"hate crimes" Week 12

            The United States is a nation that has been characterized by a group of laws, demands, crimes, the idea of “hate”, and insider vs. outsider. These traits are created and placed upon different bodies based on prior events (i.e. the cold war, 9/11, the world wars), and specifically identities. The White nation is a fundamentally biased space with contradictions placed on locations, time and collective similarities among groups of people. In these readings, the idea of hate vs. love is accumulated based on the grouping of objects in response to created subjects of the “other.” These subjectivities were in response to the 9/11 in the discourse associated around emigrants into the United States of any other descent than Caucasian. Japanese, Muslim, Arab, and lets not forget the African American race were  systematically placed in a category of difference or a “threat” or as “illegal aliens” which needed to be deported or detained whenever necessary under the command of the President.

            This notion of outsider vs. insider places a pivotal role in the definition of hate. Who hates who, and why? The mindset of the superior, power dynamics of control, and law give the idea of victim and criminal a different lens to view from. The emotional attachment such as the events of 9/11 allowed the U.S. as a nation to create law specifically for the “outsider”, deem certain bodies officially as an “outsider” and position them as individual criminals to the state as a whole. The national security created after and prior to 9/11 built boundaries to all that identified as Muslim/ Arab. This notion only reflects the self-hatred among other races prior to 9/11. The U.S. created these stipulations in emotional rage as well as political power and stability; however, these bodies to which they were created for were forced to be viewed as criminals globally in connection with the U.S., while simultaneously placing the location and space of U.S. citizens as the victim.

            In referring to which bodies are associated with hate, Audrey Lorde mentions a particular incident she has a child. Hate is an emotional process of continuously placing subjects as objects in a realm of personal belief in collaboration with levels of signification. These are created norms given only to specific people in specific locations at specific times. It almost seems as if the laws are bent in response to who is the victim and who is presented as the criminal. In the White nation, hate has been dispensed in many different manners, it is only redressing how “hate” has accumulated and under what circumstances is still stands. The government is an entity which follows certain rules and regulation with only certain individuals as beneficiaries. These readings remind me of “Taking Haiti” with the military invasion over bodies to benefit the U.S. and in return ruling power over the natives. In placing assumed terrorists under surveillance, in Guantamo Bay, or imprisonment without any notion to why, except their identity is enslavement. These individuals may not be forced to do labor, but they are detained without choice. I am not saying I agree or disagree, but I am relating race to social and political power and diplomatic administration even outside the African American race over 400 years ago.