I am no stranger to divisive racist politics. My lived experience as a former British subject in what was then British Guiana provides the setting for my debut novel, Under the Tamarind Tree. I witnessed the effectiveness of divisiveness as a weapon for maintaining minority control of a population. When deployed across a nation, it threatens and destroys our relationships with co-workers, neighbors, friends, and even family members. It is now happening within my own nuclear family.
We the people are led—perhaps, brainwashed would be a better word—to believe that our differences as individuals are liabilities for the well-being of our nation. A homogeneous population—in our case, preferably white—would make America great again. What we are never told is that our capitalist economic system thrives on the subjugation of black bodies and those of women, of all colors, making the black woman doubly oppressed.
Of greater import is capital’s subjugation of non-human life—caught and sold, cut and re-shaped and sold, habitats burned for expansion, killed to extinction. Mother Nature is now under great stress; breakdown across numerous ecosystems is underway. Even the overheated heavens lash out with fire and fury.
Bloated from insatiable greed with the spoils of nations worldwide, now depleted, and struggling to breathe, capital returns home for its last stand. Those standing in the way of its recovery must be silenced or crushed. Divisiveness works well as a vaccine to subdue growing opposition to capital’s lethal venom and demands for equality and justice for all.
Capital does not care about our financial distress, pain, and losses. Capital does not care that we are losing our loved ones in the battle against the coronavirus. Capital only cares about its own survival. Capital never concedes. “Liberate the economy!” is its call to arms.
On this Thanksgiving Day, I give thanks to my American brothers and sisters who risk their lives on the frontlines to care for our loved ones infected with Covid-19. While we the people are divided about the sacrifices essential to combat this invisible enemy, those on the frontlines are battered and exhausted, physically and emotionally. Many have lost their lives.
May your Thanksgiving Day be the best it can be during a pandemic.
