Perhaps you all remember the story of Chicken Little and
how, because an acorn fell on her head, she feared the sky was falling, but of
course it was not. Well, I fear we have a situation where, at least from the
point of view of White male Western-Europeans, the sky truly is falling. I am
considering once again, the increasingly
obvious failure of the dominant paradigm of Western-European thought, the
paradigm that has been held for at least five hundred years and contains within
it the myths of White, Western-European male superiority, as well as the
superiority of Western-European culture. I speak of these beliefs as myths
because that is what they basically were, although from the first appearance of
Portuguese caravels along the African coast, through the horrors of European
colonialism, the continued exploitation of the third world, the recent “wars”
that still continue it, and the dominance of the West until the present time they
have appeared to be facts. That is no longer so.
The American “empire” will be the last of the colonial
empires. It is increasingly clear in the Middle East and in Central and South
America that Arabs, as well as our “Little Brown Brothers” are no longer going
to accept Western hegemony. India, Japan, and China either have or soon will
surpass the U.S. in science, technology, mathematics, physics, as well as
production. We are rapidly falling farther and farther behind in everything
except perhaps military power and nuclear bombs, both being exposed as pretty
much useless capabilities, as nuclear bombs cannot be used and our military
might can’t even defeat a group of mostly illiterate Afghans fighting with only
small arms. And we have, in truth, been defeated in our recent wars in both
Asia and the Middle East (I guess we did great under Reagan when we took on
Grenada).
In any case, like Chicken Little, we are in a panic, but for
good reason, the sky really is falling for us. We, who have been brought up to
believe in our superiority and “American exceptionalism,” are now being
confronted with the truth, and it is terribly unpalatable for many, as well as
somewhat pathetic to witness. Putting our “wars,” foreign policy, and economic
problems aside, there are two manifestations of this panic that stand out: the
seemingly irrational hatred of President Obama, and the “War on Women.”
I suppose if you were brought up to believe that Black
people really are inferior to Whites, hatred of Obama who violates that basic
belief might not be considered necessarily irrational. But it is the fact that
he violates this basic belief that has to be the real reason for the hatred. As
President, Obama has been like most Presidents, both good and bad, depending
upon your points of view. His performance as President cannot explain the
intense hatred. He is hated precisely because he has shattered the paradigm of
White superiority and many just cannot tolerate that. No previous President to
my knowledge has ever faced the massive opposition to everything he tried to
do, even when those things were first presented by his opposition. When Obama
was elected Republicans chose to oppose him no matter what he tried to do, and
they have, much to the harm of our nation. And they have, of course, employed
the “race card,” describing him as incompetent, a witch doctor, an “other,” and
of course everything else from a socialist to a communist, fascist, Muslim, and
etc. They hate him, in short, because he is Black, because, in the terms of
Anthropologist May Douglas, he would be considered, “Dirt out of place.” It is
not only Republicans who feel this way about Obama, it is the vast majority of
the less educated White population as well, and, in fact, some of the more
educated.
The other seemingly irrational behavior going on at the
moment is the so-called “War on Women.” As this is politically suicidal for
Republicans but they continue it anyway it can easily be seen as irrational. We
wonder how it is that men believe they can decide better than women what is
best for women’s health and reproduction. But remember, women were no higher up
in the paradigm than children and Black people. In all societies I know of
there is none where women held the most significant positions of power. Even in
matrilineal societies (there are no truly matriarchal societies) power does not
reside in women, but, rather, in mother’s brothers. In the matrilineal
Trobriand Islands it is not the daughters that ritually “suck the bones of the
fathers,” it’s the sons. Power everywhere resides in males, in Western-European
societies in White males. Republican men do not believe they are in engaging in
a war on women, they believe it is their “right” to decide such matters, it has
always been so.
The belief in this basic paradigm is stronger in older
people than in younger people who have been brought up in a more diverse
cultural and ethnic society. We are witnessing the last gasps of a traditional
belief system undergoing a basic paradigm shift, the last desperate attempts of
Whites to cling to the powers they have come to expect as their due. With
slavery gone, lynchings gone, Jim Crow gone, demographics changing, equality
gaining ground, and voting and abortion rights being upheld, it is clear which
direction we are going. It has been and continues to be a difficult journey.
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