Deconstructing memes: Coming to terms with the fact for BIPOC communities the US has always been a police state

With everything that is happening in the US these days you have to expect that there will be lots of misinformation on social media, particularly content that is created by people with privilege.

The latest example is a meme that says, “They are not really after illegals. They are using illegals as an excuse to create a police state aimed at you.”

This meme is rife with problems, but lets start with the person who created it, Brian Tyler Cohen. I mean, look at his website, which features a big picture of him, along with lots of “merch” for people to buy, merch that promotes him. Brian Tyler Cohen also identifies himself as a Democrat.

Second, using the word “illegals” is insulting and it is just not accurate. Undocumented immigrants are not illegals, they came to the US out of desperation to flee political violence, poverty and climate disasters. In addition, coming to the US without papers is not a criminal offense it is a civil infraction that doesn’t require jail or being sent to a detention facility.

Third, saying that undocumented people are just an excuse to create a police state aimed at you completely dismissed the fact that millions of undocumented immigrants have been arrested, detained and deported since ICE was created in 2003. Every Administration since then has arrested, detained and deported millions. Drawing attention away from the lived experiences of millions of undocumented immigrants is some white supremacist shit, especially when Brian Tyler Cohen says undocumented immigrants are being used to create a police state aimed at you. You, of course, means other white people, primarily white people who haven’t given a shit about the millions of undocumented immigrants that have been arrested, detained and deported since 2003 by both Republicans and Democrats.

Lastly, the fact that Brian Tyler Cohen is saying that the current administration is creating a police state completely erases the history of what Black, Indigenous and other communities of color have lived under since the US was founded, which has been a POLCE STATE.

The US has been committed to using genocidal practices to murder, remove and wipe out Indigenous culture and spirituality ever since Europeans came to the Americas. Whether it has been through bounty hunters, the US Calvary, the FBI or local cops, all of the equates to a POLICE STATE.

Black people who were forcibly removed from their homelands and then bought by white people through the system of chattel slavery was because the state was policing the bodies of Black people. When Black people fled slavery they were rounded by men who were deputized by the state who had the legal support of the state to return Black people to their white owners, that is a POLICE STATE.

During the Jim Crow the state created laws to criminalize being Black in order to uphold structural white supremacy. That is what a POLICE STATE looks like.

During the Civil Rights era, it was mostly cops – state violence workers – who brutalized Black people for demanding equality and were jailed for it, or worse murdered. That was a POLICE STATE.

The US has had the largest prison population on the planet for several decades, with a disproportionately high percentage of Black and Brown people being incarcerated. That is a POLICE STATE.

To say that the Trump Administration is now wanting to create a police state not only ignores history, it lets all other administrations off the hook for their role in perpetuating a POLICE STATE against marginalized communities. Brian Tyler Cohen should get his facts straight or better yet, he should shut the hell up!