I was pouring India ink on a piece of blank wove-finish calligraphy paper, watching the liquid bleed across the page like a wound, when another mainstream news machine began a report on the phrase “anchor babies.”
This time, Jeb Bush, the brother of former POTUS and warmonger George W., aimed the slur at another ethnic minority.
“Frankly,” he said, “it’s more related to Asian people.”
Donald Trump, the blathering troll and leading GOP presidential candidate, uses the generality at almost every speech to curry favor with republican voters who show up at his rallies ready to build a wall, which they most certainly won’t do. Instead, they will seek to hire people to build it for them.
The absurd idea of building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico is another matter. So let us return to the slur “anchor babies.”
I’m not a theologian, and I don’t read the Bible, so I’m unfamiliar with the details of Christian dogma, but I can safely assume that it is not very Christian-like to demonize children. And as these GOP God fearers demonize kids with this aggressive language, they simultaneously reel about the “sanctity of life” and their “little angel” who just started first grade last week.
Well, folks, for Republican Christians your baby won’t be considered a “little angel” until they have their papers. “Yes, documents!” they shout with fangs drawn, and foam flowing from their maw.
Right, papers. Throughout history, Christians have done little without them. From the Bible to papal bulls to edicts to treaties, nothing got stolen and no race enslaved without paper. Amen.
And I’m singling out Christians here because it’s the faith of the Republican Party and each of the GOP presidential candidates. It’s also the faith of those land hangry, gold horny European encroachers who would later document themselves and call it “the legal way.”
“The legal way”? What was so legal about how these European invaders documented themselves?
The answer is nothing. Nothing at all.
For years I’ve said it is ironic that the descendants of a continent across an ocean [Europe] would have the audacity to refer to the southern indigenous people of this continent as “illegal.”
And they – we – are southern indigenous. Make no mistake.
What we can learn from the lexicon of the invader is that all across the continent, whether south of the U.S.-Mexican border, or north of the U.S.-Canadian line, indigenous people continue to be demonized by Christians more than 520 years since they stumbled our way with diseased crotches and crooked skulls.
Then there’s this:
Imagine if Native Americans spoke of European Americans in the same vicious and unapologetic manner that they speak of the southern indigenous people of this land, our land. What if we called them “illegals who siphon our resources”? Or “rapists” who “refuse to learn our language”?
If we did, they’d shout, “Indians!” in that alarming way the white cowboy bellows it in trite, racist western movies. Yes. They would fear revolt! “The Indians. They’ve united,” a frightened white man would say. “All of them! What do we do? What about the little angels? But I have my papers! Put that goddamn jersey away. All of you! Do you want to incite them? Oh, God. We should’ve built a wall!”
I find myself wondering about this quite often. What if all of the indigenous people united? South of the border. North of the border, down into South America. Ignoring these borders which we did not approve of – borders that cut through our lands, separating families, forcing indigenous peoples to move from their ancestral areas. What if …?
At least what we can do now, today, especially here in the U.S., is tell our European American neighbor that we won’t sit idly by as they clannishly demonize more indigenous people on a land their ancestors brutally stole. Look hard and you’ll see the similarities between the government separating indigenous families today and breaking up families 100 years ago. A child cries for her mother as they are pulled from one another. Their only crime: being indigenous on occupied land.
And this is occupied land – just an old colony that has traded in its white powdered wig for an awful blond comb-over.
Meanwhile, the shit show continues. The American throne is for sale! The bidders are getting anxious in the pit. They’re throwing elbows and spitting on their competitors. And this back alley brawl will get even more decadent as 2016 grows nearer, riddled with low blows and purple nurples. Cowards will come from behind, and the kings and queens of the cruel will continue to vilify children with language like “anchor babies” all the while willfully ignoring their own origin. This is politics. Ugly shit, and it continues.
Simon Moya-Smith
Simon Moya-Smith, Oglala Lakota, is the Culture Editor at Indian Country Today. Follow him at @simonmoyasmith.