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DIAGNOSIS AMERICA column, April 24, 2008
Cha-cha-cha-cha-changes
By Anne Keala Kelly
This week's diagnosis: Detrimental Failure Psychosis (DFP).
I'm tempted to skip right to the "Docta's Orders" segment of this column, but I should first explain a few things. DFP is also called by some, the "determined to fail psychosis." It can manifest in anyone, but is prevalent in the U.S. because this is a nation of people who live in complete denial. Of what? A history of genocide that steadily morphed into an ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign against the first people of the land (a campaign that is today held together by something called "Federal Indian Law"). Some people call them Indians, others call them Native Americans, but we all know who I'm referring to here, the non-white inhabitants who populated the continent before whitey showed up.
You may wonder what DFP has to do with such a history. In short, everything. A nation of people who can call themselves a nation because millions of people were murdered for their nationhood, and then lives as if it never happened, is capable of committing, or having committed on their behalf, countless atrocities.
What's fascinating and frightening about DFP is that it tends to manifest when the nation is on the brink of something that appears to be massive change. Now, I say "appears to be" because the change doesn't have to be real, it only has to seem real in order to bring out the latent psychosis every citizen carries, through no fault of their own.
In this case, the potential of electing a president who may change what the nation has come to believe about itself, that being that it is incapable of change.
DFP is simply the result of believing one of two things: either you think you are better off staying the way you are now, or you are incapable of changing.
Docta's Orders.
Okay people, it's entirely possible you are going about this all wrong. Don't worry about whether or not you are capable of change. What you, the Democrats, should be deciding is who you want to blame for the next 4-years. Because even if you do change, just a little, one of the most consistent aspects of DFP is that no matter how things turn out, there needs to be someone else to blame.
If you insist that failure is part of this scenario, then frame it from the perspective of the inevitable failure of the next administration. That way the question then becomes, who do you want to spare from the blame that will be heaped onto that prez, and then elect in 2012?
Are you gonna send in a white woman or a black man to clean up or shore up 232 plus years of white men's excrement?
Yes, it could be argued that McCain has, thus far, been the only consecutive winner in every Democratic debate, caucus and primary. But all that aside, for the first time in decades, Americans with and without DFP are engaged in, not distracted by political discourse that is centered on constructing an actual turning point in history.
So today and tomorrow and every day until this is over, think about what you truly want to see happen in your world. Then act accordingly. Even though you cannot take responsibility for your nation's history, at least take responsibility for your own thoughts, ideas and behavior. You won't have to do it forever, just long enough to elect someone who is not a Republican.
DIAGNOSIS AMERICA column, November 30, 2007
In Praise of The White Man's Burden
By Anne Keala Kelly
This Weekʻs Diagnosis:
Famous Colonial Displacement Amnesia (FCDA), which is a subset disorder of CDA, Colonial Displacement Amnesia.
In the past, before the advent of new technologies, such as the Internet, those afflicted were not seen as suffering from CDA because of their fame. They, like the victims of epilepsy during the middle ages who were believed to be possessed by demons, were also misdiagnosed. As famous people suffering from CDA, they were just thought of as arrogant and racist. Fortunately, when the Internet made it possible to know the thoughts of famous people almost instantaneously, a new diagnosis came about and now not only can we identify the "famous" victims of Colonial Displacement Amnesia in general, if caught early, the chances of spontaneous remission are much improved, as appears to be the case with George Will.
IN PRAISE OF THE WHITE MANʻS BURDEN
There are patients whose symptoms are easy enough to diagnose, for whom talking for an hour or two per week leads to cathartic moments, elation and release of guilt over everything from disappointing their mothers to failed marriages. Then there are individuals who defy the normal diagnostic processes and require multiple visits to the medical libraries, poring over journals, sending dozens of emails, making phone calls to colleagues across the globe, and hours of contemplation. Mr. Will, however, was this and more.
He inspired the dynamic duo of my own repertoire, bringing out both my passion for Diagnosing America and penchant for tracking literary allusions that appear spontaneously in personal narratives.
I started at the beginning, from whence all great stories come. For Mr. Will, his story starts with his name. Having already expressed his obsession with the remote, almost non-existent possibility of being related to Adolf Hitler (see patient intake form in sidebar for details), I was able to detect a peculiar resentment for people who shamelessly identify genealogically. For instance, he knows there is no such thing as "the white race," and since most white Americans donʻt know who they are past two or three generations, he believes nobody should identify ethnically, saying, "This keeps everyoneʻs slate clean." He believes that Americaʻs "melting pot" relies on our willingness to de-racialize or be de-racinated via governmental institutions.
His expressed association between cleanliness and identity led me to think of this matter of genealogy and a quote from Romeo and Juliet.
"Whatʻs In A Name? that which we call a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet;"
Having two first names, "George" and "Will," only adds to his personal identity crisis because these arenʻt just any names. "George," of course, represents the father figure in the American male unconscious.
Freudians have made linkages between this first name phenomenon and the Reverse Oedipus Complex that they believe is at the root of homosexuality among males. The intensity of which is increased among men named George who were tortured as children by the nursery rhyme "Georgie porgie puddinʻ and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry, when the boys came out to play, georgie porgie ran away."
Not realizing the poem was about a heterosexual English king, Mr. Will repressed all sexual urges that were not easily identifiable as hetero-normative. So his "gayness" or "straightness" canʻt be determined without deep hypnosis, something he refuses to consider.
The name "Will," a weighty representation of white male power and religion, simultaneously inspires unconscious notions of entitlement, desire and force, and references to the will of God. The combination of which is, I believe, at the base of what is ailing Mr. Will. Itʻs more than a triangulation of thoughts, itʻs a quadrangulation of meaning: white will= colonial force = Godʻs will = Colonial Displacement Amnesia.
Colonial Displacement Amnesia
Colonial Displacement Amnesia was first diagnosed after WWII when France, Great Britain and Germany were stripped of most of their colonies. Cases of CDA first appeared in England among men with professions ranging from sheepherders to members of parliament.
However, in contrast to the rest of the western powers, America refused to de-occupy Hawaii, even though Hawaii was on the United Nations' list of "Territories To Be Decolonized." Instead, just one year before all the former territories began the process of decolonizing, the US forced a "statehood" vote in Hawaii, which yielded none of what Mr. Will claims in his column with regard to how actual Hawaiian people voted. It was, in fact, fraudulent because the majority of the people who voted were from America and were not Hawaiian or descended from the citizens of the Hawaiian Kingdom.
The muddling of historical details with regard to colonial power, and pure invention of interpretation that follows is one of the indicators that can lead to a CDA diagnosis. And the chances of reaching the CDA conclusion were hightened by Mr. Will's crediting Hermann Goering (famous Nazi) with saying he will decide who is Jewish, when in reality it was Karl Lueger, early 20th century (pre-Nazi) mayor of Vienna who made the quip.
Mr. Will is a highly intelligent man. When I pointed out the connecting threads between his thoughts, he grasped the concept of CDA quickly. He realized that there was an amnesiac quality to his ideas about Hawaii being a place without national identity beyond the American identity, although he remained uncertain of the connections between overthrowing the Kingdom of Hawaii and its impact on the actual first people of Hawaii , which he has only recently come to understand as being both indigenous (which at the time of the overthrow was 95% of the citizenry of the kingdom) and independent.
But sensing I was making progress, I pushed him further and we arrived quickly at what became our breakthrough moment, something every Docta looks for, but often has to wait years to reach.
Mr. Will wondered out loud at his own earlier remark with regard to identity and cleanliness and asked, "When did white people begin to equate being white with being clean?" And then, without prompting from me, he began to recite the opening stanza of Rudyard Kiplingʻs poem, The White Manʻs Burden.
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
I asked him to reflect on why he would think of such a poem in connection with Native Hawaiian people. Again, a moment of astonishing "Docta Bliss." Mr. Will made the correlation entirely on his own.
He expressed resentment over the need for legislation that is intended to pacify people who live in a place called the pacific, saying "It's too much of a contradiction in terms. For that matter, so is being 'Hawaiian' and 'American...' I've even been told Hawaiians have their own national anthem and that they sing it whenever large groups of them gather to talk about Hawaiian sovereignty."
But perhaps more to the point, beyond his indignation over the existence of Hawaiian political discourse, is what is really ailing Mr. Will: he sees the pacific as a place of American tragedy, where innocent American men were killed during the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which got America into WWII, wherein thousands died in prisoner of war camps and on battlefields throughout the pacific. And he said, "How dare anyone in Hawaii, Hawaiian or otherwise, not be eternally grateful for American protection? Itʻs like the poem says, we bound our sons to exile to serve our captives need. Why canʻt they just say thank you?"
He fought back tears during this session, and honestly so did I. Gently, I explained to him that the American practice of forgetting where you come from, your ancestral memory in exchange for a national identity, is a form of self hatred. I reminded him that his own name, not knowing who his ancestors are, has been his true burden and that maybe that lost-ness is the burden of all white men. I told him that an entire people actually knowing who they are both genealogically and nationally has brought out what he perceives as his own nationalistic pride, but in reality itʻs a wished for pride in the ancestral self.
I went on to remind him that the poem was written during the US expansion into the pacific during the late 19th century, and that the recent legislation (Akaka Bill) that attempts to mimic federal recognition for Hawaiians as a native people must have made him think of the poem. Although it was written about America in the Philippines, Hawaii is also a site in the pacific where Americans have died in battle and I suggested that perhaps in his land-locked American mind, he confused Hawaii with the Philippines, unconsciously of course.
In the end, after just a few sessions, Mr. Will made incredible progress towards reversing the effects of Famous Colonial Displacement Amnesia. He stands as one the most hopeful of all my patients because of his ability to follow the pathways of his own pathological Americanisms. It's a stunning reversal in political thought and if we are able to continue our work together I believe he may become the poster child for FCDA remission.
Treatment Plan
I have set forth a schedule of weekly sessions with Mr. Will. Because of the distance between Hawaii and Mr. Will's home in rural Washington DC, we will conduct most of our sessions by phone. I have decided to pursue full remission without the use of drugs, and he has agreed to trust this process... for now. Part of the recovery process for anyone suffering from FCDA requires an intellectual shift, perhaps we could go so far as to call it a paradigm shift. In the case of Mr. Will, I have determined that his use of poetry may line his path to recovery, and have therefore asked him to do several things.
1) Read the Kipling poem again and do some free-style writing about it. I have asked him to start with specific language in the poem, such as "To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride..." and see if it's possible to make links between the trajectory of meaning behind the poem and political support he has for the contemporary American "War On Terror."
2) I have asked him to focus at least part of his writing on the refrain, "Take up the White Man's burden." For instance, he may write quite a bit on why the words Take, White, and Man are capitalized throughout the poem. Does this resonate with meaning to him? If so, why?
3) Because the column that brought Mr. Will to me for diagnosis was entirely about Hawaiian people, Hawaiian political struggle, and ideas of federal recognition, I have asked Mr. Will to read a few books on the subject, beginning with Aloha Betrayed by Noenoe Silva (See suggested reading list in sidebar).
While my work is about healing, not politics, I have asked him to rethink his position after he has become legitimately informed on the complex, historical issues that have created the Akaka Bill and where actual Hawaiian people stand on this matter. While most Hawaiians agree that it is bad legislation, their reasoning is so far removed from Mr. Will's that they may as well be talking about completely separate issues.
(November 20th column)
This Weekʻs Diagnosis: DEMOCRACY COLLAPSE DISORDER
From time to time, Diagnosis America features "Be My Guest" Columnists. This weekʻs column is by Roberto Rodriguez.
COLUMN OF THE AMERICAS
NOVEMBER 19, 2007
MACEHUAL: BY ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ
ON THE VERGE OF DEMOCRACY COLLAPSE DISORDER
Colony Collapse Disorder: this is the name given to the dying off of
the world's bees, which spells an impending global crisis. It's not
that I want to make light of this diagnosis. Quite the reverse; it's
that the name could just as easily be applied to the state of the
nation. Though Democracy Collapse Disorder is what comes to mind.
When historians look back to examine the origins of this latter
disorder, it will be determined that it began in 2000, compliments of
the U.S. Supreme Court when its intervention resulted in the ascension
of George W. Bush to the presidency of the United States.
Lacking the tradition of contesting government, the opposition meekly
accepted the results. Yet, by governing from the middle, the highly
contested presidential election might have simply resulted in an
asterisk next to the president's name. Instead, he began to govern as
if he had received an overwhelming mandate from both, the electorate
and God, helping to usher in the most greedy, corrupt, anti-science,
secretive and unaccountable administration in the nation's history.
Under the guise of Christianity, POTUS or the President Of The United
States single-handedly helped to usher back in The Dark Ages.
Just as plans for the Iraq invasion were in place long before, 9-11,
the designs for Democracy Collapse Disorder were also in place, long
before the president's installation. Yet, President Bush, a blue-blood
son of a former president, was not an innocent bystander; to carry out
the neoconservative agenda of world dominance simply required the
notion of a unitary executive in which all power resides in POTUS.
Given 9-11, the attack gave him an opportunity to accelerate that
agenda, which included the de-Constitutionalization of the United
States..
The seven primary components of Democracy Collapse Disorder include
assertions by the president that he has the right to:
1) wage preemptive permanent war against any potential enemy, while
coddling tyrannical blood-thirsty dictators who support the U.S.
agenda of world domination.
2) declare that the United States is in fact in a permanent state of
worldwide war against "Islamo-fascism."
3) disregard the rights of anyone, including the right to secretly
detain anyone indefinitely, without due process and without the right
to legal representation, including the right to torture.
4) disregard any law, create any law, or interpret any law to his
favor, to be able to operate outside of the U.S. Constitution, while
also asserting the right to interpret his illegal actions as lawful.
5) operate outside of the Constitution during this time of permanent
war, without being subject to any checks and balances.
6) operate outside of international law and in disregard of
international treaties and conventions.
7) pardon, grant amnesty and grant retroactive immunity to anyone
under his control who violates the Constitution or any international
law.
If these were but theoretical assertions of power, that would be
dangerous enough. But this president has actually carried out his
assertions and aside from engaging the United States in a disastrous
illegal war and occupation, he has also been wrong about everything.
Wrong in a moral sense. Wrong in a legal sense. And wrong in a
strategic sense.
Enter the Democratic Party and the 2006 elections: its leaders are
given an overwhelming mandate to stop this runaway president who has
been plundering the public treasury to wage his illegal war. Yet,
their first order of business is to grant him and his war cabinet
unconditional amnesty and retroactive immunity.
That is the definition of Democracy Collapse Disorder.
If Congress had an alternate and effective plan to actually terminate
the illegal occupation of Iraq, that would be one thing, but worse
than being impotent, the refusal to hold the president accountable has
emboldened him to continue his criminal endeavors worldwide, including
threatening to wage yet another unsanctioned war against Iran.
To its credit, Congress has at least now taken a firm stand in support
of "the rule of law." Joining the likes of Lou Dobbs and Rep. Tom
Tancredo, who represent the lunatic and fanatical wing of the
political spectrum, Congress has taken a firm stand against amnesty,
that is, no amnesty for Mexicans. No amnesty for brown
Spanish-speaking dishwashers and maids. At least they are consistent.
There will also be no amnesty for those in the U.S. government whose
lies have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Iraq. Similar
to Scooter Libby, instead they will be granted immunity, pardons and
commutations.
That too is Democracy Collapse Disorder. It also sounds like the
definition of insanity.
(c) Column of the Americas 2007
Patzin, by Gonzales is published the 1st Monday of the Month.
Macehual, by Rodriguez is published the 3rd & 5th Mondays of the
month. Gonzales can be reached at Patzin@gmail.com-- Rodriguez can be
reached at XColumn@gmail.com. Also at: 520-743--0376
PO BOX 41552, Tucson, AZ 85717. Their columns are archived at:
hometown.aol.com/xcolumn/myhomepage/
TREATMENT PLAN:
The patient presented with symptoms that are beyond the scope of drugs that I can prescribe legally. I recommend a visit to the local medical marijuana clinic. I have no doubt that once the patient discusses the symptoms of DCD, the physician on-call at the clinic will not only grant the request for a membership card, but will likely administer the first dose on the spot. (I advise the patient to bring requisite snacks because of the side effects of the marijuana treatment, but only items that DO NOT derive from other countries, especially developing countries, or anything that has been genetically modified, as these things may subvert the rest of the suggested treatment outlined below).
I also recommend Reverse Primal Scream Therapy (RPST); my detractors have, in the past, argued that the severity of this therapy can be considered cruel, but I believe that when used in conjunction with medicinal marijuana and weekly talk-therapy sessions it could jump start the healing process. RPST is inexpensive and easily accessible. All it requires of the patient is the willingness to sit silently while the people(s) who have been on the receiving end of uninvited American Democracy pollination events verbally express their righteous indignation and refusal to submit.
DIAGNOSIS AMERICA column, November 10, 2007
By Anne Keala Kelly
PATHOLOGICAL COMPULSIVE DISORDER (PCD is like OCD, but different).
Things you should know about PCD:
Like most mental disorders, PCD is an equal opportunity illness that can afflict anyone, however, those most vulnerable to its devastating effects (real and imagined wounds to self and others) are white males between the ages of 39 and 75 who have a propensity for delusional daydreams about their own greatness. Studies have also shown that men of any ethnic background or economic class can be similarly afflicted, as can all women. The overwhelming connection between these groups appears to be the combined effects of personal ambition and the willingness to exploit people (most of them non-white) while appearing to help them. Because of this last characteristic, sometimes referred to as the "U Factor" or "User Syndrome," some scientists have nicknamed PCD the "Con Disorder," or "Pathological Con Disorder." A related illness in this case is American Racism Denial Syndrome (ARDS), but it is secondary. (See Patient Intake Form for symptoms and recommended medication; see below for diagnostic commentary and treatment plan.)
Introduction
When Duane "Dog" Chapman first contacted me for a consultation, he presented with several issues, the first being grief over a betrayal by his son, the second was his use of a racial slur. I was struck by what I perceived to be an over-sensitive response to the opinions of other people. I had not at that point read the transcript nor heard the taped conversation and was more concerned with his symptoms. I thought, how bad could it be?
Sadly, it was far worse than he had described to me during our first session, and I had to remind him that misrepresenting the depths of the problem only makes my work as a "docta," who focuses primarily on the American psyche, that much harder. And that if I were to treat him, he would need to commit to a) the prescribed treatment plan, b) weekly therapy sessions and c) reading a number of books that I believe will aid him, and the America he represents, in the healing process. I am uncertain about his willingness to proceed; I received a voice mail canceling our last appointment due to a hastily scheduled appearance on the Larry King show, and we have had no further contact.
WHEN DOGS BITE
Dogs that bite, especially older dogs, are typically thought of as beyond hope. The recidivist offender is often put to sleep either by a caring owner or in some cases the courts. Weʻve all read or heard stories of owners who let their dogs loose on people and then end up having to destroy the animals and/or do jail time. But what about the dog that bites itself?
Duane "Dog" Chapman is the metaphor of a self-mutilating dog. Chapman is lost in a labyrinth of Americaʻs race psychoses, the culmination of which is a corner stone of American culture. And because he was not the labyrinthʻs architect, Chapman doesnʻt believe he is a racist. He sees himself more as a commuter forced by circumstance to use the racist highway when he needs a shortcut, not as someone responsible for the highwayʻs existence. Indeed, he is experiencing trauma because he has followed the rules that govern its use and is now being shamed publicly. Once a proxy for white Americaʻs fear of non-white people, he has become proxy for white Americaʻs inability to contain its race rage.
Understandably, he is confused because the underlying mechanisms of American society are complicit in his rise and fall. How else can we explain a muscle-bulging white man who looks like something between the cartoon version of Thor, the Norse god of thunder, and a biker-styled cowboy, who calls his sonʻs black girlfriend a "f------ n-----" but insists that he is not racist?
Chapmanʻs tirade was in fact a passionate plea for his son not to infringe on his use of the N word, as if the word itself represents territory that he, being a dog, has marked. To him itʻs a piece of linguistic property that he stands on when he needs to reassure himself with notions of superiority. But language, whether verbal or physical, communicates things about us, some of it intentional, some not, and itʻs up to us to decode it.
Some forms of language are literally considered private property, as with copyrights. Others are public, or can be made public, as happened with Chapmanʻs taped conversation. Again with the dog metaphor... some dogs are bullies that bark and growl to get what they want: control over their territory, or in Chapmanʻs case, over his sonʻs affection for a black woman.
Whether or not the communication was intended to be private does nothing to diminish the historic and political meaning of the N word and the intended and unintended consequences when a white person uses it. So malleable is this word that Chapman claimed it had nothing to do with the ethnicity of his sonʻs girlfriend, but was instead a defining aspect of her character. Personally, Iʻve never heard it used by a black person to describe the character of a white person.
Still, if we follow this line of reasoning it leans toward notions of all things being equal in racist discourse. How many times have any of us heard or even remarked about non-whites hating whites and how racist that is? But just getting close to equality in racism would mean Africans and the natives of North and South America would have to invade Europe, dispossess its people, kidnap, torture and enslave them for 500 years and use their bodies to build black and brown empires in Africa, America and Europe.
The N word is a special word in America. It can be a verb, a noun, an adjective; it can instill terror and humiliation when a white person uses it, and communicate humor between black people. However, when a famous person gets caught using it or any of its related concepts, the word then becomes like the magic bullet theory surrounding the Kennedy assassination. The self-loathing of America is so overwhelming that people need to believe itʻs all about one lone nut case who then has to be sacrificed on the altar of American denial. For the country itself to acknowledge its own dependency would be going too far.
Iʻve heard its twin word, "negro," used by whites, Asians and Latinos in an affectionate way, as with a Latin boyfriend I had who greeted his brother with "hey negro" when they talked on the phone. Sick as it seemed to me, it was their expression of intimacy. But what does it mean when intimacy and humor are used to disguise the unspoken overall acceptance of white supremacy, or in the case of the former boyfriend, the "at least we ainʻt black" supremacy? Implicit in that silent agreement is the passivity of the contemporary conspiracy of racism.
Americaʻs Racism Denial Syndrome (ARDS) owes its existence to its guilt by association characteristic. Because so much of the American social, economic and cultural infrastructure was constructed on varying levels of racism, almost every group can trace its existence in America to a racially determined oppression. The ethnic cleansing/forced removal perpetrated against the indigenous peoples in America makes black people complicit even as they are targets because, through no fault of their own, they have become uninvited settlers in the homeland of other peoples. Seriously, that lie about freed slaves getting 40 acres and mule? I suppose it sounds good, but native scholars have pointed out that if the great promise had ever taken place, the land would have been stolen from the natives.
Another area of the ARDS, which may have some loose connection to our metaphor of the self-wounding dog, is the use of politeness and apologies to mask the historical hatred for people who are not white, or in the case of interracial mixed bloods, not white enough.
Whatʻs remarkable about this is that it carries an embedded colonial patterning of self oppression/hatred that manifests as an urge to reinforce the oppressorʻs machinery. The result is that when the corporate owned media calls upon its countless non-white consumers to forgive what they are told is an anomaly, they will lean towards viewing Chapmanʻs rant as a desperate man dispensing fatherly advice to his son, or a fatherly crime of passion. The masses will be inclined to ignore the growing trend of prominent white men spewing racist and anti-Semitic language (Don Imus, Mel Gibson and Michael Richards). Like a diverted river finding its way back to its original flow, is this a comeback of an ideology that was taking a nap? Or is it a backlash against a society that refuses to examine the premise of its existence? (A call to the CDC confirmed rumors that they are undertaking a study to determine whether this outbreak is a new, contagious strain of PCD.)
But forgive Chapman we must if we are not ready to release our addiction to what he represents and the role he plays in suspending our own disbelief. Forgiving him is our only way of collectively denying that racism goes way beyond skin color, that itʻs an eternal, generational form of hatred. If you hate someoneʻs ethnicity, are you not hating the ancestors who made them and preemptively hating the descendants who will come from them?
Maybe for Americans racism is so entrenched that doing away with it seems like it will take too much effort. After all, most of us are just trying to get from day to day, and racism is an incredibly fluid, multi-faceted ideology that relies on passive acceptance. To unhinge it would mean changing all the stories about Americaʻs greatness, its promise of equality; America wouldnʻt exist if the first white invaders didnʻt adhere to and expand on racist principles.
And being non-white has never represented power, wealth or freedom in America. It has meant the opposite. Which complex came first, white power or non-white inferiority? Are either of these notions of social order real, and if so is it possible to dismantle it? Or is asking these questions like the dog chasing, catching and biting its own tail?
Six years ago on a trip to DC, I visited an exhibit at the Smithsonian that focused on the migration of black people from the rural south to the urban north. As I wove my way through the different artifacts on display, past the replica of a share croppers cabin replete with dirt floor, a wood burning stove, a rocking chair and handmade broom, a Ku Klux Klan robe hovering above another glass case was visible from nearly every part of the exhibit, even though it was near the end. I thought, oh, a KKK outfit. Iʻve seen those before in movies. It wasnʻt shocking or even unfamiliar. Itʻs a well known, all encompassing symbol that anyone of any ethnicity can point to and say, "bad white people," like wagging our heads at a swastika and saying, "Nazis, they were crazy, but thatʻs all over now."
Icons like pointy white hoods and swastikas comfort us because they are symbols for the worst of western civilization and appear to be isolated in the past. Witness The History Channel, all Nazi all the time. And the scratchy black and white footage of Hitler and company walking at 18 frames a second instead of 24 makes it seem even more ancient. The uniforms they wore are safe signifiers of how white people who went too far used to dress. The white hood and robe floods the imagination so no one has to be inconvenienced by the living legacy behind such murderous couture. So prevailing are these notions of what white supremacy looks like, that most people don't see it unless the person expressing it is sticking their arm straight out at a 45 degree angle, or using the N word.
As I got closer to the KKK outfit, what began as subtle, involuntary observations evolved into an abrupt end to my own sensibilities about the genocidal history of America. I had spent most of my adult life developing an understanding of that history, along with the parallel detachment from personal responsibility. I donʻt like racists, I donʻt knowingly hang out with racists, I recognize racism in the institutions of America, in movies and songs and in the absence of fair representation by and about non-white people in politics and media.
Despite my armor of intolerance and righteous indignation, my mind continued to unpack what I was looking at. The robe had sweat stains on it and appeared to be well worn; the wearer of this thing was maybe about 5ʻ6", not very broad in the shoulders. I presumed a man wore it, but donʻt recall seeing a name or gender identifying the owner. It just floated there on a thin wire with its collar about ten feet off the ground, its hemline eye level to me. Suspended in well-lit isolation over a glass case, it represented a lynching. But it was also evocative of choir singers, my high school graduation gown, angels and altar boys, even though it meant none of that.
The case beneath it contained newspaper clippings and references to stories, like one about an entire family lynched on one tree. I perused the rest of the display until I got to the NAACP posters calling for people to write to congress and ask for the passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill of 1921.
I donʻt remember the rest of the exhibit. The fact that just over 80 years ago white Americans wouldnʻt even pass a bill to make lynching black people illegal eclipsed everything else.
Terrorizing and murdering black people in America was, until very recently, not so unusual. During a 21 year period at the end of the 19th century, as many as 3 lynchings a week took place somewhere in the US. And the symbols deployed by the terrorists have lingered, as we have seen in recent weeks with a noose and a swastika being left on office doors of black and Jewish professors at Columbia. The actual lynching and torture of black people is rare now, but the pathological rage it was born of has morphed into other kinds of control.
Through shows like Dog The Bounty Hunter, on the Arts & Entertainment Network, everyone can watch remnant pieces of the slave/master narrative play out. The heroic white bounty hunter with dream catcher earings, dark shades, a sleeveless shirt and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth routinely captures darkies who have run away from American justice. As he takes them in, he and his wife lecture the fugitives about everything from parenting skills to Jesus. Then the prisoners are presumably carted off to the county, state or federal prison system, aka, the prison industrial complex. The prison industry in the US experienced its first boom after the emancipation of slaves; the 13th amendment that freed the slaves also made it easy to re-enslave many of them in prison through forced, unpaid labor ironically used to rebuild the south. These past two decades have been another boom time for the industry, thus programs like Cops and Dog The Bounty Hunter are apropos.
Here again, the ARDS: the dark people Chapman is chasing are mostly Hawaiians and other Polynesians. If the Dog were chasing African Americans instead of Pacific Islanders, how would that play out in Americaʻs racial order of things?
Chapman, like America, has been outed for bad behavior, not for the motivation behind it. He says heʻs sorry, but if that were true, he would have been sorry when he did it, not when he got called to the carpet for it. Thatʻs the thing about mental disorders, they are involuntary patterns set by a host of determining factors.
Pathological Compulsive Disorder is an integral part of the repetitive manifestation of racism in America. This means that once in a while an open expression of racism is going to show itself via a surrogate elder (Imus), hero (Gibson), clown (Richards) or cowboy/sheriff (Chapman). Whatʻs as disturbing, though, is when America collectively looks askance, as if an imaginary friend has suddenly taken physical form. Or maybe itʻs more like when a dog bites itself and is surprised by the pain inflicted with its own teeth.
TREATMENT PLAN
I recommend drinking lots of water, several hours a day of quiet time, rest and long meditative walks. I also suggest enrolling in How Racism Works 101, reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X at least two times, and prayers to whoever your God is, whether Norse or not. And lastly, Mr. Chapman, I believe the most important part of your healing will come when you give every single dime you and your family have made, off the backs of Polynesians and other non-white people, to the families you damaged when you exploited their suffering for a television show. Because every family that has someone incarcerated, regardless of the "crime," suffers for it. When people like you get rich and famous off of it... in a better world that would be criminal.
DIAGNOSIS AMERICA column, April 24, 2008
Cha-cha-cha-cha-changes
By Anne Keala Kelly
This week's diagnosis: Detrimental Failure Psychosis (DFP).
I'm tempted to skip right to the "Docta's Orders" segment of this column, but I should first explain a few things. DFP is also called by some, the "determined to fail psychosis." It can manifest in anyone, but is prevalent in the U.S. because this is a nation of people who live in complete denial. Of what? A history of genocide that steadily morphed into an ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign against the first people of the land (a campaign that is today held together by something called "Federal Indian Law"). Some people call them Indians, others call them Native Americans, but we all know who I'm referring to here, the non-white inhabitants who populated the continent before whitey showed up.
You may wonder what DFP has to do with such a history. In short, everything. A nation of people who can call themselves a nation because millions of people were murdered for their nationhood, and then lives as if it never happened, is capable of committing, or having committed on their behalf, countless atrocities.
What's fascinating and frightening about DFP is that it tends to manifest when the nation is on the brink of something that appears to be massive change. Now, I say "appears to be" because the change doesn't have to be real, it only has to seem real in order to bring out the latent psychosis every citizen carries, through no fault of their own.
In this case, the potential of electing a president who may change what the nation has come to believe about itself, that being that it is incapable of change.
DFP is simply the result of believing one of two things: either you think you are better off staying the way you are now, or you are incapable of changing.
Docta's Orders.
Okay people, it's entirely possible you are going about this all wrong. Don't worry about whether or not you are capable of change. What you, the Democrats, should be deciding is who you want to blame for the next 4-years. Because even if you do change, just a little, one of the most consistent aspects of DFP is that no matter how things turn out, there needs to be someone else to blame.
If you insist that failure is part of this scenario, then frame it from the perspective of the inevitable failure of the next administration. That way the question then becomes, who do you want to spare from the blame that will be heaped onto that prez, and then elect in 2012?
Are you gonna send in a white woman or a black man to clean up or shore up 232 plus years of white men's excrement?
Yes, it could be argued that McCain has, thus far, been the only consecutive winner in every Democratic debate, caucus and primary. But all that aside, for the first time in decades, Americans with and without DFP are engaged in, not distracted by political discourse that is centered on constructing an actual turning point in history.
So today and tomorrow and every day until this is over, think about what you truly want to see happen in your world. Then act accordingly. Even though you cannot take responsibility for your nation's history, at least take responsibility for your own thoughts, ideas and behavior. You won't have to do it forever, just long enough to elect someone who is not a Republican.
DIAGNOSIS AMERICA column, November 30, 2007
In Praise of The White Man's Burden
By Anne Keala Kelly
This Weekʻs Diagnosis:
Famous Colonial Displacement Amnesia (FCDA), which is a subset disorder of CDA, Colonial Displacement Amnesia.
In the past, before the advent of new technologies, such as the Internet, those afflicted were not seen as suffering from CDA because of their fame. They, like the victims of epilepsy during the middle ages who were believed to be possessed by demons, were also misdiagnosed. As famous people suffering from CDA, they were just thought of as arrogant and racist. Fortunately, when the Internet made it possible to know the thoughts of famous people almost instantaneously, a new diagnosis came about and now not only can we identify the "famous" victims of Colonial Displacement Amnesia in general, if caught early, the chances of spontaneous remission are much improved, as appears to be the case with George Will.
IN PRAISE OF THE WHITE MANʻS BURDEN
There are patients whose symptoms are easy enough to diagnose, for whom talking for an hour or two per week leads to cathartic moments, elation and release of guilt over everything from disappointing their mothers to failed marriages. Then there are individuals who defy the normal diagnostic processes and require multiple visits to the medical libraries, poring over journals, sending dozens of emails, making phone calls to colleagues across the globe, and hours of contemplation. Mr. Will, however, was this and more.
He inspired the dynamic duo of my own repertoire, bringing out both my passion for Diagnosing America and penchant for tracking literary allusions that appear spontaneously in personal narratives.
I started at the beginning, from whence all great stories come. For Mr. Will, his story starts with his name. Having already expressed his obsession with the remote, almost non-existent possibility of being related to Adolf Hitler (see patient intake form in sidebar for details), I was able to detect a peculiar resentment for people who shamelessly identify genealogically. For instance, he knows there is no such thing as "the white race," and since most white Americans donʻt know who they are past two or three generations, he believes nobody should identify ethnically, saying, "This keeps everyoneʻs slate clean." He believes that Americaʻs "melting pot" relies on our willingness to de-racialize or be de-racinated via governmental institutions.
His expressed association between cleanliness and identity led me to think of this matter of genealogy and a quote from Romeo and Juliet.
"Whatʻs In A Name? that which we call a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet;"
Having two first names, "George" and "Will," only adds to his personal identity crisis because these arenʻt just any names. "George," of course, represents the father figure in the American male unconscious.
Freudians have made linkages between this first name phenomenon and the Reverse Oedipus Complex that they believe is at the root of homosexuality among males. The intensity of which is increased among men named George who were tortured as children by the nursery rhyme "Georgie porgie puddinʻ and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry, when the boys came out to play, georgie porgie ran away."
Not realizing the poem was about a heterosexual English king, Mr. Will repressed all sexual urges that were not easily identifiable as hetero-normative. So his "gayness" or "straightness" canʻt be determined without deep hypnosis, something he refuses to consider.
The name "Will," a weighty representation of white male power and religion, simultaneously inspires unconscious notions of entitlement, desire and force, and references to the will of God. The combination of which is, I believe, at the base of what is ailing Mr. Will. Itʻs more than a triangulation of thoughts, itʻs a quadrangulation of meaning: white will= colonial force = Godʻs will = Colonial Displacement Amnesia.
Colonial Displacement Amnesia
Colonial Displacement Amnesia was first diagnosed after WWII when France, Great Britain and Germany were stripped of most of their colonies. Cases of CDA first appeared in England among men with professions ranging from sheepherders to members of parliament.
However, in contrast to the rest of the western powers, America refused to de-occupy Hawaii, even though Hawaii was on the United Nations' list of "Territories To Be Decolonized." Instead, just one year before all the former territories began the process of decolonizing, the US forced a "statehood" vote in Hawaii, which yielded none of what Mr. Will claims in his column with regard to how actual Hawaiian people voted. It was, in fact, fraudulent because the majority of the people who voted were from America and were not Hawaiian or descended from the citizens of the Hawaiian Kingdom.
The muddling of historical details with regard to colonial power, and pure invention of interpretation that follows is one of the indicators that can lead to a CDA diagnosis. And the chances of reaching the CDA conclusion were hightened by Mr. Will's crediting Hermann Goering (famous Nazi) with saying he will decide who is Jewish, when in reality it was Karl Lueger, early 20th century (pre-Nazi) mayor of Vienna who made the quip.
Mr. Will is a highly intelligent man. When I pointed out the connecting threads between his thoughts, he grasped the concept of CDA quickly. He realized that there was an amnesiac quality to his ideas about Hawaii being a place without national identity beyond the American identity, although he remained uncertain of the connections between overthrowing the Kingdom of Hawaii and its impact on the actual first people of Hawaii , which he has only recently come to understand as being both indigenous (which at the time of the overthrow was 95% of the citizenry of the kingdom) and independent.
But sensing I was making progress, I pushed him further and we arrived quickly at what became our breakthrough moment, something every Docta looks for, but often has to wait years to reach.
Mr. Will wondered out loud at his own earlier remark with regard to identity and cleanliness and asked, "When did white people begin to equate being white with being clean?" And then, without prompting from me, he began to recite the opening stanza of Rudyard Kiplingʻs poem, The White Manʻs Burden.
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
I asked him to reflect on why he would think of such a poem in connection with Native Hawaiian people. Again, a moment of astonishing "Docta Bliss." Mr. Will made the correlation entirely on his own.
He expressed resentment over the need for legislation that is intended to pacify people who live in a place called the pacific, saying "It's too much of a contradiction in terms. For that matter, so is being 'Hawaiian' and 'American...' I've even been told Hawaiians have their own national anthem and that they sing it whenever large groups of them gather to talk about Hawaiian sovereignty."
But perhaps more to the point, beyond his indignation over the existence of Hawaiian political discourse, is what is really ailing Mr. Will: he sees the pacific as a place of American tragedy, where innocent American men were killed during the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which got America into WWII, wherein thousands died in prisoner of war camps and on battlefields throughout the pacific. And he said, "How dare anyone in Hawaii, Hawaiian or otherwise, not be eternally grateful for American protection? Itʻs like the poem says, we bound our sons to exile to serve our captives need. Why canʻt they just say thank you?"
He fought back tears during this session, and honestly so did I. Gently, I explained to him that the American practice of forgetting where you come from, your ancestral memory in exchange for a national identity, is a form of self hatred. I reminded him that his own name, not knowing who his ancestors are, has been his true burden and that maybe that lost-ness is the burden of all white men. I told him that an entire people actually knowing who they are both genealogically and nationally has brought out what he perceives as his own nationalistic pride, but in reality itʻs a wished for pride in the ancestral self.
I went on to remind him that the poem was written during the US expansion into the pacific during the late 19th century, and that the recent legislation (Akaka Bill) that attempts to mimic federal recognition for Hawaiians as a native people must have made him think of the poem. Although it was written about America in the Philippines, Hawaii is also a site in the pacific where Americans have died in battle and I suggested that perhaps in his land-locked American mind, he confused Hawaii with the Philippines, unconsciously of course.
In the end, after just a few sessions, Mr. Will made incredible progress towards reversing the effects of Famous Colonial Displacement Amnesia. He stands as one the most hopeful of all my patients because of his ability to follow the pathways of his own pathological Americanisms. It's a stunning reversal in political thought and if we are able to continue our work together I believe he may become the poster child for FCDA remission.
Treatment Plan
I have set forth a schedule of weekly sessions with Mr. Will. Because of the distance between Hawaii and Mr. Will's home in rural Washington DC, we will conduct most of our sessions by phone. I have decided to pursue full remission without the use of drugs, and he has agreed to trust this process... for now. Part of the recovery process for anyone suffering from FCDA requires an intellectual shift, perhaps we could go so far as to call it a paradigm shift. In the case of Mr. Will, I have determined that his use of poetry may line his path to recovery, and have therefore asked him to do several things.
1) Read the Kipling poem again and do some free-style writing about it. I have asked him to start with specific language in the poem, such as "To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride..." and see if it's possible to make links between the trajectory of meaning behind the poem and political support he has for the contemporary American "War On Terror."
2) I have asked him to focus at least part of his writing on the refrain, "Take up the White Man's burden." For instance, he may write quite a bit on why the words Take, White, and Man are capitalized throughout the poem. Does this resonate with meaning to him? If so, why?
3) Because the column that brought Mr. Will to me for diagnosis was entirely about Hawaiian people, Hawaiian political struggle, and ideas of federal recognition, I have asked Mr. Will to read a few books on the subject, beginning with Aloha Betrayed by Noenoe Silva (See suggested reading list in sidebar).
While my work is about healing, not politics, I have asked him to rethink his position after he has become legitimately informed on the complex, historical issues that have created the Akaka Bill and where actual Hawaiian people stand on this matter. While most Hawaiians agree that it is bad legislation, their reasoning is so far removed from Mr. Will's that they may as well be talking about completely separate issues.
(November 20th column)
This Weekʻs Diagnosis: DEMOCRACY COLLAPSE DISORDER
From time to time, Diagnosis America features "Be My Guest" Columnists. This weekʻs column is by Roberto Rodriguez.
COLUMN OF THE AMERICAS
NOVEMBER 19, 2007
MACEHUAL: BY ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ
ON THE VERGE OF DEMOCRACY COLLAPSE DISORDER
Colony Collapse Disorder: this is the name given to the dying off of
the world's bees, which spells an impending global crisis. It's not
that I want to make light of this diagnosis. Quite the reverse; it's
that the name could just as easily be applied to the state of the
nation. Though Democracy Collapse Disorder is what comes to mind.
When historians look back to examine the origins of this latter
disorder, it will be determined that it began in 2000, compliments of
the U.S. Supreme Court when its intervention resulted in the ascension
of George W. Bush to the presidency of the United States.
Lacking the tradition of contesting government, the opposition meekly
accepted the results. Yet, by governing from the middle, the highly
contested presidential election might have simply resulted in an
asterisk next to the president's name. Instead, he began to govern as
if he had received an overwhelming mandate from both, the electorate
and God, helping to usher in the most greedy, corrupt, anti-science,
secretive and unaccountable administration in the nation's history.
Under the guise of Christianity, POTUS or the President Of The United
States single-handedly helped to usher back in The Dark Ages.
Just as plans for the Iraq invasion were in place long before, 9-11,
the designs for Democracy Collapse Disorder were also in place, long
before the president's installation. Yet, President Bush, a blue-blood
son of a former president, was not an innocent bystander; to carry out
the neoconservative agenda of world dominance simply required the
notion of a unitary executive in which all power resides in POTUS.
Given 9-11, the attack gave him an opportunity to accelerate that
agenda, which included the de-Constitutionalization of the United
States..
The seven primary components of Democracy Collapse Disorder include
assertions by the president that he has the right to:
1) wage preemptive permanent war against any potential enemy, while
coddling tyrannical blood-thirsty dictators who support the U.S.
agenda of world domination.
2) declare that the United States is in fact in a permanent state of
worldwide war against "Islamo-fascism."
3) disregard the rights of anyone, including the right to secretly
detain anyone indefinitely, without due process and without the right
to legal representation, including the right to torture.
4) disregard any law, create any law, or interpret any law to his
favor, to be able to operate outside of the U.S. Constitution, while
also asserting the right to interpret his illegal actions as lawful.
5) operate outside of the Constitution during this time of permanent
war, without being subject to any checks and balances.
6) operate outside of international law and in disregard of
international treaties and conventions.
7) pardon, grant amnesty and grant retroactive immunity to anyone
under his control who violates the Constitution or any international
law.
If these were but theoretical assertions of power, that would be
dangerous enough. But this president has actually carried out his
assertions and aside from engaging the United States in a disastrous
illegal war and occupation, he has also been wrong about everything.
Wrong in a moral sense. Wrong in a legal sense. And wrong in a
strategic sense.
Enter the Democratic Party and the 2006 elections: its leaders are
given an overwhelming mandate to stop this runaway president who has
been plundering the public treasury to wage his illegal war. Yet,
their first order of business is to grant him and his war cabinet
unconditional amnesty and retroactive immunity.
That is the definition of Democracy Collapse Disorder.
If Congress had an alternate and effective plan to actually terminate
the illegal occupation of Iraq, that would be one thing, but worse
than being impotent, the refusal to hold the president accountable has
emboldened him to continue his criminal endeavors worldwide, including
threatening to wage yet another unsanctioned war against Iran.
To its credit, Congress has at least now taken a firm stand in support
of "the rule of law." Joining the likes of Lou Dobbs and Rep. Tom
Tancredo, who represent the lunatic and fanatical wing of the
political spectrum, Congress has taken a firm stand against amnesty,
that is, no amnesty for Mexicans. No amnesty for brown
Spanish-speaking dishwashers and maids. At least they are consistent.
There will also be no amnesty for those in the U.S. government whose
lies have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Iraq. Similar
to Scooter Libby, instead they will be granted immunity, pardons and
commutations.
That too is Democracy Collapse Disorder. It also sounds like the
definition of insanity.
(c) Column of the Americas 2007
Patzin, by Gonzales is published the 1st Monday of the Month.
Macehual, by Rodriguez is published the 3rd & 5th Mondays of the
month. Gonzales can be reached at Patzin@gmail.com-- Rodriguez can be
reached at XColumn@gmail.com. Also at: 520-743--0376
PO BOX 41552, Tucson, AZ 85717. Their columns are archived at:
hometown.aol.com/xcolumn/myhomepage/
TREATMENT PLAN:
The patient presented with symptoms that are beyond the scope of drugs that I can prescribe legally. I recommend a visit to the local medical marijuana clinic. I have no doubt that once the patient discusses the symptoms of DCD, the physician on-call at the clinic will not only grant the request for a membership card, but will likely administer the first dose on the spot. (I advise the patient to bring requisite snacks because of the side effects of the marijuana treatment, but only items that DO NOT derive from other countries, especially developing countries, or anything that has been genetically modified, as these things may subvert the rest of the suggested treatment outlined below).
I also recommend Reverse Primal Scream Therapy (RPST); my detractors have, in the past, argued that the severity of this therapy can be considered cruel, but I believe that when used in conjunction with medicinal marijuana and weekly talk-therapy sessions it could jump start the healing process. RPST is inexpensive and easily accessible. All it requires of the patient is the willingness to sit silently while the people(s) who have been on the receiving end of uninvited American Democracy pollination events verbally express their righteous indignation and refusal to submit.
DIAGNOSIS AMERICA column, November 10, 2007
By Anne Keala Kelly
PATHOLOGICAL COMPULSIVE DISORDER (PCD is like OCD, but different).
Things you should know about PCD:
Like most mental disorders, PCD is an equal opportunity illness that can afflict anyone, however, those most vulnerable to its devastating effects (real and imagined wounds to self and others) are white males between the ages of 39 and 75 who have a propensity for delusional daydreams about their own greatness. Studies have also shown that men of any ethnic background or economic class can be similarly afflicted, as can all women. The overwhelming connection between these groups appears to be the combined effects of personal ambition and the willingness to exploit people (most of them non-white) while appearing to help them. Because of this last characteristic, sometimes referred to as the "U Factor" or "User Syndrome," some scientists have nicknamed PCD the "Con Disorder," or "Pathological Con Disorder." A related illness in this case is American Racism Denial Syndrome (ARDS), but it is secondary. (See Patient Intake Form for symptoms and recommended medication; see below for diagnostic commentary and treatment plan.)
Introduction
When Duane "Dog" Chapman first contacted me for a consultation, he presented with several issues, the first being grief over a betrayal by his son, the second was his use of a racial slur. I was struck by what I perceived to be an over-sensitive response to the opinions of other people. I had not at that point read the transcript nor heard the taped conversation and was more concerned with his symptoms. I thought, how bad could it be?
Sadly, it was far worse than he had described to me during our first session, and I had to remind him that misrepresenting the depths of the problem only makes my work as a "docta," who focuses primarily on the American psyche, that much harder. And that if I were to treat him, he would need to commit to a) the prescribed treatment plan, b) weekly therapy sessions and c) reading a number of books that I believe will aid him, and the America he represents, in the healing process. I am uncertain about his willingness to proceed; I received a voice mail canceling our last appointment due to a hastily scheduled appearance on the Larry King show, and we have had no further contact.
WHEN DOGS BITE
Dogs that bite, especially older dogs, are typically thought of as beyond hope. The recidivist offender is often put to sleep either by a caring owner or in some cases the courts. Weʻve all read or heard stories of owners who let their dogs loose on people and then end up having to destroy the animals and/or do jail time. But what about the dog that bites itself?
Duane "Dog" Chapman is the metaphor of a self-mutilating dog. Chapman is lost in a labyrinth of Americaʻs race psychoses, the culmination of which is a corner stone of American culture. And because he was not the labyrinthʻs architect, Chapman doesnʻt believe he is a racist. He sees himself more as a commuter forced by circumstance to use the racist highway when he needs a shortcut, not as someone responsible for the highwayʻs existence. Indeed, he is experiencing trauma because he has followed the rules that govern its use and is now being shamed publicly. Once a proxy for white Americaʻs fear of non-white people, he has become proxy for white Americaʻs inability to contain its race rage.
Understandably, he is confused because the underlying mechanisms of American society are complicit in his rise and fall. How else can we explain a muscle-bulging white man who looks like something between the cartoon version of Thor, the Norse god of thunder, and a biker-styled cowboy, who calls his sonʻs black girlfriend a "f------ n-----" but insists that he is not racist?
Chapmanʻs tirade was in fact a passionate plea for his son not to infringe on his use of the N word, as if the word itself represents territory that he, being a dog, has marked. To him itʻs a piece of linguistic property that he stands on when he needs to reassure himself with notions of superiority. But language, whether verbal or physical, communicates things about us, some of it intentional, some not, and itʻs up to us to decode it.
Some forms of language are literally considered private property, as with copyrights. Others are public, or can be made public, as happened with Chapmanʻs taped conversation. Again with the dog metaphor... some dogs are bullies that bark and growl to get what they want: control over their territory, or in Chapmanʻs case, over his sonʻs affection for a black woman.
Whether or not the communication was intended to be private does nothing to diminish the historic and political meaning of the N word and the intended and unintended consequences when a white person uses it. So malleable is this word that Chapman claimed it had nothing to do with the ethnicity of his sonʻs girlfriend, but was instead a defining aspect of her character. Personally, Iʻve never heard it used by a black person to describe the character of a white person.
Still, if we follow this line of reasoning it leans toward notions of all things being equal in racist discourse. How many times have any of us heard or even remarked about non-whites hating whites and how racist that is? But just getting close to equality in racism would mean Africans and the natives of North and South America would have to invade Europe, dispossess its people, kidnap, torture and enslave them for 500 years and use their bodies to build black and brown empires in Africa, America and Europe.
The N word is a special word in America. It can be a verb, a noun, an adjective; it can instill terror and humiliation when a white person uses it, and communicate humor between black people. However, when a famous person gets caught using it or any of its related concepts, the word then becomes like the magic bullet theory surrounding the Kennedy assassination. The self-loathing of America is so overwhelming that people need to believe itʻs all about one lone nut case who then has to be sacrificed on the altar of American denial. For the country itself to acknowledge its own dependency would be going too far.
Iʻve heard its twin word, "negro," used by whites, Asians and Latinos in an affectionate way, as with a Latin boyfriend I had who greeted his brother with "hey negro" when they talked on the phone. Sick as it seemed to me, it was their expression of intimacy. But what does it mean when intimacy and humor are used to disguise the unspoken overall acceptance of white supremacy, or in the case of the former boyfriend, the "at least we ainʻt black" supremacy? Implicit in that silent agreement is the passivity of the contemporary conspiracy of racism.
Americaʻs Racism Denial Syndrome (ARDS) owes its existence to its guilt by association characteristic. Because so much of the American social, economic and cultural infrastructure was constructed on varying levels of racism, almost every group can trace its existence in America to a racially determined oppression. The ethnic cleansing/forced removal perpetrated against the indigenous peoples in America makes black people complicit even as they are targets because, through no fault of their own, they have become uninvited settlers in the homeland of other peoples. Seriously, that lie about freed slaves getting 40 acres and mule? I suppose it sounds good, but native scholars have pointed out that if the great promise had ever taken place, the land would have been stolen from the natives.
Another area of the ARDS, which may have some loose connection to our metaphor of the self-wounding dog, is the use of politeness and apologies to mask the historical hatred for people who are not white, or in the case of interracial mixed bloods, not white enough.
Whatʻs remarkable about this is that it carries an embedded colonial patterning of self oppression/hatred that manifests as an urge to reinforce the oppressorʻs machinery. The result is that when the corporate owned media calls upon its countless non-white consumers to forgive what they are told is an anomaly, they will lean towards viewing Chapmanʻs rant as a desperate man dispensing fatherly advice to his son, or a fatherly crime of passion. The masses will be inclined to ignore the growing trend of prominent white men spewing racist and anti-Semitic language (Don Imus, Mel Gibson and Michael Richards). Like a diverted river finding its way back to its original flow, is this a comeback of an ideology that was taking a nap? Or is it a backlash against a society that refuses to examine the premise of its existence? (A call to the CDC confirmed rumors that they are undertaking a study to determine whether this outbreak is a new, contagious strain of PCD.)
But forgive Chapman we must if we are not ready to release our addiction to what he represents and the role he plays in suspending our own disbelief. Forgiving him is our only way of collectively denying that racism goes way beyond skin color, that itʻs an eternal, generational form of hatred. If you hate someoneʻs ethnicity, are you not hating the ancestors who made them and preemptively hating the descendants who will come from them?
Maybe for Americans racism is so entrenched that doing away with it seems like it will take too much effort. After all, most of us are just trying to get from day to day, and racism is an incredibly fluid, multi-faceted ideology that relies on passive acceptance. To unhinge it would mean changing all the stories about Americaʻs greatness, its promise of equality; America wouldnʻt exist if the first white invaders didnʻt adhere to and expand on racist principles.
And being non-white has never represented power, wealth or freedom in America. It has meant the opposite. Which complex came first, white power or non-white inferiority? Are either of these notions of social order real, and if so is it possible to dismantle it? Or is asking these questions like the dog chasing, catching and biting its own tail?
Six years ago on a trip to DC, I visited an exhibit at the Smithsonian that focused on the migration of black people from the rural south to the urban north. As I wove my way through the different artifacts on display, past the replica of a share croppers cabin replete with dirt floor, a wood burning stove, a rocking chair and handmade broom, a Ku Klux Klan robe hovering above another glass case was visible from nearly every part of the exhibit, even though it was near the end. I thought, oh, a KKK outfit. Iʻve seen those before in movies. It wasnʻt shocking or even unfamiliar. Itʻs a well known, all encompassing symbol that anyone of any ethnicity can point to and say, "bad white people," like wagging our heads at a swastika and saying, "Nazis, they were crazy, but thatʻs all over now."
Icons like pointy white hoods and swastikas comfort us because they are symbols for the worst of western civilization and appear to be isolated in the past. Witness The History Channel, all Nazi all the time. And the scratchy black and white footage of Hitler and company walking at 18 frames a second instead of 24 makes it seem even more ancient. The uniforms they wore are safe signifiers of how white people who went too far used to dress. The white hood and robe floods the imagination so no one has to be inconvenienced by the living legacy behind such murderous couture. So prevailing are these notions of what white supremacy looks like, that most people don't see it unless the person expressing it is sticking their arm straight out at a 45 degree angle, or using the N word.
As I got closer to the KKK outfit, what began as subtle, involuntary observations evolved into an abrupt end to my own sensibilities about the genocidal history of America. I had spent most of my adult life developing an understanding of that history, along with the parallel detachment from personal responsibility. I donʻt like racists, I donʻt knowingly hang out with racists, I recognize racism in the institutions of America, in movies and songs and in the absence of fair representation by and about non-white people in politics and media.
Despite my armor of intolerance and righteous indignation, my mind continued to unpack what I was looking at. The robe had sweat stains on it and appeared to be well worn; the wearer of this thing was maybe about 5ʻ6", not very broad in the shoulders. I presumed a man wore it, but donʻt recall seeing a name or gender identifying the owner. It just floated there on a thin wire with its collar about ten feet off the ground, its hemline eye level to me. Suspended in well-lit isolation over a glass case, it represented a lynching. But it was also evocative of choir singers, my high school graduation gown, angels and altar boys, even though it meant none of that.
The case beneath it contained newspaper clippings and references to stories, like one about an entire family lynched on one tree. I perused the rest of the display until I got to the NAACP posters calling for people to write to congress and ask for the passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill of 1921.
I donʻt remember the rest of the exhibit. The fact that just over 80 years ago white Americans wouldnʻt even pass a bill to make lynching black people illegal eclipsed everything else.
Terrorizing and murdering black people in America was, until very recently, not so unusual. During a 21 year period at the end of the 19th century, as many as 3 lynchings a week took place somewhere in the US. And the symbols deployed by the terrorists have lingered, as we have seen in recent weeks with a noose and a swastika being left on office doors of black and Jewish professors at Columbia. The actual lynching and torture of black people is rare now, but the pathological rage it was born of has morphed into other kinds of control.
Through shows like Dog The Bounty Hunter, on the Arts & Entertainment Network, everyone can watch remnant pieces of the slave/master narrative play out. The heroic white bounty hunter with dream catcher earings, dark shades, a sleeveless shirt and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth routinely captures darkies who have run away from American justice. As he takes them in, he and his wife lecture the fugitives about everything from parenting skills to Jesus. Then the prisoners are presumably carted off to the county, state or federal prison system, aka, the prison industrial complex. The prison industry in the US experienced its first boom after the emancipation of slaves; the 13th amendment that freed the slaves also made it easy to re-enslave many of them in prison through forced, unpaid labor ironically used to rebuild the south. These past two decades have been another boom time for the industry, thus programs like Cops and Dog The Bounty Hunter are apropos.
Here again, the ARDS: the dark people Chapman is chasing are mostly Hawaiians and other Polynesians. If the Dog were chasing African Americans instead of Pacific Islanders, how would that play out in Americaʻs racial order of things?
Chapman, like America, has been outed for bad behavior, not for the motivation behind it. He says heʻs sorry, but if that were true, he would have been sorry when he did it, not when he got called to the carpet for it. Thatʻs the thing about mental disorders, they are involuntary patterns set by a host of determining factors.
Pathological Compulsive Disorder is an integral part of the repetitive manifestation of racism in America. This means that once in a while an open expression of racism is going to show itself via a surrogate elder (Imus), hero (Gibson), clown (Richards) or cowboy/sheriff (Chapman). Whatʻs as disturbing, though, is when America collectively looks askance, as if an imaginary friend has suddenly taken physical form. Or maybe itʻs more like when a dog bites itself and is surprised by the pain inflicted with its own teeth.
TREATMENT PLAN
I recommend drinking lots of water, several hours a day of quiet time, rest and long meditative walks. I also suggest enrolling in How Racism Works 101, reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X at least two times, and prayers to whoever your God is, whether Norse or not. And lastly, Mr. Chapman, I believe the most important part of your healing will come when you give every single dime you and your family have made, off the backs of Polynesians and other non-white people, to the families you damaged when you exploited their suffering for a television show. Because every family that has someone incarcerated, regardless of the "crime," suffers for it. When people like you get rich and famous off of it... in a better world that would be criminal.
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