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 with “Japs Keep Moving.”
American Removal tests its first PSAs with “public enemies,” “hobos, tramps, and vagrants,” but ultimately settles for Black & Brown youth in inner cities 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,” “[white] single-family 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 incorporates “Un-American,” “Black radicals,” and “communist hippies” into its lexicon.
Once these ring hollow, it reinvigorates itself: “[Black] drugs and gangs,” “[Black] welfare queens,” [Latinx and Asian] immigrant “invasion,”
Followed by 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 yet more life-blood: a global war on Muslims as “terrorists,” “extremists,” and once again “radicals.”
A generation later, American Removal 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 Brown women in private prisons,
Or when you ask about the gentrification of our neighborhoods, a city’s homeless “clean-ups” while 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 ends with a silence.
J.T.
