Schools in the US teach a White or Anglo American history of the country. Because of White guilt it is full of lies, half-truths and stuff left out. There is much to learn and unlearn:
America – a continent, not a country.
Anglo Americans – the English-speaking White people of North America, the largest ethnic group in the US as a whole. They often see themselves as the “real Americans”, as better than everyone else. They have a good guy/bad guy view of history:
sanitize, demonize – what those who write about US history for schoolchildren do. They make Whites seem way better than they are (heroes! pioneers!) and people of colour seem way worse (savages! bandits!).
White heroes – did not create the US through their courage and virtue. Instead the US was built on:
The three pillars of racism: genocide, slavery and imperialism. The genocide of Natives was not a “tragedy”, Black slavery was not an “embarassment”. These were not unfortunate accidents or “mistakes” – the wealth and power of White people were directly built on them! The US is as twisted by racism as South Africa or Israel.
settle, discover – said only of Whites, as if there were not 80 million people already living in the Americas when they showed up, as if others did not teach them how to live in North America, as if others did not work hard to build the country.
Western frontier – White gaze term.
Manifest Destiny – God so loved White people that he wanted them to have northern Mexico. Not found in the Bible, just a “belief” (aka war propaganda). An example of Anglo American exceptionalism – the big lie used since the 1600s to excuse Anglo violence, conquest and imperialism.
Mexican War – the naked conquest of northern Mexico. President Polk egged Mexico into war so that he could take California and New Mexico. The young Lincoln and Grant were against it.
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo – ended the Mexican War. Anglos immediately broke the treaty, forcing Mexicans off their land. Cue lynchings, ethnic cleansing.
Mexican bandits – an Anglo term sometimes applied to true outlaws, sometimes to those fighting Anglo rule.
Melting pot – the idea that everyone in the US should become Anglo American, as if all else is somehow lesser, as if history and identity do not matter. The “salad bowl” is only slightly better because it still assumes:
A nation of immigrants – said of the US even though some came in chains and some were conquered. A colour-blind way of looking at the US that hides racism and supports the Bootstrap Myth.
13 Chicano heroes: Not all of these are Chicano, but all are important to Chicano history. As a start learn about and know:
- Cesar Chavez,
- Emiliano Zapata,
- Dolores Huerta,
- Frida Kahlo.
- Luis Valdez,
- Che Guevara.
- Joaquin Murrieta,
- Tomas Rivera,
- Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz,
- Martin Luther King, Jr,
- Benito Juarez,
- Ricardo Flores Magon,
- Ernesto Galarza.
Events they do not tell you about (among others):
- August 29th 1970,
- the student walkouts in 1968,
- mass deportations in the 1930s.
– Abagond, 2014.
Source: Mainly “De Colores Means All of Us” (1998) by Elizabeth Martinez and “Drink Cultura” (1993) by Jose Antonio Burciaga. All mistakes are mine!
See also:
- Welcome to Hispanic Heritage Month 2014
- How White history deals with people of colour:
- The bootstrap myth
- colour-blind racism: the four frames
Good point about the melting pot. It implies that we all have to hide our differences in order to get along. It explains why the word diversity is such a dirty word to some Americans.
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this guy was great in college at USC, he really helped me understand, for the first time, about the underclass, something d’souza glaringly also ignores except for to add emphasis to his arguments
http://socialecology.uci.edu/faculty/vigil
James Diego Vigil
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@Kiwi
You know helped perpetuate that very myth you complain about. “Taiwanese exchange students study harder than Americans,,,,Yada Yada Yada” Think about it, before you type.
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These notes focus more on white people and their racism than chicanos..
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And all the “gringos” said “Ouch” scathing and incisive post.
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@Kiwi,
I think you are comparing apples with oranges (to some extent), even though that is what most Americans do. You are comparing Brain Drain immigrants of the late 20th century to pre-19th century non-whites. It might make more sense to compare Brian Drain immigrants (eg, from Asia) with other brain drain immigrants (eg, from Africa) or prior ones (eg, Jews from Europe).
19th century Asian coolies often entered (usually tricked into entering) into involuntary bonded servitude and many were shipped to the Americas on the same ships used to transport African slaves, some with very high mortality on the Transpacific passage comparable to or surpassing the mortality on the Transatlantic Middle Passage. They performed some of the most dangerous (life-threatening) labour in the West, or alongside black plantation labour in the South for little or no pay. Many got trapped in the Americas without the ability to pay their way back, without the right to become citizens or vote, and According to modern definitions of forced, involuntary labour, they were also transported as slaves. The main difference is that their slavery is not considered chattel as pre-civil war slavery was (but perhaps more comparable to post-reconstruction sharecropping).
I don’t think it is accurate or reasonable to make the comparison that you made. Compare post 1968 Brain drain immigrants from Asia with those from Africa, Europe and the Americas.
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@ The Pragmatist
I agree. I hope it is serving as background to an upcoming post.
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@ The Pragmatist @ Jefe
Most people in the US see Chicano history, when they see it at all, through the lens of Anglo American history. It is important, at least for me, to know what that framing is. I did the same during Asian American history month:
Most of this post was based on Chicano criticism of how Chicano history gets taught in California schools. A common mistake is to add more Hispanic content but keep the White racial framing.
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Yes, Abagond, of course I knew about the other post you did. But this one is different. It is not so much about how one actually writes about Chicanos, but about the White Anglo American lens (in general). It is not really about how to write about Chicanos.
That is why it comes across as confusing at first. Maybe you will explain how it relates to other things in future posts, eg,
which is more on topic with the title of the post. So I thought the actual content of this post might be background to a future post where you explain how this information is used (which may have been cut off due to your 500 word parameter).
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Actually, based on the title of the post, I was expecting it to be more about how Chicanos view the history of the US, not about how whites vies the history of the US.
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based on what George Ryder said, i’m wondering how much european diseases really did affect the native populations compared to the genocides. i recently heard some people claim disease wiped out much of the native australian population so i’m curious to know if disease’s role in exterminations has been exaggerated. i’d like to see a post on that.
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@Kiwi,
You didn’t say that it was based on what white people think, but implied that that was what had happened, making whites think the way they do. That is why I disagreed with the statement.
As Brain drain immigrants and their children often head straight to the suburbs, Suburban whites are likely to encounter brain drain immigrant families more than other kinds.
I suspect that suburban whites do not encounter many blacks, but if they do know a few, they are more likely to encounter either brain drain African immigrants or middle / upper middle class blacks, some who may have West Indian origin (although not likely to be many in any case). They same may be true of Hispanics, or suburban Hispanics might be so anglicized that many whites did not even realize they were Hispanic.
The rest is filled in by what is provided by the media. In that regard, liberal whites might be just as reliant, if not more reliant on forming images based on media stereotypes. That is where stuff like Perpetual foreigner or model minority, or black thuggification or helpless darkies comes from.
I assume that you mean that it is easier for whites, who see “their” country as a nation of immigrants, to categorize Asian Americans in that mold. Since voluntary Asian immigrants generally exceed involuntary ones (at least the ones that whites know about), they see Asians as a better fit than blacks or Hispanics, despite that many blacks and Hispanics are voluntary immigrants and many Asians (as well as Europeans) came as involuntary labour.
For example, take sharecropping. The image of a sharecropper in the USA was a poor uneducated southern black person, although in some states (eg, Kentucky and Tennessee and parts of Northern Alabama) the majority were white.
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@1tawnystranger
I have always found this claim to be very suspect. Because if it were true, then why did it selectively wipe out some populations (outside Eurasia and Africa) and not others? Why are some Latin American countries or Pacific Islands majority indigenous? If the Eurasian diseases were so deadly, why did it only kill off the people living in areas that white people decided to settle.
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GR, people can die by disease or illness, but it could be deliberate. For example, once it was discovered that a village was susceptible to a flu, whites could lend them infected blankets (for example) and wipe out a whole village in a couple months without shedding a drop of blood.
I have read many sources that indicated whites often spread diseases to Natives on purpose.
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[…] Schools in the US teach a White or Anglo American history of the country. Because of White guilt it is full of lies, half-truths and stuff left out. There is much to learn and unlearn:- Click through to read more – […]
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[…] Source: abagond.wordpress.com […]
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[…] Source: abagond.wordpress.com […]
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Reblogged this on Mbeti's Blog and commented:
another good summery from one of my favorite blogs
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“Most people in the US see Chicano history, when they see it at all, through the lens of Anglo American history.”
When I was in community college I overheard a white girl telling her friend about how they watched a video in her class about the Chicano Civil Rights Movement. She said to her, “I guess you could say Mexicans were oppressed?” in a doubtful tone.
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