Critical consciousness - to think globally and act locally - is the incense that burns inside the shelters of hope. We smell this incense when we call upon our government and ourselves to act in a way that respects this earth that can, as Gandhi put it, "provide for everyone's needs, but not everyone's greed."
This idea is as ancient and humble as the beginning of time, and it is what makes the density of songs that keep us dancing through cycles of incredible hardships. It is the common thread between every amazing human culture.
The idea that one organism, one man, one culture or one country is superior to all else is still the energizer battery of today's sickness that keeps going and going. It is when we expect violence to bring about peace, and we accept economic profits over ecological health to bring about freedom.
Will today just be another name for yesterday, asks the great writer Eduardo Galeano when talking about the cycles of violence that have claimed the lives of more than 100 million people within the last century. In our "culture of silence," grown on Petri dishes filled with denial and materialism, we do not ask ourselves why this violence started in the first place, who is selling the arms, and how we can provide our children with a strong sense of patriotism that also extends to all of humanity.
When we ask the right questions of ourselves and each other, and we do not skim the surface like White House Press Secretary Ari Fleisher does for a living, then maybe we can reach a collective consciousness that actually prevents these problems from ever happening.
The conflict in the Middle East is an example of modern day colonization. Our culture of silence cannot be heard more loudly when we do not talk about how the formation of Israel resulted in massive displacement of Palestinians from the land they have inhabited since time immemorial.
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Since 1948, Palestinians have been subjected to policies based on a racist philosophy. Amnesty International just reported that within the last year these policies have resulted in the destruction of 500 Palestinian homes making over 2,000 people homeless, the vast majority being Palestinian children.
There are many Jewish organizations fighting side by side with Palestinians to end this brutal occupation that eats away at the human soul. Because most of us are only exposed to the major news broadcastings, which are not all that broad in their analyses, we are easy to internalize this conflict as an inevitable holy war.
We "debate" whether Arafat can control his people, while Israel bombs their police stations. We are even low enough to accuse Palestinian women for sending their children to die and get money. Critical consciousness tells us that Palestinians have been molded into a modern day image of the "restless and uncontrollable natives," similar to the images conjured up to justify the genocide of Native people in the Americas, Africa, Asia and even Europe.
We are obsessed with labeling those who criticize Israel's government as being anti-Semitic, while we constantly label the Palestinian people as terrorists. Critical consciousness would tell us that Israel's military actions couldn't be antithetical to the Judaic religion, and that in historic actuality the Semites are Palestinian people. In our culture of silence we do not criticize the fact that U.S. supplies Israel with the tanks and fighter jets as one of the reasons there is terrorism in that region for all people.
In this age of fast information technology, we are even faster to overlook historical facts and demonize an entire people with swooping ease. It behooves all of us to critically think about what Martin Luther King, Jr. said while talking about the connections between the civil rights movement and the growing war in Vietnam: "The ultimate logic of racism is genocide."
As a young student, I am tired of, but will never stop philosophically fighting, the legacies of slavery and genocide. I leave you a present of some words from Nelson Mandela as he emerged from a South African prison to become the president: "As we are liberated from our fear, our presence liberates others."
by Maceo Carrillo Martinet
Daily Lobo Columnist
Questions, comments or suggestions can be e-mailed to Maceo Carrillo Martinet at conuco8@unm.edu.
