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A painful reminder of cultural genocide Information, activism & resistance to U.S.

militarism, war & corporate greed, linking with
struggles against racism & oppression within
Posted in Racism & Oppression
the United States.

January 5, 2019

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What was supposed to be just another amateur wrestling match held in southern New
Jersey on Dec. 19 turned out to be an act of unspeakable violence, prompting a viral
response on Twitter. Please Donate

A white male referee, Alan Mahoney, gave a white woman a pair of scissors to cut off The IAC is a wholly volunteer organization and
we totally rely on you. Click here to support our
the dreadlocks of 15-year-old African-American wrestler, Andrew Johnson, 90 seconds
work
before his match. Johnson’s white coach stood by and let it happen. Johnson was given
what amounted to an ultimatum — either cut your hair or forfeit your match. The
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“reason” given for this was that the cap that Johnson had on did not meet
“regulations” in covering his “unnatural” hair, although most of his hair was covered.

The incident created such outrage that Mahoney is inde�nitely suspended from calling
any future matches until a review is carried out by the New Jersey State Interscholastic
Social Issues
Athletic Association. Johnson’s wrestling team at Buena Regional High School had
announced before the suspension that they will boycott any matches involving Anti-war
Mahoney.
Class struggle

Mahoney was criticized for using a racial slur against a Black referee during a match in Climate & Environment
2016, but was still allow to call matches. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy felt GI’s & Veterans
compelled to respond, saying, “No student should have to needlessly choose between
Immigrants & Refugees
his and her identity and playing sports.” (Washington Post, Dec. 21)
Indigenous

Cultural genocide, an attempt to erase one’s identity if you are a person of color, Labor solidarity
usually starts with the very young. Just think about all the Indigenous youth who were LGBTQ
kidnapped and forced to attend Westernized schools. These children endured the deep
People with disabilities
pain of having their hair cut off, wearing clothing foreign to them and being forbidden
to speak their original languages. The aim of these schools was to torture Indigenous Prisoners

youth and erase from hearts and minds their cultural heritage, including heroic Racism & Oppression
resistance of ancestors to racist genocide dating back to the days of Columbus. Women

Millions of kidnapped Africans, brought to the U.S. to endure chains and the lash
The World
under slavery, suffered a similar kind of cultural genocide. There was not only the
physical torture but also the psychological torture of the slave master’s attempts to
Africa
erase African roots from one generation to the next.
Asia

Shireen, a Black sportswriter, wrote in The Guardian, “ I thought about all the ways Europe
that racists have invoked vacuous and bigoted reasons for hacking the young people’s
Latin America & The Caribbean
hair in order to maintain systems of white privilege. I remember stories of how
North Africa & West Asia
Indigenous children’s long braids, which had spiritual and traditional signi�cance,
were cut off in order to appease colonial white powers. Those were acts of violence, Other

this was too.” (Dec. 21)

TRANSLATE
This same article quotes Dr. Amira Rose Davis, a Black assistant professor of history,
gender and sexuality studies at Penn State University:  “What we see with Andrew
Johnson is reminiscent of what we saw with, say, Venus Williams incurring a Select Language
penalty for beads falling out of her hair. [T]he constant demand to ‘tame’, conform Powered by Translate

and change their natural hair to accommodate or assimilate into white dominated
sports spaces is an all too common demand of so-called integration and a power move
designed to remind athletes of color of their place and the terms of their inclusion.”
 Eighty percent of all amateur wrestlers in the U.S. are white.

Johnson won his match but will not be wrestling anytime soon while he deals with this
traumatic experience.

What happened to Johnson was not an isolated incident but part of a centuries-long
societal pattern of cultural genocide within a capitalist system riddled with white
 supremacy.

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