Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Time to Awaken True American Democracy: The Power of the People
Yesterday I was interviewed about my anthology, Women Writing Resistance in Latin America & the Caribbean, on the Berkeley CA Pacifica Radio affiliate KPFA. The show is called "Against the Grain," hosted by C.S. Soong, and focusing on "politics, society & ideas." In the course of our conversation, CS asked me to explain what I meant when I talked about "internal colonization" in the introduction to the book, and the question has continued to resonate with me this morning.
Audre Lorde described internal colonization best when she called it "that piece of the oppressor that is planted deep inside you." It's all the assumptions we carry within us about who is supposed to be dominant or subordinate, what kind of appearance is most attractive or most effective, what we are supposed to accept without question as "the natural order," the way things are meant be.
Resisting internal colonization turns out to be one of the most difficult things anyone practicing resistance to the status quo and activism for social change is called on to do--largely because internal colonization is so very insidious. We are so conditioned to accept the way things are, especially in this day and age of media-induced stupor, that it gets harder and harder to think outside the box. What does it take to provoke outrage in this country?
For example, how could it be that the movement to impeach George W. Bush is having such trouble gaining traction? According to a story posted on Alternet.org yesterday, it's only now that the mainstream media, specifically the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, is beginning to report on the growing impeachment movement in Congress-- months after it became clear that Bush and his team lied to the nation on why we should invade Iraq, months after the flaunting of international law began with the illegal detention and torture centers at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and elsewhere, months after the widespread illegal wiretapping of U.S. citizens began, months after it became clear, through the abysmal government response to the Katrina disaster, that Homeland Security is a great big pork barrel sham.
It's my hunch that we have "internal colonization" to blame for the sluggishness of our national response to these outrages. The one thing the Bush team has been most successful at is wrapping themselves in the American flag and identifying themselves with the invincible power of American empire. And since this kind of nationalist talk is spoon-fed to Americans in the schools and the media from earliest childhood, it becomes implanted, second nature: America is the strongest country in the world, we stand for democracy and freedom, we can do no wrong, not ever, no how and no way--and "we" are the Republicans currently in power.
Ordinary Americans have been essentially brainwashed into the Bushies' black/white dogma--you're either with us or against us, and if you're against us you're evil, inhuman, and deserve to be exterminated. Having finally gotten a chance to watchthe outstanding film "Hotel Rwanda," I am reminded of the way the Hutus referred to the Tutsis as "cockroaches," a verbal move that dehumanized them, making it possible for millions of people to be slaughtered as casually as you might spray a cockroach nest under your kitchen sink.
We have been indoctrinated to believe that the life of a cockroach is worth nothing. It's this kind of hierarchical thinking, placing the value of some forms of life above others, that has gotten us into the present predicament of our planet. Of course I'm not a nut who believes a hunk of algae is as important as a panda bear, or a human being. But we must recognize that without algae, for instance, and trees, and other plant life that we take for granted and kill wantonly when they're in our way, we so-called "higher life forms" could not exist on this planet. Plants produce oxygen, plants underpin our food chain--without plants we die.
The dangerous lack of recognition of the interdependence of every aspect of our planetary ecosystem is due to our internal colonization, which began back with Darwin, who placed human beings at the apex of a hierarchical evolutionary ladder, and insisted, in a scientific twist on the old Biblical injunction to "be fruitful and multiply and be stewards of the land," that we were destined by evolution to rule the earth.
We are the most powerful species on earth, no doubt about it. We have the power to wipe out ourselves and every other species too, except perhaps the lowly algae and cockroach. But it's a mark of our internal colonization that we admire power that shows itself as destruction, as domination. We need to resist this longstanding indoctrination into hierarchal thinking, and begin to value a form of power that, as Frances Moore Lappe puts it in her new book Democracy's Edge, "builds the capacities of all involved." Lappe posits a form of power that is "creative, freeing, collaborative, dynamic, and based on a give-and-take, two-way relationship," rather than a hierarchical top-down structure.
This is a form of power that we all possess, if only we could recognize its potential sleeping within us. If we could only wake up the great slumbering power of true American democracy, we'd have George Bush and his cronies out of Washington in no time.
Audre Lorde described internal colonization best when she called it "that piece of the oppressor that is planted deep inside you." It's all the assumptions we carry within us about who is supposed to be dominant or subordinate, what kind of appearance is most attractive or most effective, what we are supposed to accept without question as "the natural order," the way things are meant be.
Resisting internal colonization turns out to be one of the most difficult things anyone practicing resistance to the status quo and activism for social change is called on to do--largely because internal colonization is so very insidious. We are so conditioned to accept the way things are, especially in this day and age of media-induced stupor, that it gets harder and harder to think outside the box. What does it take to provoke outrage in this country?
For example, how could it be that the movement to impeach George W. Bush is having such trouble gaining traction? According to a story posted on Alternet.org yesterday, it's only now that the mainstream media, specifically the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, is beginning to report on the growing impeachment movement in Congress-- months after it became clear that Bush and his team lied to the nation on why we should invade Iraq, months after the flaunting of international law began with the illegal detention and torture centers at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and elsewhere, months after the widespread illegal wiretapping of U.S. citizens began, months after it became clear, through the abysmal government response to the Katrina disaster, that Homeland Security is a great big pork barrel sham.
It's my hunch that we have "internal colonization" to blame for the sluggishness of our national response to these outrages. The one thing the Bush team has been most successful at is wrapping themselves in the American flag and identifying themselves with the invincible power of American empire. And since this kind of nationalist talk is spoon-fed to Americans in the schools and the media from earliest childhood, it becomes implanted, second nature: America is the strongest country in the world, we stand for democracy and freedom, we can do no wrong, not ever, no how and no way--and "we" are the Republicans currently in power.
Ordinary Americans have been essentially brainwashed into the Bushies' black/white dogma--you're either with us or against us, and if you're against us you're evil, inhuman, and deserve to be exterminated. Having finally gotten a chance to watchthe outstanding film "Hotel Rwanda," I am reminded of the way the Hutus referred to the Tutsis as "cockroaches," a verbal move that dehumanized them, making it possible for millions of people to be slaughtered as casually as you might spray a cockroach nest under your kitchen sink.
We have been indoctrinated to believe that the life of a cockroach is worth nothing. It's this kind of hierarchical thinking, placing the value of some forms of life above others, that has gotten us into the present predicament of our planet. Of course I'm not a nut who believes a hunk of algae is as important as a panda bear, or a human being. But we must recognize that without algae, for instance, and trees, and other plant life that we take for granted and kill wantonly when they're in our way, we so-called "higher life forms" could not exist on this planet. Plants produce oxygen, plants underpin our food chain--without plants we die.
The dangerous lack of recognition of the interdependence of every aspect of our planetary ecosystem is due to our internal colonization, which began back with Darwin, who placed human beings at the apex of a hierarchical evolutionary ladder, and insisted, in a scientific twist on the old Biblical injunction to "be fruitful and multiply and be stewards of the land," that we were destined by evolution to rule the earth.
We are the most powerful species on earth, no doubt about it. We have the power to wipe out ourselves and every other species too, except perhaps the lowly algae and cockroach. But it's a mark of our internal colonization that we admire power that shows itself as destruction, as domination. We need to resist this longstanding indoctrination into hierarchal thinking, and begin to value a form of power that, as Frances Moore Lappe puts it in her new book Democracy's Edge, "builds the capacities of all involved." Lappe posits a form of power that is "creative, freeing, collaborative, dynamic, and based on a give-and-take, two-way relationship," rather than a hierarchical top-down structure.
This is a form of power that we all possess, if only we could recognize its potential sleeping within us. If we could only wake up the great slumbering power of true American democracy, we'd have George Bush and his cronies out of Washington in no time.
