The
2019 loss of Nobel Laureate author Toni Morrison reminded us of her
comments on racism and fascism, a comparison even more relevant today.
In
this address, given at Howard University during its 1995 Charter Day
celebrations, Morrison spoke eloquently about the origins and social
significance of Howard and other historically Black institutions of
higher learning, about the education and mis-education of African
Americans (and LGBT folk, we might add), and about the aberrant societal
tensions wrought by racism, [sexism], and fascism.
. . . Let us be
reminded that before there is a final solution, there must be a first
solution, a second one, even a third. The move toward a final solution
is not a jump. It takes one step, then another, then another. Something,
perhaps, like this:
(1) Construct an internal enemy, as both focus and diversion.
(2) Isolate and
demonize that enemy by unleashing and protecting the utterance of overt
and coded name-calling and verbal abuse. Employ ad hominem attacks as legitimate charges against that enemy.
(3) Enlist and
create sources and distributors of information who are willing to
reinforce the demonizing process because it is profitable, because it
grants power and because it works.
(4) Palisade all
art forms; monitor, discredit or expel those that challenge or
destabilize processes of demonization and deification.
(5) Subvert and malign all representatives of and sympathizers with this constructed enemy.
(6) Solicit, from among the enemy, collaborators who agree with and can sanitize the dispossession process.
(7) Pathologize
the enemy in scholarly and popular mediums; recycle, for example,
scientific racism and the myths of racial superiority in order to
naturalize the pathology.
(8) Criminalize
the enemy. Then prepare, budget for and rationalize the building of
holding arenas for the enemy--especially its males and absolutely its
children.
(9) Reward
mindlessness and apathy with monumentalized entertainments and with
little pleasures, tiny seductions, a few minutes on television, a few
lines in the press, a little pseudo-success, the illusion of power and
influence, a little fun, a little style, a little consequence.
(10) Maintain, at all costs, silence.
[...] Racism may
wear a new dress, buy a new pair of boots, but neither it nor its
succubus twin fascism is new or can make anything new. …
