Why is the United States so Violent.docx (original) (raw)

I think that if we want to understand the incredible violence of the United States, institutionally and individually, the indelible line of causation goes back to racism, and the institutionalization of violence as the primary vehicle for capturing land from the First Nations, and then utilizing the same apparatus of violence to kidnap the labor and quiescence from the slaves. At each juncture of U.S. history, that “official” capacity for violence (in the form of armies, police forces, and organized terrorist organizations) has been leveled first at Native Americans and African-Americans, and then against other subaltern targets. At every juncture, non-institutionalized violence – militias, terrorist vigilantes, interpersonal violence including intimate partner violence, as well as violent criminality – has been tolerated or even encouraged as an adjunct and justification for systemic violence. And always, the overarching rationale has been the classic racist (and gender) blaming the victim canard, that the targets “do not understand anything but violence.” (That has been applied as relentlessly to women (who “need to be put in their place”) as people of color (who usually need to be “civilized,” because of their “barbarous” natures.)