May 19, 2021
Page 9
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O PINION
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They Hope to Destroy the Truth
Living within a lie
o sCar h. b layton
Even a person who does not be-
lieve a lie may be forced to live
within it.
For generations, people of col-
or, while not believing in white
supremacy, have been forced to
live as if it was real. And we are
still forced to live that way today.
But the one glimmer of hope
shining through the toxic cloud of
racist lies enveloping the world
for more than 500 years is truth.
And critical race theory is one
means of delivering the truth.
White supremacists are now at-
tacking critical race theory, how-
ever, in an attempt to destroy it.
By destroying critical race theory,
they hope to destroy the truth and
force all of us to continue to live
within a lie.
The truth that the color of one’s
skin does not determine a person’s
God-given abilities has always
been evident to people of color.
But within a global social struc-
ture designed to advantage white
people over everyone else, that
truth has been denied and hidden
from view.
The orthodoxy of white su-
premacy, reinforced by a will-
ingness to employ gunpowder in
a pan-global rampage, allowed
white supremacists to amass most
of the material resources of the
earth, along with the means to
exploit them solely for their own
benefit. What school-aged child
by
has not seen graphic renderings of
Europeans, cast in a heroic light,
gunning down indigenous people
of North America, South America,
Africa and Asia? This oppression
and annihilation of people of color
have been characterized by British
author Rudyard Kipling as “the
white man’s burden” to bring civ-
ilization to the rest of the world.
Poisonous race hatred spawned
by white supremacy has flowed
through Western society like filth
in an open sewer. Yet there are
those who take offense at the as-
sertion that America is a racist
country.
Race hatred began in America
when European invaders, arriv-
ing with Christopher Columbus,
annihilated as many as 3 million
indigenous inhabitants in the Ba-
hama Islands and continued with
the slaughter of indigenous people
in the early days of every state in
this nation. This genocide of In-
digenous Americans, combined
with the importation of enslaved
Africans as unpaid labor, created
wealth for the European invad-
ers founded upon stolen land and
stolen labor. The continued en-
croachment on Indian land and
exploitation of people of color
through immorally low wages
continue to underpin this dispro-
portionate accumulation of wealth
by white Americans. Current pol-
icy decisions by lawmakers and
corporate leaders such as refusing
to legislate a livable minimum
wage, redlining, discriminatory
hiring practices, gerrymandering,
and on and on, also continue to
obstruct wealth accumulation by
people of color.
The facts are clear, written in the
blood-soaked soil and the countless
unmarked graves of people of col-
or who were murdered, massacred
and worked to death so that certain
white people could accumulate
wealth and live as they pleased.
This includes mistreatment of the
Chinese, who were barred entry
into this country after they helped
build its railroads, and Japanese
Americans who were herded into
concentration camps during World
War II without due process of law,
while German Americans large-
ly were allowed to go about their
C ontinued on p age 10
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