Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God - Chapter Three: Manifest Destiny War

I am finally on the other side of beginning the new Sunday School season. One Sunday was Homecoming Sunday, the next started Sunday School, and then the next was Ministry Fair Sunday. It has been a busy month and I did not get back to this as quick as I thought I would. Here we all are, a few weeks later, ready to discuss Chapter Three: Manifest Destiny War in Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God by the Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas.

Dr. Douglas begins the chapter by giving us a history of the term, Manifest Destiny: the combination of Anglo-Saxon as the epitome of humanity finding their place in a whole new world and setting up a societal paradise known as the United States of America. According to Manifest Destiny, the USA was a blank slate ready for the experiments of democracy as imagined by Anglo-Saxon ways and culture. God had declared Anglo-Saxons as superior and all other races were to assimilate as quickly as possible. Assuming that whiteness is superior is troublesome enough, but then requiring assimilation from every other race is a “declaration of war” (pg 107) against non-white bodies. Because God had ordained the Anglo-Saxons as superior, then the war declared against the non-whites was a religious & just war. People indigenous to the USA were killed or segregated using the ideology of Manifest Destiny. All immigrants and non-whites were expected to assimilate as fully and quickly as possible. White Space was to be defended at all costs.

Dr. Douglas then neatly traces the ideas of Manifest Destiny straight into the beginning of the Stand Your Ground Laws. If White Space is the most valuable space, then defending White Space is paramount to fulfilling Manifest Destiny and Stand Your Ground laws allow for the use of deadly violence in that protection of White Space.

The rest of the chapter explains the intersection of Stand Your Ground and White Backlash. Even before Stand Your Ground laws were enacted, non-whites could be killed with impunity simply for being in White Space. If a white person felt threatened in any way by a non-white person, and especially by a black male, that “threatening” presence could be killed or otherwise removed with no further thought. Lynchings, imprisonments, and now police shootings are the direct result of the backlash against black people for simply being in a white space. Militarized police officers and departments continue to fight the war of Manifest destiny every day.

Dr. Douglas ends the chapter by pointing out that having a Black President of the United States has triggered a whole new level of White Backlash. She ponders the idea that the only place her Black son is safe is in her own home.

I am so glad I started this book. Now that I have been introduced to these ideas of White Space and Manifest Destiny and Anglo-Saxon Superiority I cannot un-see it unfolding all around me. I admire Dr. Douglas’ methodical, logical outline of the foundations of the United States and how we got to this place that so many of us find appalling. In some ways, I wonder how we can unravel racism from the fabric of our culture, when it has been woven in so tight and methodically from the very beginning.  

Chapter Four will begin Part Two of the book, which also has three chapters. We are halfway finished reading at this point. Where are your thoughts?