by Jennifer Roberts

While many Americans work tirelessly toward racial justice in the United States, there remains an old, opposing, evil force that takes no days off – white supremacy. While the actors are somewhat new, the script is the same.  White supremacy intimidates and subjugates its targets, forcing them to believe lies about themselves and other people who are not white. It also feeds itself lies that help it to distance itself from human beings that it has othered.  White supremacy is not some boogie man or monster lurking in the closet, it inhabits the bodies, minds and spirits of people who fall prey to this depraved way of thinking and living.  It thrives inside teachers, school board members, judges, politicians, police officers, accountants and postal workers.  All it needs is a host.

Sadly, there are far too many white Americans who tremble in an unfounded fear that Black people are somehow taking resources that they have been programmed to believe belong to them.  Resources like jobs, college admissions and homes.  And like a scared, wounded animal that has been backed into a corner, unhinged white supremacists and passive progressives are snarling, foaming at the mouth and pacing as they try to make sense of the lie that that they were fed all while watching the racial and ethnic landscape of America become more brown.  Because they have believed the deeply rooted lie for generations, it is easy for them to blame Black people for what they believe to be theft of their supposed white inheritance instead of considering the possibility that what they were programmed to believe was a lie.  They weren’t smarter, more qualified, more attractive, more clean or more deserving; they were simply white.

In her brilliantly written book, “Caste:  The Origins of Our Discontents,” author, Isabel Wilker establishes eight pillars of the caste system:  Divine Will and the Laws of Nature, Heritability, Endogamy and the Control of Marriage and Mating, Purity versus Pollution, Occupational Hierarchy, Dehumanization Stigma, Terror as Enforcement, Cruelty as a Means of Control and Inherent Superiority versus Inherent Inferiority.  

The sixth pillar, Dehumanization Stigma is the racist low ball that Donald Trump and other white supremacists are throwing at the thousands of Haitian immigrants who fled violence and poverty in their country and who are working to revitalize cities like Springfield, Ohio.

Wilkerson writes, “To dehumanize another human being is not merely to declare that someone is not human, and it does not happen by accident.  It is a process, a programming.  It takes energy and reinforcement to deny what is self-evident in another member of one’s own species.  

It is harder to dehumanize a single person standing in front of you, wiping away tears at the loss of a loved one, just as you would, or wincing in pain from a fall as you would, laughing at an unexpected double entendre as you might.  It is harder to dehumanize a single individual that you have gotten the chance to know.  Which is why people and groups who seek power and division do not bother with dehumanizing an individual.  Better to attack a stigma, a taint of pollution to an entire group.  

Dehumanize the group, and you have completed the work of dehumanizing any single person within it.  Dehumanize the group, and you have quarantined them from the masses you choose to elevate and have programmed everyone, even some of the targets of dehumanization, to no longer believe what their eyes can see, to no longer trust their own thoughts.  Dehumanization distances not only the out-group from the in-group, but those in the in-group from their own humanity.  It makes slaves to groupthink of everyone in hierarchy.  A caste system relies on dehumanization to lock the marginalized outside of the norms of humanity so that any action against them is seen as reasonable.”

Among other lies, Trump and his vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, are perpetuating lies that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are eating animals.  Trump, as he visibly grasped for solid ground during Tuesday night’s presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, said, “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs  The people that came in, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.  And this is what’s happening in our country and it’s a shame,” according to CNN.

Thankfully, Trump was quickly fact-checked by debate moderator and ABC anchor, David Muir, who responded in real time saying, “I just want to clarify here.  You bring up Springfield, Ohio.  ABC News did reach out to the city manager there.  He told us there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”

According to NBC.com in a Septembrer 9^th article entitled, “Haitian Immigrants in Springfield, Ohio”, “…the people that came in” to whom Trump referred are the 15,000 Haitian immigrants who according to the same NBC article, “…received temporary protected status from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, allowing them to stay in the U.S. due to conditions in the Caribbean island nation.”  T

The article went on to say, “At a Tuesday news conference, Springfield Mayor Rob Rue addressed the online attention on the city’s migrant population.  He said the city had no verifiable instances of immigrants eating pets or local wildlife, and instead asked, “As a human being, can you imagine being talked about like this?”

This is dehumanization stigma on full display and it is a horrible look.

America has seen this tired movie throughout its brief, 248-year history and well before it was a country.  I for one am not interested in experiencing racist reruns.  I, like millions of other Americans, am interested in progress that values and protects the humanity of everyone.  Progress that seeks to invite people in, not other and exclude them.

White supremacy is at the foundation of American history dating back hundreds of years.  America’s economic wealth was built on the backs of millions of enslaved Africans and African Americans who were subjected to dehumanization at the hand of European businessmen and women.  Through legalized chattel slavery, African mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, scientists, teachers, entrepreneurs farmers, griots – human beings were kidnapped, separated from their families and communities, forced to endure the Middle Passage and to become slaves.  They were stripped of their humanity, dignity, pride, culture and tradition and made to feel as though they were not human despite constant resistance. They were told that they were animals and that it was God’s will for them to be enslaved and controlled by white people.  Fast forward a few hundred years to the Civil rights movement.  Descendants of enslaved Africans were dehumanized and brutally barred from accessing and enjoying their full citizenship.  They were called dogs, hosed, beaten, bombed and lynched for attempting to register to vote.  They were violently restricted from buying homes in more affluent neighborhoods and sending their children to more well-resourced schools simply because they were Black.  They were othered, spit on, cursed at, degraded daily and murdered because of white supremacy.

America, we have a choice to make.  Do we give in to the lies of white supremacy and the fears that give it oxygen or do we suffocate it by choosing to believe that there is room for all of us?  Let us choose to be better to ourselves and to one another.  Let us choose to actively love our neighbors which means choosing not to make choices that inflict harm upon them.  Let us choose to do the collaborative work of securing liberty and justice for all.  Let us choose freedom. 

(Jennifer Roberts is a Prince William County resident and founder of Conversations In the Community and the Sawubona School.)