All the Dots Get Connected
How a 1916 postcard "against woman suffrage" shows how all forms of oppression are an expression of white supremacy
This postcard is from 1916 and I'm sharing it here because it reveals so much of how the levers of white supremacy function - and how its gears are greased.
And, no, "white supremacy" is not too strong a term nor is it too tenuously connected to other forms of oppression (like denying women the right to vote).
I know this about white supremacy because this postcard says that quiet part out loud.
Back before people got wise to how dog whistles and coded language can flower over their intent, they still understood how white supremacy is advanced by all sorts of oppressive policies - while white supremacy is the core value that's being advanced.
All oppression is connected.
In 1916 they didn't bother to pretend it wasn't all connected. They could say what was on their minds with impunity. The passage of time and the fact that they're no longer as transparent today as they were a century ago doesn't make it any less connected.
When right-wing lawmakers and conservative groups poke and probe around in the iterative process to detect where their outrages directed against vulnerable people will be met with maximum public apathy - like the way they're now attacking the trans community - don’t overlook how they're also co-opting other groups of people to buy in to the same machinery of oppression the lawmakers use to advance white supremacy.
If people from one group are dormant when the lawmakers target a different vulnerable group, the first group of people will have forfeited the right to express moral outrage when the lawmakers come after that first group.
Which, by the way, they will do.
"Better" still, if that first group can be enlisted to actively target another group, that first group is toast when the lawmakers start feeding them into the machinery of oppression.
When people say, "That's not my fight," they're oiling that white supremacy machine.
When people say, "I'm against racism but I don't like these Q+ folx," they're operating that white supremacy machine.
When people imagine all the ways they’re demographically and ideologically “safe” from being churned and ground to pulp by the gears of the white supremacy machine, suffering under the delusion that they have no self-interest in dismantling that machinery, they’re queuing up to be fed into the machine.
You don't have to take my word for any of this. Just ask the Georgia Association Against Woman's Suffrage if you’re being co-opted into consenting to your own demise.
Amazing smoking gun of a document. That should get our attention, if anything can.