The Use of Color

In an ear­lier post, I had noted that I would write some more on a pho­to­graph I had posted to pro­vide a graphic illus­tra­tion of the kinds of regimes that decided on tri­als when it was in the best inter­est of the state, rather than, for exam­ple, the inter­ests of justice.

When you look at the use of color in that photo, the first thing you should notice is every­one in that pho­to­graph is white. It’s shock­ing to watch so many peo­ple inter­nal­ize and regur­gi­tate the “White = Normal” lie with­out even think­ing, and that atti­tude is obvi­ous in the responses to the start of ren­di­tion and the Military Commissions Act.

Start with the fact that the U.S. gov­ern­ment denies even the pos­si­bil­ity of habeas cor­pus, every day, all over the world. Immediately after 9/11, 1,400 peo­ple were rounded up and impris­oned by the INS with­out charge or the abil­ity to see coun­sel. Thousands more are lan­guish­ing in jail after being sold to American troops in Afghanistan by the our heroin-producing “allies” (one would be hard pressed to call any­one who helps junkies stay that way an “ally” in any but the most cor­rupt, Machiavellian sense). No writ for Iraqis or Afghans sus­pected of sup­port­ing who­ever the bad guys are this week in those two coun­tries, either.

Nor is this some new phe­nom­ena in American life. There was no habeas cor­pus for slaves prior to 1861. Or out­spo­ken north­ern Democrats from 1861 – 1865. Native Americans weren’t allowed to file those writs until 1891. Japanese immi­grants and their kids didn’t get it dur­ing WWII either.

Even prior to the Military Commissions Act„ whether this basic human right applies to non-citizens resid­ing in the U.S. was a ques­tion con­sid­ered up for debate by the same Congress: recall their ear­lier attempts to make local police eth­ni­cally cleanse Latinos from the U.S. — until the tar­gets of that lily lit­tle geno­cide started march­ing by the mil­lions and broach­ing the sub­ject of neigh­bor­hood defense com­mit­tees (rally ’round your fam­ily, pocket full of shells).

Naturally, like all laws, this will be pri­mar­ily used against non-white peo­ple, but that does not mean it won’t be enforced against whites who don’t go along. In America, you can’t do that kind of thing to white peo­ple with­out pass­ing laws and such (well, maybe commie-pinko whites, but they hardly count), which is why this law is a huge deal among the pro­gres­sive groups when it merely insti­tu­tion­al­izes what:

1. The Bush admin­is­tra­tion has been already doing for the last 5 years.
2. White-owned gov­ern­ments in gen­eral have been doing to every­one else for the last 400 years now.

It sim­ply sucks that nobody here seems to care about any­thing unless they are per­son­ally threat­ened or attacked — well enough that the whole right-libertarian free-market/greed-is-good ide­ol­ogy deserves a look in a whole other light.

I’ll post still more on that pho­to­graph later.