Orlando Proves That America May Never Be A Safe Space For Anyone

aka The Native American From The Village People Is All Of Us

A few weeks ago, I was strolling down the street listening to the Village People’s slyly subversive gay liberation anthem “Y.M.CA..” This morning, as I woke up, I was greeted with a text message that while 50 people were murdered and 53 people were injured in Orlando, that anywhere from 150-300 Native Americans were murdered and 51 were wounded at the Massacre at Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890. Thus, in contemplating where America’s been, is currently, and is headed, this op-ed opens with a lurid photograph of Felipe Rose. If unaware, Rose is the Latin-American-turned-Native American representative in gay culture lampooning/politicizing disco vocal sextet the Village People. In contemplating everything about the historical importance of Rose’s actual and imagined humanity, we understand the idea that what Orlando proves is that America may never ever be a safe space for anyone.

If we go back even further past 1890 to say, 15,000 years ago when America’s most native Paleo-Indian peoples migrated from Eurasia into modern-day Alaska and then spent the better part of 6000 years populating the current landlocked United States, let’s presume that this is the safest time that America’s ever had as a space relatively free of significant human-on-human violence as caused by ethnic and culture-based strife.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus reached America and everything changed. A perpetual history of European colonization of America and mistreatment of American residents who do not fit the profile of being a Euro-hetero male with commerce-aided power and influence has followed. Furthermore, this history has set forth a series of divisive and corrosive changes to the nation’s one-time legacy of all people living in harmonious contact with the Earth and each other.

Since 1492, the following has occurred in America:

• Between the 15th and 18th centuries, European explorers, military officials and religious expatriates believed America’s native peoples to be pagan savages and conquered them and their land using then-modern military technology.
• From the 17th to 19th centuries, these colonizing Europeans purchased oftentimes unaware and unwilling African men and women, bringing them over to America to serve as indentured servants to farm the native peoples one-time land and care for both the animals the natives once cared for and the animals owned by the Europeans.
• In the 18th century, these Europeans established a collection of religious, cultural and Euro-global colonialist controlled fiefdoms to be unified under the control of a group of wealthy male European landowners as a country called the United States of America. In this nation, the African slaves were to be granted no freedom and three-fifths person-hood, while the natives were to be imprisoned, massacred, forcibly relocated to new locations or swaddled to death in smallpox-infected blankets.
• For the better part of the 18th to 21st centuries, American residents who were non-European in their heritage have been treated in a manner eerily similar to both African and Native Americans.

When we think about just this history alone, it’s clear that the seeds of constant strife in America are well-sown in our collective national DNA.

If we fast-forward to 2016, the conditions that exist clearly show that in reflecting conditions similar America at its colonial era worst, that the country is possibly more unsafe than ever before.

The rise of an LGBT culture that includes European-Americans acting in a manner consistent with black, brown and red Americans on many levels stands against everything upon which America was *ACTUALLY* built. Thus, this should be a much more significantly frightening issue for progressive-leaning Americans to consider. For as much as the abstract concept of “America” is built upon “freedom” and “independence,” let’s also note that this “indivisible” nation is indivisible foremost “under God,” “God” as defined through a broad understanding of Christianity via interpreting the Holy Bible. This is the same Bible that for many people declares things like homosexuality a sin. If homosexuality is a sin, then in a country where the laws are Christian-defined, homosexuality has the air of being forever “anti-Christian.” If we extrapolate back further into American history, this defines homosexuality as also possibly being coded language for “pagan” and “savage,” too.

In America, “pagan savages” have frequently been murdered in cold blood since the 16th century.

Goddammit.

As well, throw into this mix the rise of Donald Trump. Trump’s the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States in 2016. Trump is a moneyed Christian landowner of German-Scotch heritage. Thus, the idea that he could’ve easily been in the room during the signing of both the Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution as a member of the Continental Congress from New York is entirely possible. The idea that eight years after we elected someone representing the legacy of Africans being three-fifths of a person in the US Constitution, that we elect someone who follows in the lineage of old men in white wigs who set generations of second-and-third class mistreatment of non-European heterosexual male Americans into legal action is deplorable.

What happened in Orlando falls into a terrifying vortex of where America’s legacy of general mayhem and lack of safety for all its inhabitants leaves us. An Arab-American ISIS member brandished an assault rifle and murdered 50 homosexuals in a nightclub where Latin-influenced music was being played. The collective weight of anger, shame, despondence and hopelessness of America’s history and future hangs in that sentence. There’s an oozing, heavy and foul-smelling malaise-like slime bearing the collective weight of 600 years of history that’s coating our collective American existence apparent there, too. Containing the blood of black slaves, sweat of Latin farmers, tears of Native Americans, and the confused anger of Arab Americans torn between allegiances to family, gender, religion, countr(ies) and heritage, it’s thoroughly disgusting and impossible to remove from all facets of our existence.

Today, I’ll put on my headphones and walk down the street while listening to the Village People’s “Y.M.CA..” When I hear Felipe Rose’s voice, I’ll know he’s not just singing for my enjoyment, he’s actually singing for our collective American future. He’s singing for freedom, he’s singing for justice, he’s singing for safety, he’s singing for a better American way that we may never have.