This piece reminded me of a video about the Red Legs of Barbados. I went back and watched it again and it fits.
Just to keep history straight, the idea that the Irish were slaves is a lie that continues to feed white supremacy ideology here in the states.
However, the Red Legs of Barbados were familiar, much like the people I worked with in isolated communities here in America, where I once did cultural planning work.
The largest desert in the world is in the western states. Isolation is so complete in these rural deserts, it’s like time stood still. During the Great Depression, Dust Bowl refugees refused entry into coastal states ended up isolated and cut off from society and working in desert mines or dry farming. Dust Bowl refugees who made it across the Mojave Desert, landed in the Great Central Valley, where extreme prejudice and violence kept them isolated and impoverished for generations (think, John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath). Kevin McCarthy hails from one of these areas.
Up in the western mountain ranges, people in small, communities were also isolated for generations.
Out west, a lot of people in the Proud Boys, three percenters, Aryan Brotherhood, Neo-Nazis and other white supremacist gangs hail from these isolated areas.
In eastern mountain country – Kentucky, West Virginian, etc. – coal mining communities cut off from the world by “company-stores”, rugged terrain, and company guards remained isolated and impoverished as well.
In addition to myths and legends surrounding these isolated, exploited and impoverished white American communities came the fabulously wealthy horror industry’s books and films, like Deliverance.
The Red Lega of Barbados film offers a hard look at a unique reversal of fortune for black and white people. Simply put, the consequences of Irish descendants holding onto racism are so wrenching, the film is difficult to watch.
While isolation is self-imposed in Barbados, corporations engaged in resource extraction impose it on workers here in the states with the same results. Poor white people who soothe their pride with racism, condemn themselves and their descendants to lives of deep, inescapable, hopeless poverty.
The 51-minute-long film alternates between English subtitles and English speakers. If anyone here watches it, I’d be very interested in your views. Here is the link:
