The United States is an Apartheid Nation

The united states is an apartheid nation.

You may read these words and ignore them as the intentional hyperbole of the Radical Left, or as words used by ‘activists’, to inflame the masses, and call them to riot.

They are of course, none of those things. They are a cold, calculated descriptor, of a legal, political, economic and militarized system, that subjugates portions of our people, to benefit and enrich another.

The basic definition of apartheid is simple:

“A policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race.”

Is this not what we have in America ?

Is this not what we have always had ?

The gap in wealth between white families and black families in the United States of America, is wider today, than it was at the height of Apartheid South Africa.

Just consider, for a moment, the idea of a anti-apartheid protestor out on the streets, who is greeted by a South African. She says thank you for your work, and just remember - the economic divide here, is worse.

Though this divide, as staggering as it may be, is still simply a portion of our subjugation.

When the calvary came west, they killed, raped, maimed, burned, destroyed, infected, and ultimately colonized a continent. Or of course, they won it from another colonizer.

Along the way, hundreds of Treaties were signed by the United States, guaranteeing vast swaths of land to indigenous people, and guaranteeing of paramount importance - their Sovereignty.

Though the Constitution calls Treaties the Supreme Law of the Land, the entire story of our expansion, is one of perpetual breaching; of treaties and laws.

As is often said by Native activists - The Indian Wars Have Never Ended. The old POW Camps became Reservations, often on the same land and with the exact same identifying number. These reservations work still, to deny sovereignty, and keep the original people of this land in continual subjugation.

The same laws used to demarcate what land is Reservation and what land belongs to the extractive industries who are constantly at war with Native Peoples, are used to determine what land is used for section 8 housing, and what land will be gentrified for the benefit of the ruling majority. The structures of prison, begin in the organization of land and city.

This of course, is why the statement - The United States is an Apartheid Nation - ought not be terribly complicated or emotional. It is simply a clear minded, honest analysis of a political structure that for centuries has stolen land through tactics of genocide and grave deception, and stolen bodies through tactics of conquest, and enslavement.

The Laws governing Native People are fundamentally different than those governing me. As are the laws so often applied to Black People. This applies to red lining and real estate, loans and credit, our educational system and our healthcare system. It certainly applies to application of force by police, and determination to punish by juries and judges alike. And though the definitions may shift slightly, the same racism applies to which countries we support with resources and food and weaponry and intelligence, and which countries we destroy for extraction.

We may have theories regarding the equal application of the law. Stories and legends and tales and ideas. But such has never been true on this land, not now and not since Columbus first encountered the Arawaks. Their eventual extermination, began the war we are still battling today.

If we can begin to acknowledge the severity of the problem. The scale at which white supremacy has colonized the planet, and the thoroughness with which it has erased the ancient history of this land we call home - then, and maybe only then, can we begin to acknowledge the scale at which we must consider solutions.

In this way, Apartheid South Africa offers a compelling roadmap, or at least, a series of lessons, for what we might imagine.

Of course, it is worth acknowledging up front that the fundamental difference, between the project of decolonizing the United States and decolonizing South Africa, or for that matter, India, the Philippines, or nearly anywhere else, is that here, the genocide of native peoples was much, much more thorough. While it is obvious to us now, that the British should no longer rule India, or that Afrikkans should no longer rule South Africa, it still feels perfectly normal, that a largely european power structure, “founded” entirely by europeans, controls whether people of a darker skin complexion, are allowed to be free on these lands.

This reality presents an inescapable mathematical challenge. Absent widespread violence, the majority must either decide to side with the minority for justice, or the fundamental demographics of the country must change. In our time, we are seeing the beginnings of all three.

When South Africa began its process of transformation, there were many unknowns, and both tensions and passions, were high.

The journey toward a new constitution, a new flag, a new song, and a new national story, was a long one, but in so many ways, it was supported by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission took seven years, and worked to unearth grave injustices, and crimes against humanity, that had taken place on their soil. Those who had been persecuted were given a platform to put those grievances on the record, and those who had committed the crimes were given due process, and ultimately some form of justice.

There has never been such a commission in the United States. Not for the Boarding Schools, which perpetuated a direct strategy of generational genocide - and not for Slavery, which shackled human beings for centuries. Not for the detention of families without habeas corpus on the border, and not for the extrajudicial murder of Black people by police.

We could create one.

We could go inch by inch across this great land, and acknowledge the crimes of colonialism. We could build monuments to those who resisted, and the heroes who defied colonial conquest. We could hold ceremonies, led by indigenous people, acknowledging what has been done, and committing ourselves and our future generations, to restore what has been taken.

We could hold vigils, led by the Black community, lionizing those who have given their lives in the struggle, and pledging enormous resources to finally ensure the descendants of those brought here by force, are given the modern forty acres and a mule they have been promised so many times before.

Just as restitution of lands are inseparable from reconciliation with native peoples, property ownership is inseparable from any meaningful reparations program. It is the single greatest contributor to the wealth gap, and the most direct way to ensure people are able to expeditiously live lives of dignity and peace.

For some, these proposals may seem extreme, or too large in scale. I wonder how you would feel, if it had been your father where George Floyd had been.

Is it extreme to honor the Treaties ?  Or is it extreme to ask a people to endure centuries of subjugation. Is it extreme to ensure Black people have political control over the forces policing them ?  Or is it extreme to assume we will continuing seeing this same pattern of innocent people being murdered, and masses of people rising up to demand some measure of justice.

An earlier version of the flag we think of as the American flag, was flown by the United States military, in each of the wars against Native people. Even today, if you walk into the Pentagon, the first several flags represent the Indian Wars. These conquests set the foundation for what we would later do in nearly every corner of the world.

At gatherings of Indigenous resistance, you will sometimes see the flag flown upside down. This will often draw a strong reaction from white folks, who feel it is gravely disrespectful. It isn't uncommon for Natives to look back and ask some variation of the basic question - how can the direction of a piece of cloth, inspire more outrage from you than our continual subjugation ?

As it turns out, the guidebook for how to properly treat the United States flag, says that it should be flown upside down, as a signal for duress. When all is not well.

All is not well.

The Pine Ridge Reservation is home to the Oglala’s, who fought alongside Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, in the last great defeat of the U.S. military. The Battle of Little Big Horn or the Battle of the Greasy Grass, depending on who you listen to. The United State’s first form of retribution was Wounded Knee, the largest mass shooting in our history. Today, Pine Ridge is the poorest county in the country. The empire never forgets.

If you are white, or a European American, you have likely grown up being told a story of who we are, and where we are. If you are like me, you held that story close at one point, and felt deeply and personally identified with its myths, symbols, flags and songs. The journey away from that construct, and toward the people who have always been here, or those whose families were brought here by force, may be a challenging one, but they are the ones who have always known what is truly happening. Their stories and their point of view represent a far closer understanding of the “truth” than a state sanction propaganda campaign, stretching from the Pope’s decision to legalize theft of land from non-christians in 1493 - all the way to today. Manifest Destiny. 

From sea to shining sea, all belongs to us, the europeans who claimed it a few hundred years ago through vast crimes and destruction.

For many, they will tell you that this is the end of the story. What is settled is settled. What is done is done. But like a farm planted over forest, the groomed soil may be a physical reality for some time - generations even - but eventually, given a long enough time scale, the forest will return.

Such is true of this land. The songs and the symbols. The ideas and the principles. The systems for governance and the laws that guided them. All were here for millennia. All are deeply imbedded in the fiber of the land. All are also, returning.

A Constitution which calls Black people a literal fraction of a human being, and a Declaration of Independence that calls the Original People’s of this land “Merciless Indian Savages”, may not represent a strong enough foundation for this cross continental civilization to stand on. If “American” means anything, it is the identity of a people who decided to tell a new story, and write a new structure, for how we shall live with one another and with the earth. None of us living in this nation today created that word, but each of us must decide what it means for us, in our time. Will we once again claim the freedom inherit in every living being, and author a new future, and a new system, for us and those who come after ?

Imagine if you were to grab a bedsheet, and tape it tightly to the wall. Then sit back to consider; if the flag of this land, and the flag of our people, were yours to create, what would you paint ?

Perhaps consider doing the same with a large document and a sharpie. If the words that defined us as a people, were yours to write, what would you say ?

And then consider doing the same with this revolutionary moment. If the vast forces of human beings, leaving their homes and putting their bodies on the line to demand justice, were given a mantra, what would you have us say ?  What would you have us chant ? What would you hope we reach our arms to the sky in order to express?

Rebellion is as inherit to this grand project of democracy as any other behavior, and should be encouraged and supported however possible. Though it is not my place to make demands of anyone, as someone who has felt rebellion at the center of their soul for decades, I will implore a single piece of unsolicited and hopeful insight:

Use your rebellion to create.

Use your defiance to articulate a new path, a new identity, a new story and a new us. Use your anger to build. Use your rage to make.

There will always be destruction; it is inseparable from entropy. The question is always where, and what comes after.

The Original Peoples of this land often dedicated themselves to the creation and perpetuation, of vast ecosystems. Some claim the Redwoods and forests of the west, the rice fields of the midwest, and even the Amazon, were all created and supported over millennia, by generations of indigenous people.

One of the most significant tactics in their quiver of tools, was the controlled burn. In the forests, a controlled burn does many things. It kills all the underbrush that is clogging the pathways for animal migration. It creates thick layers of nutrients in the soil. The heat can often open cones, allowing seeds to be released. And perhaps most unexpected, fire can be an effective tactic to guide animal migration, and bring wild herds toward land that needs to be grazed or tilled, and away from places that need regrowth.

Today we have handed control of our forests and grasslands and lakes and rivers, to bureaucrats who do not understand these natural cycles, and to extractive industries that ignore our interdependence, for short term, personal enrichment.

The results are forest fires, growing in frequency and intensity, each year.

What is the lesson ?

The lesson is use your fire. Use it with focus and determination. Use it with an understanding of the Whole. Use your fire to burn all part of the forest that must be burned. Use your fire, knowing that points of heat can benefit everything else, without burning everything else.

Use your fire as the ancients used fire.
To perpetuate life.

The system must be reborn. We cannot continue to pretend that a generation of europeans came here, and just happened to create the most unique form of government the world had ever seen. They learned many of their founding principles of freedom and self rule, from the people of this land, and the history of liberty that had thrived on this continent, long before Europeans knew these shores existed.

If we continue to tell a story of european exceptionalism, and erase the true origins of those exceptional ideas, or the true labor behind our exceptional industries, then we will continue to birth generations of white americans who will be raised within a fiction of supremacy. To change their understanding of who they are, we must collectively become infinitely more honest about who we are, and where we are.

American Police are the generational result of Slave Patrols. They existed to protect white property, and keep a dark and exploited population, controlled. This basic function has not changed.

We must continue to protest these basic functions. Stop them wherever they emerge. Work within the system to root out District Attorneys, Sheriffs, Judges, and so on, while working outside the system to create civilian forces to protect vulnerable civilians by any means necessary.

We could be mobilizing as local, nonviolent, independent militias, to guard the homes of undocumented families from ICE. To protect native communities from man-camps and destructive pipelines. And yes, to protect black communities from the police.

This same work extends around the world. While we should work to elect a Commander in Chief who prioritizes peace, in the meantime people around the world need protection from imperialism. Whether working with international forces, or local militias, sovereignty belongs to all people, and everyone has a right to protection.

The same industries profiting from the vast expansion of our militaries around the world, are profiting from the militarization of our police at home. This larger collection of businesses and industries is often known as the War Machine. Beginning with Nixon, there has been a deeply strategic effort to divide the international peace movements, from domestic movements for justice. This divide serves only those committed to war.

A unified, global movement toward ending colonialism in all its forms, will only come into being if we are honest about what has brought us to this point. Without a legal path to prosecute the crimes of colonialism, we will never share a mutual understanding of our shared history, and a broad consensus for how we begin to heal.

We can become more. All life is created equal and interdependent with one another. We can commit to the freedom of life, and the liberation of all living beings.

Until that time, there is a long and profound legacy of those who have given everything they have to give, toward our collective liberation. While there can never be a comparison between the pain inflicted on the victim, and that of the perpetrator, there can also be no doubt that conquest poisons all of us. Everyone has a roll to play in our getting free, but none more so than those holding the keys to power and privilege.

We will each find our own path to healing and personal liberation, but our collective liberation will demand mass transformation. Of systems and structures. Leaders and borders. Symbols and shared understanding. I do believe this process is indelibly supported when we put the full force of our being toward constructive rebellion. When we live it and breathe it. Speak it and write it. Sing it and paint it. Love it and be it. A vision of who we could become.  Of where we might go. Of how life will be, when all are born free.

Sending love and strength to all those on the frontlines. Respect always for those who put their bodies on the line for all of us.

Sean