Working Toward Unity—Discharging Colonialism, Enslavement, and Genocide
The following are combined notes from the first of three webinars for Global Majority Reference People and some other Global Majority leaders. The webinars were led by Teresa Enrico [International Liberation Reference Person for Pacific Islander and Pilipino/a and C/Korean Heritage People] and Azi Khalili [International Liberation Reference Person for South, Central, and West Asian-Heritage People]. We focused on how our minds had been impacted by colonization, enslavement, and genocide as we discharged anti-Palestinian oppression and antisemitism.
HUMAN NATURE AND BEING HURT
Every one of us is fundamentally good, brilliant, significant, loving, and powerful. And we are also facing the effects of centuries of oppression, violence, and emotional hurts that try to confuse us about who we are. We have been told lies that we aren’t smart, that we aren’t significant.
We all have connections to colonization and its history, perpetuated through racism, genocide, enslavement, imperialism, and neocolonialism. Our communities have been colonized and have long histories of accumulated distress. We will be able to reflect rationally on the occupation of and assault on Gaza as we collectively find ways to heal the historical and ongoing effects on our minds of colonization, enslavement, and genocide.
At this moment in history, our human species is deeply hurt, carrying layers and layers of distress. We have arrived at this point as a result of thousands of years of hurt, of generations of accumulated distress and no discharge. And we target each other with these hurts—at times being brutal and violent in each other’s direction.
The good news is that every one of us, every human, does our best under horrific oppressive conditions—and that these hurts need not be permanent. We can use the tools of RC to develop and hold on to the most pro-human and anti-pattern perspectives. We can hold on to the biggest perspective possible in any situation.
COLONIZATION
Historically, as egalitarian societies grew into class societies, our distress patterns made us accept one group taking advantage of another. Exploitation is fundamental to our oppressive societies and is embedded in all forms of oppression. This long-standing problem is rooted in colonization, which has been a key means of exploitation for centuries, if not millennia. Colonization involves the complete takeover of groups, tribes, and nations, including their land, environment, cultures, and languages, by other groups aiming for total exploitation.
In the most recent chapter of our human history, in the last five hundred years, a small minority of humans from Europe, who were very hurt, began amassing wealth and power—exploiting, colonizing, enslaving, and genociding the majority of us humans, the Global Majority.
These European-heritage people mistakenly began feeling superior to the rest of us, believing they were smarter than us and entitled to our resources, land, bodies, and our free or cheap labor. They came to view white supremacy as “normal” or “natural” and considered the domination of Global Majority people and the genocide of Indigenous peoples to be inevitable.
We understand in RC that hurt humans hurt other humans. These European-heritage people were deeply hurt—driven by fears of scarcity and death, and suffering from disconnection and isolation from other humans. These distresses showed up as insatiable greed and led these people, and consequently us, into big trouble.
They stole resources, enslaved people, and seized land across Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands.
They used divide-and-conquer strategies among the colonized, and to this day, the “manufactured” divisions and hostilities among the colonized, among us, have not yet healed.
The colonizers also destroyed local infrastructure. We are still dealing with the aftermath of crushed local leadership, suppressed cultures, marginalized religions, disrupted economies, destroyed Indigenous food production systems, and the erosion of our Indigenous/local languages, to just name a few.
Colonizers also initiated and engaged in wars between the colonizer/colonized people as well as instigating civil wars—all to benefit the colonizer. Another weapon used by the colonizer (that is generally embedded in wars and the military) is sexual exploitation and violence that primarily targets women and young people. Drugs, alcohol, and other addictive substances are typically part of this. War, sexual violence, and drugs install distresses that make colonized people accept domination, subjugation, terror, disempowerment, defeat, hopelessness, powerlessness, internalized genocide recordings, and more.
In their histories the colonizers portrayed themselves as the heroes. The colonized Global Majority people and Indigenous people were made invisible, which erased their rich and diverse cultures. The re-writing of history served to legitimize their domination and control of land.
In these narratives, the complex societies, advanced knowledge systems, and vibrant traditions of the colonized people were either dismissed or appropriated, without acknowledgment. The achievements and contributions of the colonized peoples were downplayed or ignored. Our resistance struggles against colonial rule were portrayed as illegal rebellions or terrorism rather than legitimate fights for justice and self-determination. Colonizers and settlers punished the colonized for resisting colonization by imprisoning and killing them.
By controlling the narrative, the colonizers and settlers ensured that future generations, in both the colonizing and colonized countries, would view the colonial period through a lens that justified and glorified the colonial military power, violence, domination, and supremacy.
When the colonizers no longer needed the colonized people for their cheap or forced labor, but still wanted their land and its resources, they enacted genocide on these Native, Indigenous, and tribal peoples.
Colonization, enslavement, and genocide dehumanized the colonized and the colonizer, the enslaved and the enslaver, and the settlers and those targeted by genocide. The roles of oppressed and oppressor divide us and separate us into superior/inferior, dominant/dominated, and enemy/ally. They create a dichotomy of those whose lives matter, and those whose lives don’t matter.
None of these roles are real or permanent. They are imposed by the oppressive system and forced upon the oppressed and the oppressor, beginning at birth. Violence and threats of violence, through local police forces and militaries, ensure that we endure these roles and the oppressive, inhumane, exploitative structures that accompany them.
THE UNITED STATES
The United States, in 2024, has the largest, most dominant owning class of any nation. The Americas were first a classless society, consisting of almost six hundred sovereign Indigenous tribes who had no concept of private property. The Americas were forcibly transformed into a class society when European-heritage settlers stole the land of the Indigenous people and implemented policies of genocide against them.
The settlers went on to enslave humans from Africa, violently forcing them into unpaid labor. The United States evolved from a country with limited developed resources by exploiting, for centuries, the forced and unpaid labor of stolen and enslaved Africans.
Finally, the United States became the dominant capitalist country by stealing minerals, oil, and other resources from the Global South and profiting massively from war, militarization, and the selling of arms, as well as by oppressing and exploiting the working class of the United States. This transformation into the dominant capitalist country was based on colonization, enslavement, genocide, imperialism, and oppression and exploitation of the working class.
INTERNALIZED OPPRESSION
The worst effects of colonization, enslavement, and genocide are the distresses they leave on our minds. Distress is the biggest problem we face as a species. It stops us from finding and implementing rational, humane, pro-survival solutions to the significant challenges we currently face.
Colonization, enslavement, and genocide have left us with internalized oppression. We encourage each of us to be as honest and open as we can be—about how we have been hurt, about how our people have been hurt, and about how our people have hurt others.
The following are some examples of internalized oppression:
- Many distress recordings from being both the victims of and the perpetrators of violence
- Mistreatment of our children
- Struggling with the perpetuation of sexual violence
- A sense of inferiority in relation to European-heritage people
- Becoming quiet and invisible in the company of European-heritage people
- Believing that European-heritage people should be in charge
- Feelings of powerlessness and patterns of passivity
- Feeling stupid and not trusting our own minds or the minds of people who are similar to us
- Attacks on our leaders
- Fear of standing up for justice
- Allowing hate to colonize our minds, leading to hatred of oneself, members of our constituency, or of every European-heritage person
- Feeling that nothing about us is right—perceiving our culture, language, and institutions as wrong
- Struggling with feelings of insignificance
- Feeling separated from our own people and all others
- Feeling alone and disconnected
- Living with genocide recordings
- Struggling to want to be alive or fully alive
- Acting out self-destructive patterns, including using substances to numb unbearable feelings
- Chronically feeling angry, humiliated, devastated, and victimized
- Being vulnerable to manipulation by oppressive forces that undermine our humanness
- Struggling to prioritize our health, re-emergence, and overall well-being
- Struggling to feel joy and happiness
Now let’s imagine a world without exploitation, supremacy, genocide, and domination. How do we get there?
Brooklyn, NY, USA
Shoreline, Washington, USA
(Present Time 216, July 2024)