Page 10 - RACE HEALER Mag Volume 1
P. 10

Regarding  law,  there  are                                                                               deeply  embedded  con-
           five  very  important  dates                                                                              tempt  of  the  powerful
           to remember:                                                                                              white bodies towards the
                                                                                                                     less powerful white bod-
           In  1667,  the  Virgin-                                                                                   ies.  The  less  powerful
           ia  assembly  established
           that  Christianity  did  not                                                                              white  missed  and  con-
           change  the  conditions  of                                                                               tinues to be blind to this
           Black  and  Native  people                                                                                most salient point. Pow-
           in bondage.                                                                                               erful  white  people  also
                                                                                                                     created formal structures
           In 1680, a few short years                                                                                and  institutions  to  rein-
           after  the  Bacon  rebellion                                                                              force these notions of su-
           the Virginia assembly es-                                                                                 premacy  by  which  poor
           tablished  that  enslaved                                                                                 white  bodies  benefited
           persons  shall  not  raise  a
           hand to a white person re-                                                                                from  and  fully  partici-
           gardless of station.                                                                                      pated in.


           In 1691, laws preventing                                                                                  Black  and  Native  bod-
           intermarriage between white and black people were enacted.          ies were deliberately presented as straw men for white bodies to
                                                                               blow their ancient unhealed historical trauma through. What had
           In 1705, the Virginia assembly decided that poor whites could       been white-on-white (or, usually, powerful-white-on-less-power-
           own property but the enslaved could not.                            ful- white) trauma was transformed, in carefully calculated fash-

                                                                               ion, into white-on-Red and white-on-Black violent trauma, which
           In 1823, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the Doc-
           trine of Discovery that gave European white nations the absolute    was then institutionally enforced.
           dominion  and  ownership  over  “New  World”  Native  American
           lands and created the basis for western expansion. This was ad-     Throughout the United States’ history as a nation, white bodies
           opted from the 1493 Doctrine of Discovery by Spain that gave        have colonized, oppressed, brutalized, and murdered Black and
           them the rights to Indigenous lands.                                Native ones. But well before the United States began, powerful
                                                                               white bodies colonized, oppressed, brutalized, and murdered oth-
           The unhealed class traumatic effects  of  the  dark  ages  creat-   er, less powerful white ones.
           ed  fertile  ground  for  the  poor  white  body  to  except  the  seeds
           of  white  body  supremacy  as  a  means  to  reflexively  protect
           themselves  and  their  progeny  from  further  powerful  white  vi-   The carnage perpetrated on Black people and Native Peoples in
           olence. Powerful white violence and  brutality  that  continues     the “New World” began, on the same soil, as an adaptation of
           on  poor  white  bodies  well  into  this  century  but  now  it  is  ob-   longstanding  white-on-white  traumatic  retention  strategies  and
           scured by reflexive decontextualized privilege and overwhelm.       brutal class practices. This brutalization created trauma that has
           The  creation  of  white  body  supremacy  didn’t  not  assuage  the   yet to be healed among American bodies of all hues today.


                                                               Get to know the author




                                                   Resmaa Menakem is a therapist, licensed social worker, and police trainer and consultant who spe-

                                                   cializes in trauma work, addressing conflict, and body-centered healing. His most recent book is My

                                                   Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies.
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