By Sikivu Hutchinson
In 1963, Malcolm X declared that John F. Kennedy’s
assassination was an example of “chickens coming home to roost”. He argued that the U.S.’ climate of bigotry
and state violence was to blame for his death.
Taken out of context, his comments were misconstrued by some as
endorsing Kennedy’s murder. In an interview
with journalist Louis Lomax he maintained, “I meant that the death of Kennedy was the result of a long
line of violent acts, the culmination of hate and suspicion and doubt in this
country.”
Malcolm X’s critique resonates in an environment of
in-your-face white supremacist vitriol stoked by nearly eight years of hating
on Obama and social justice. Exhibit A
is Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the U.S. and the nativist
feeding frenzy it’s inspired from white Middle America.
Yet, one of my pet peeves is those who self-righteously
claim that these fascist acts are “un-American”, when they are merely chickens
coming home to roost. In his criticism of Trump’s rhetoric, President Obama
claimed that this “is not who we are as Americans”. Continuing in this vein, CNN commentator
Fareed Zakaria wrote
recently about being “appalled” by Trump’s bigotry as a naturalized American
citizen (the essay is entitled “I am a Muslim. But Trump’s views appall me because
I’m an American”). Zakaria said he’s
“proud of that identity because as an immigrant, it
came to me through deep conviction and hard work, not the accident of birth.”
Zakaria’s statements are problematic
on a few levels. First, there is the
specter of model minority bootstraps meritocracy implied by the characterization
“hardworking immigrant”. While some are
“simply” granted the so-called rights and privileges of American citizenship
due to the accident of birth, others like Zakaria, have worked damn hard to
earn it. Zakaria’s evocation of American
exceptionalism discounts the realities of people of color in a nation where “hardworking”
has practically become an antonym for being black.
Secondly, Zakaria laments being forced
to claim his Muslim otherness despite identifying as a secular agnostic. Perhaps
privileged brown folk like him can turn a blind eye to the pervasive
invisibility and bigotry that non-white non-Christian Americans experience, but
the majority don’t have the luxury.
After each terror attack allegedly perpetrated
in the name of Islam, the U.S. launches into a predictable cycle of heightened
anti-Muslim Islamophobic attacks and hate incidents. Muslim communities become more visible to the
mainstream as a reviled other, while public officials decry these explicit acts
of profiling as an anomaly—not reflective of the “true” spirit of American
values.
But the true spirit of American values
has always been demonization of the other in the name of “democracy”. Homilies about the U.S.’ moral uprightness
and vaunted democratic freedoms are belied by the staggering reality of epic
racial wealth gaps, deepening racial segregation and state violence. Exceptionalists like Obama and Zakaria cling
to the notion that the U.S. has the highest standard of living and greatest
economic mobility among “developed” nations.
They peddle the illusion of American religious freedom and tolerance,
despite the overwhelmingly Christian face of elected officials and the
anti-Muslim, anti-secular bigotry that this dominance fuels. And they bandy the
myth of civil education despite the apartheid structure of American public
schools, their Eurocentric curricula, destructive zero tolerance policies and policing
of children of color.
What the “I’m appalled because I’m an
American” flag-wrapping posture really implies is that those others—in backward
non-enlightened, non-Western societies that are supposedly so radically
different from ours—don’t have the same high regard for principles of equality
and justice.
Tell that to the descendants of
Japanese Americans displaced from their homes, jobs and livelihoods during the
World War II-era internment.
Tell that
to the hundreds of activists of color discredited and slaughtered under the
U.S.’ COINTELPRO regime.
Tell that to black children systematically brutalized in the Obama
administration’s police state schools while they pledge “one nation under God”. Flag wrapping and patriotism in the face of
fascism, overt and covert, are the
last refuge of ahistorical scoundrels.
