American Removal begins with a language.
It starts with Indians as “uncivilized,” “savages.”
It expands with Black bodies deemed as “niggers” and “3/5ths.”
It proliferates with “providence” but only for Aryan destiny, “by the millions.”
American Removal embraces its robes with an “Indian Removal Act,”
Followed by a war on “Dirty Mexicans,”
Followed by a “Chinese Exclusion Act,”
Followed by Filipinos as “niggers.”
Then “Japs Keep Moving.”
American Removal tests its first PSAs with “public enemies,” “hobos, tramps, and vagrants,” but ultimately settles for Black & Brown youth as “gangs.”
It then sows its modern seeds with a “red line.”
Red line maps delineate our colors, separating “undesirables” and “subversive racial elements” from “homogeneous,” “single-family [white] homes.”
Until a war to end all wars. Two atom bombs dropped on “Japs,” but none on German nazis or Italian fascists.
After the war, American Removal grows to include “Un-American,” “Black radicals,” and “communist hippies” into its lexicon.
Once these begin to ring hollow, it reinvigorates itself: “[Black] drugs and gangs,” “[Black] welfare queens,” [Latinx and Asian] immigrant “invasion.”
Then national publication on a generation of new [Black] “super-predators.”
American Removal then sanctifies itself, calling on “[white] property owners” to “revolt.”
Followed by calls to “Save Our State,”
Followed by “English (Only) For Our Children.”
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, American Removal finds still new life-blood: Global war on Muslims as “terrorists,” “extremists,” then once again “radical.”
A generation later, it relishes in “good people on both sides,” “shit-hole countries,” and “stand back and stand by.”
But when you ask about a million bodies burned by drones in the Global South since 2001,
Or when you ask about civil uniforms shooting down Black men, women and children,
When you ask about the forced sterilization of incarcerated Latina women in private detention centers,
Or when you ask about the gentrification of our neighborhoods, a city’s homeless “clean-ups” as new police patrol new hotels around the corners,
When you ask American Removal if it may dignify these acts with so much as an acknowledgement,
That’s when all you get is silence.
American Removal concludes with a silence.
J.T.
