,

LGBTQ+ Americans,

Women, who outnumber men,

 

“If current trends continue, the demographic profile of the United States will change dramatically by the middle of this century, according to new population projections developed by the Pew Research Center. The nation’s population will rise to 438 million in 2050, from 296 million in 2005, and 82% of the growth during this period will be due to immigrants arriving from 2005 to 2050 and their descendants.” Pew research 

 

They might,

Elect two unqualified presidents,

From the same party,

In the same century,

Using the antebellum electoral college,

Going from a five-to-four Supreme Court fiat,

And “Brooks Brothers” Riots in Tallahassee, Florida,

To a three-to-six zealot’s Mullah oligarchy,

To an actual coup attempt on January 6,

(Both orchestrated by Roger Stone in his rodent weirdness),

 

And now that the CIA rejected “white” supremacist Tucker Carlson,

He has 40,000+ hours of Capitol video footage gifted to him,

By the spineless jellyfish, Kevin McCarthy,

January 6, 2021, was practice!

January 6, 2025, will be Margaret Atwood’s “Sons of Jacob,”

In fifty states and territories,

Just like they did in Wilmington, NC, in 1898,

They WILL establish a “Republic of Gilead,”

And, as long as the New York Stock Exchange is functional,

The world will barely blink!

 

Fascism doesn’t stop with your favorite “out” group.

Ignorance is not Thomas Ode’s bliss,

Ignorance is Orwell’s tool for the powerful,

It is relentless in its pursuit of power and dominance.

It is insidious in that it will recruit,

Turncoats from those same out groups,

Subsisting on the crumbs from the rich man’s table for their poor Lazarus,

They’re only solace: they’re not you, who has it worse.

 

It’s why they oppose it.

Education, comedy, history, music, poetry, science: reality!

 

Because they know the power of intersectionality,

And that their dominance is a chimera fantasy:

VOTE!