Is America still genocidal? According to the Teflon Theory of White History the answer is no: the last full-blown genocide was in the 1800s. That was too long ago, so it has absolutely no effect on the present. To prove your case you need to provide Recent Examples:
- Because wiping out over a million people could not possibly affect White American ideas about race and human worth. Or be a sign of how screwed up they might still be;
- Because enjoying the material fruits of said genocide could not possibly cause a serious case of Moral Blindness in which white people turn a blind eye to the very faults that led to genocide.
Genocide is a crime. And like with other crimes, those who have done it once are more likely to do it again. Sudan has carried out two genocides in my lifetime. Ethiopia and what used to be Yugoslavia are also repeat offenders.What about America?
Genocides unfold in eight stages:
- Classification: the division into “us and them”. Example: Asking an Asian American what country he is from.
- Symbolization: applying symbols to the them to mark them out as pariahs, as objects of hate. Examples: black skin, yellow stars, race or religion on ID cards.
- Dehumanization: seeing the pariahs as not truly human. Example: the word “nigger”.
- Organization: training and arming. Example: the Ku Klux Klan.
- Polarization: silencing the voices in the middle that still stand up for the pariahs. Example: calling whites who stand up for blacks “nigger lovers”.
- Preparation: separating the pariahs from everyone else. Examples: ghettos, prison camps.
- Extermination: mass killings. Example: the Holocaust.
- Denial: dispute the numbers, blame history, see it as “natural”, derail discussions about it, etc. Examples: The comments on this post?
The first step is “natural”, as Americans would put it, meaning it is common to all human societies. It is when it moves beyond Stage 1 that something is going seriously wrong.
White America has gone beyond Stage 1 not once but at least three times:
- Stage 7: 1600s to 1800s: Native Americans
- Stage 5: 1870s to 1950s: blacks
- Stage 6: 1940s: Japanese Americans
Where different sorts of Americans are now:
- Stage 0: whites
- Stage 1: Asians, Mexicans, Muslims
- Stage 2:
- Stage 3: blacks
- Stage 4:
- Stage 5:
- Stage 6:
- Stage 7:
- Stage 8: Native Americans ?
Jews I would put at 0.6, Muslims, at 1.8.
I am not sure if Native Americans are an 8: I put them there because in my experience whites are not comfortable talking about it and try to derail. If you cannot admit to a fault there is little chance of change. Like a drunk who thinks he is not a drunk.
But even apart from that, you still have blacks at 3. Deep down whites think of blacks as monkeys. That makes it easier to kill them or, what is most commonly the case, to stand by and do little when they die in large numbers, as during the heroin and crack epidemics and the high murder rates that followed.
See also:
America uses systematic genocide unlike other countries such as Africa….that is why no one notices it or does but has no idea how to fight back until it becomes full blown mass killing genocide….
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abagond,
I see you are experiencing another flare-up of your black alternate reality paranoia syndrome.
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To alwaysright101 – “America uses systematic genocide”….
If you’re talking about welfare, the poverty level in the U.S, and public education – I most certainly agree with you.
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no_slappz said:
“abagond,
I see you are experiencing another flare-up of your black alternate reality paranoia syndrome.”
I see you’re still chatting c*** again! What a tool!
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That Kinga Alfred thing was friggin disturbing! So much so that it sounds like a horrorn movie, tht can’t b real man! Abagond please do me a favour and read that link in its entirety and see what that thing really is about. If u find any truth to it would u mind doing a post on it in the next few weeks. That made me feel sick.
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I saw that too. Not sure if the King Alfred Plan is an urban legend or what, though. If it turns out to be true I will certainly do a post on it.
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I am not totally sure either…but I think it is an ‘urban legend’
ie The King Alfred plan…
There is also one regarding P.W. Botha and committing genocide against Blacks in South Africa. Many consider this to be true…
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As someone who was born and raised in Yugoslavia, I know what you’re talking about.
As for the topic of America, I believe what happened to Native Americans (well, in both North and South America) is genocide. If you count number of victims, it’s the greatest genocide in history. That’s why it’s really disturbing to hear US teaching you about human rights, justice and freedom when the government is unable to admit what happened to Native Americans was genocide (stage 8). Not just US government, but it’s the most powerful.
What happened to blacks was also genocide, not sure which one on the scale- there were killings, but since blacks were useful for slave work, I am not sure if the goal was extermination. Dehumanization is “only” on stage 3, but what about Jim Crow and segregation, and KKK? Smells more like other stages (4-6). Not sure about today, but it’s definitely not 0.
One more thing: the “us” vs “them” dichotomy is natural. However, the way you choose to form who is “us” and who is “them” isn’t natural. Why is to many people, “us” still “people of my own race”, and not “people of my own country”. Why do so many white Americans see themselves as “us”, but black Americans as “them”?
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With regard to:
What happened to blacks was also genocide, not sure which one on the scale- there were killings, but since blacks were useful for slave work
Just for clarification this was also the case for the Jews in Auschwitz, who were also used for ‘work’ in the concentration camps.
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Ok. So, you do think it goes to scale 8 for blacks as well?
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Mira:
Good point about the “us v them” is natural but not the form it takes: race. religion, language politics, etc.
I put Jim Crow at a 5 because the polarization was never complete. The civil rights movement stopped it from getting that far.
You still have the Klan but they are a shadow of their former selves. They are no longer lynching people, for example.
So when white people say “it is not as bad as it used to be” I agree: it is no longer a 5, “just” a 3. But when they think racism is dead (Stage 0) or that their racism is “natural” (Stage 1), that is where I disagree.
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I see. So, you’re talking about the present situation, not how far it went in history? You know better than me, so if you think blacks are at 3 now, I believe you. So yes, I mean, of course it’s not the way it used to be, even I know that. If it was 5 or 6 (or 7, as J says), it is better to be 3. But 3 isn’t the goal, 0 (or perhaps 1) is!
And what about Native Americans? I think I read somewhere there only 1-3% of them today in the US. I know their history is stage 8, but what do you think, where are they today? What stage? From what I can see, today’s white Americans tend to see Natives as “exotic others” (unlike blacks, who are, I guess, still seen as “pathetic others”)- that’s why you have so many people claiming their grand grand mother or someone was a Native American. But I don’t think it helps. There are so little of them left, and I wonder if they are organized enough to practice their culture or at least teach their children about it.
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With regard to:
“Ok. So, you do think it goes to scale 8 for blacks as well?”
That was not my point but understanding the nuances and the process of genocide
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I was just wondering where would you put genocide against blacks (what stage): during the slave era, and where would you put it today (what stage). Am I just paranoid, J, or are you seeing all of my posts as some sort of propaganda against blacks? I am sorry to ask this, but it does seem like it sometimes.
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Sorry J, I realize my words sound harsh. I meant to say, sometimes I get the feeling you’re always questioning what I say, trying to make it look like I said something against black people, or something to make their suffering look less important or extreme.
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No what I was trying to do was attempting to have a look at what I see as your ‘ways of looking at things’ but at this time with the issue of ‘genocide’.
It does not matter if you hold the perception that you do either.
Cheers!!
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No what I was trying to do was attempting to have a look at what I see as your ‘ways of looking at things’ but at this time with the issue of ‘genocide’.
I believe in the presented scale. Genocide doesn’t equal killing and nothing else. There are some steps that precede killings, but could be seen as genocide.
So, regarding blacks, I wrote:
What happened to blacks was also genocide, not sure which one on the scale- there were killings, but since blacks were useful for slave work, I am not sure if the goal was extermination.
I wrote that because I thought blacks were seen as useful for work (unlike Native Americans) and were not systematically killed (with extinction as a goal) during the slave days.
Then you wrote:
Just for clarification this was also the case for the Jews in Auschwitz, who were also used for ‘work’ in the concentration camps.
Then I thought: Hmmm, he’s right, Nazi did use Jews for work but planned to kill (extinct) them. Maybe I was wrong, maybe the same thing happened to slaves in America? So I wrote: ok, So, you do think it goes to scale 8 for blacks as well? in a way: “did the same thing happened to blacks?”
And you answered:
That was not my point but understanding the nuances and the process of genocide.
So it got me confused. It looked like you missed the point intentionally or something. If you are interested in my general views on race, racism etc please ask. If you want to know my intentions for writing what I write, please ask.
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Mira,
Those whites that usually claim Native American ancestry don’t live in the Mid-West. America has to be looked at regionally in some views about race. This was around forty years ago, but when I was in Oklahoma, Texas and Colorado, I was shocked at the intolerance of Native Americans and how they were even more despised than Black folk.
These white folks racism is constantly evoked by the Native defending their right to exist, which to them were those heathen massacres. It doesn’t play into their mind that not only land was taken, but tens of millions of Buffalo were slaughtered in order starve the Native Americans. What is so interesting now, is that these people that have benefited from the genocide and property theft are some that fiercely defend their property rights. Some of them have gotten very upset on their blogs, when I point out the Homestead Act of 1862 was the biggest entitlement program from the FEDs. This program lasted til 1934.
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There need NOT have to be steps towards genocide, unless you are hinting that all genocides work the same way – which I know you are not.
The point which I am making, and I do not want to reduce it either to what Fanon refers to being ‘objective’ etc. That one has to understand the historical processes for genocide.
You had made mention of ‘African slaves and work’. I merely pointed out that the Jews were also made to work’ before being murdered as part of the process.
And still on teh same theme, if we are speaking of ‘extinction’ then that would characterise the European Jew genocide only.
It did NOT incorporate all Jews across the planet like the Beta Israel Jews (Ethiopia), Sephardic Jews, Bene Jews (India).
Hence my point about understanding due process(es).
I do not understand your point when you say:
“So it got me confused. It looked like you missed the point intentionally or something. If you are interested in my general views on race, racism etc please ask. If you want to know my intentions for writing what I write, please ask”.
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There need NOT have to be steps towards genocide, unless you are hinting that all genocides work the same way – which I know you are not.
I was talking about 8 stages of genocide. I didn’t see you oppose the idea presented in Abagond’s post. So why are you quoting my posts only. If you don’t think genocides work in stages, we can talk about it. I was commenting on Abagond’s scheme about the 8 stages of genocide (ok, it was not “his| scheme, but the one presented here). I think stages are good to use because otherwise people would disregard any genocide that is not about mass killings as not genocide. True, there are other definitions of genocide, but like I said, if you want to argue the presented 8stages scheme, just say to.
I do not understand your point when you say: “So it got me confused. It looked like you missed the point intentionally or something. If you are interested in my general views on race, racism etc please ask. If you want to know my intentions for writing what I write, please ask”.
What was confusing about it? Like I said, I might be paranoid, but it looked to me that you’re reading my comments not for what I actually write, but to reveal something “hidden” behind them, something that- as far as I can tell from you other posts- goes in the direction of me trying to deny or minimize suffering of black people. So I said, if you want to talk about my intentions, we can do that. But please don’t misinterpret my posts. If I say “blacks were not exterminated”, you could write: “are you sure about that? They were” and we can talk about it. Not “but Jews were used for work too”- that way I’m getting the feeling you’re either missing the point or trying to play a game with me, a game I don’t understand. My English is not be perfect, so yes, it can be a factor here so I’m not saying you’re mean or doing this on purpose. Maybe I am the one whose comments are confusing.
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Abagond,
When genetic engineering can give you the child with specific characteristics, then I think all Americans including Black folks will participate in genocide.
How man Black people will opt for a blond, blue eyed and fair skinned child. Do you think that the Black child who now picks out the white doll, grow up to think differently?
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Beautifully written again.
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@Hathor
Those whites that usually claim Native American ancestry don’t live in the Mid-West. America has to be looked at regionally in some views about race. This was around forty years ago, but when I was in Oklahoma, Texas and Colorado, I was shocked at the intolerance of Native Americans and how they were even more despised than Black folk.
True. Of course America is not uniform. But I don’t know much about regional differences, so I can’t tell. Also, note that my experience with these things comes from Internet (blogs like this one) or media. Perhaps it’s a bit different in practice. All in all, I do see (online and in media) white people pretty often talking about Native American ancestry, no matter how small. So I got the feeling Natives are considered “exotic others” (as the opposite of “pathetic others”) these days.
When genetic engineering can give you the child with specific characteristics, then I think all Americans including Black folks will participate in genocide.
How man Black people will opt for a blond, blue eyed and fair skinned child. Do you think that the Black child who now picks out the white doll, grow up to think differently?
This is a very good question. I am not sure about blond, blue eyes child, but I do think many black parents would opt for lighter skin and straight hair. 😦
That’s why movie “Gattaca” is (unintentionally, I guess) interesting. In their world, there are only a few black people. (Sure, it was probably because of white-producers-are-racist, as usual, but in this case, it did have a meaning. Also, whites were mainly blonde and blue eyed).
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color of love, that was not what i was referring to. i was referring to institutionalized racism and colorblind racism and anything that falls under that category.
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Mira,
I was thinking of that movie, although I hadn’t seen it. The theme is popular in sci-fi, only now has technology brought it closer to reality.
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It is a decent movie. Not perfect, though. Some things are just way to naive to be believable, but the concept is ok.
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1. I saw “Gattaca” too. It was interesting.
2. The 8-stage model of genocide comes from Gregory Stanton of the US State Department. He studied the genocide in Cambodia and noticed that the genocides in Rwanda and Sudan went through the same stages. It also clearly applies to the Holocaust. But applying it to America is me, not him.
3. White Americans have long used blacks as a cheap supply of labour, but ever since Emancipation blacks have become an “optional” population, if that makes sense. There is a great Derrick Bell story about that, “The Space Traders”. Blacks were worth more to whites when there was a dollar-sign on their head, when they had market value as slaves.
4. Native Americans might be back down at Stage 1. That is why I put a question mark after them in the post. It depends on current white views on having wiped them out, something I do not have a good handle on.
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The King Alfred Plan was made up by John A. Williams in 1967 for his book “The Man Who Cried I Am”. He left copies of the plan in the New York subway and it became an urban legend.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Alfred_Plan
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I’m sorry butt step 1 doesn’t apply to Native Americans. They were not separated into “us” and “them” because there never was any “us” to begin with. In Germany, Serbia, Rwanda the victims were already part of the “social contract” of the place, but in America there were two completely different and incompatible “social contracts” and lifestyles competing for the same territory. The annihilation of the weaker one was a given. And genocide implies the idea of choice. The Germans had a choice, the Yugoslavians had a choice and the Rwandans had their choice too. What happened there was not something that was inevitable.
But in America’s case I think the social forces and momentum were so much in the disfavor of the Native Americans that no government could have amassed the power to stop them. The masses wanted land and they wanted it then. Any government that would have tried to deny them for the sake of some “hunter-gatherers” would have failed and would have been quickly thrown out of power .
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I don’t know about Rwanda, but what happened in Germany and Yugoslavia was not a similar thing, and what happened in America is also different. Three different things. In case of Yugoslavia, one thing that is rarely mentioned is the fact that it was fall and disintegration of one nation in a civil war. Because that’s what it was: one nation, civil war. Nobody talks about it this way (including the participants), because today it’s really unpopular to say it was a civil war or that all those ethnicities once (and not so long time ago!) made one nation (Yugoslavian). Instead, people talk about “centuries of hate” between ethnic groups and “it was always like this”, while, in fact, it wasn’t. It was a civil war that happened to one nation. None of the ex-Yugoslavian republics want to talk about it that way (because it doesn’t suit their interest), but that doesn’t change the fact it was a civil war.
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Is the US government genocidal?
Obviously not. If the government were genocidal, elected officials would begin to support the full legalization of all recreational drugs.
If all recreational drugs were legalized, the death and devastation blacks would inflict on themselves would amount to genocide.
But no responsible politicians support legalization.
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With regard to your comments Mira.
This is a chatboard where people put forwards ideas and exchange ideas. Sometimes people put forward ideas as a compliment, or to clarify matters, or to be adversial, or for a variety of reasons.
However, when people adopt the position, why are you addressing me, but did NOT address someone else. personally for me that does NOT make any real sense.
Since, if one has the ‘facts’ no matter who addresses you, or whatever they may claim. The ‘facts’ ought to be able to speak for themselves, even if an individual may have a ‘dishonest’ appoach.
Personally I think it may be your command of the language and the nuances thereof, how it can be used ‘overtly’ or ‘covertly and’explicitly’ or ‘implicity’ which may be creating your perception??
Hope this makes some sense.
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Facts can’t speak for themselves. They always need someone to interpret them. But that’s another story.
When it comes to this post, I didn’t understand you wanted to challenge the whole idea behind stages of genocide. I thought there was something in my posts you want to challenge- but you didn’t say what.
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I came to clarify a point which I identified viz that ‘work’ also occurred for Europeans Jews in their genocide, as it also occurred for the ‘African slaves’.
Surely you must agree also that there is nothing to be interpreted here with regard to these two facts of information.
I am afraid you are mis-representing my position if that is your perception- but as I had said earlier that is fine by me.
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davi,
The Federal government got the land then open the door to immigration to fill the land. There were no masses demanding land. A lot of the land gotten from the Native American was high in minerals, water or forest. You look at the population density of the Mid-West. There was no need for the Native American to be removed except there would have to be some compromise in whether the whites would get all the benefits and profits or their nations sovereignty would be violated.
There is always an argument that the “Indian didn’t understand property rights or couldn’t assimilate, but many of the nations tried, they became educated, formed local governments in the American style, some already had governments and forms of justice that the colonist adopted, especially the Cherokee and the northern nations like the Iroquois.
What Europeans forget is the only thing that made their technology possible was gun power and the horse. Horses did not even exist in America until the Spanish brought them over.War was another pressure that advanced their technology. If Europe had not been as populated, I would venture to say they would have at the same stages as the rest of the world.
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davi,
I have to respectfully disagree. The binary of White versus the Racialized Other was predicated on the idea that Europeans were clean, advanced, civilized, “progressive”, industrious, and favored by God.
The Other, specifically Native Americans in this case, was predicated on the idea that they were savages, barbaric, backward, primitive, and pagan.
Ultimately, this representation functioned to allow white settlers to delude themselves into thinking that their expansion into Native American territory was only natural. They saw themselves as advancing the country as a whole by bringing modernity and progress to what was essentially considered a wilderness populated by savage nobles who had no idea how to “properly” work the land. Hence you have ideas such as Manifest Destiny floating around, that God wanted white people to spread and flourish.
So yeah, there definitely was a “us” versus “them” in place for all of this to occur. Socially constructed, but real all the same.
It was deliberate, legitimized, reinforced, and acted upon.
So none of this “it was societal forces” and hence inevitable is not flying with me.
Honestly, I’m not sure why you think Native Americans had to be formally included in American society for them to be dehumanized in the first place. Genocide is not concerned with social contracts. Genocide is genocide.
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The title itself “Is America still genocidal ?” sounds like the “Did you stop beating your wife? ” question
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Right, because it assumes that America at least used to be genocidal even if it is not any more.
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@ J,
I think the comparison between Jews in WW2 and the African-American experience is comparing apples and oranges.
This is not to get into an “oppression olympics” and compare whose suffering is worse. It’s just different.
The intent for the European Jews was to wipe them out. The forced labour they did was a side benefit of the process, but not the goal.
I don’t think this could ever really be said of any government plan towards African-Americans. The intention was to use their labour, not to kill them. Although of course they historically treated as subhuman and it was not important whether they died or not. But there is a difference.
The Native American situation, historically speaking, does count as genocide. Although it was not directed and explicit in the way that the Jewish Holocaust was, in effect it was still genocidal, and was being carried out by many independent agents in many locations around the US.
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Eurasian,
Just to say I was not comparing ‘Jewish Holocaust’ and the African-American process.
Why do people keep refering to ‘slavery’ as only an ‘American experience’ – I do NOT understand why some here can only see slavery being restricted to the shores of America, when it was a global enterprise??
And again the extermination of the Jews in the history book is written as if ALL Jews were to be exterminated when this obviously was not the case, only White European Jews. So there was no attempt to wipe out ALL Jews
These are the ‘facts’ that we have before us on the discusson table.
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j, you wrote:
And again the extermination of the Jews in the history book is written as if ALL Jews were to be exterminated when this obviously was not the case, only White European Jews. So there was no attempt to wipe out ALL Jews
Oh. In other words, you are claiming that if Germany had won WWII it would have stopped killing Jews. That’s a new one. The Nazis would have killed every Jew in every country under German control. Thus, if Germany had realized its goal of world domination, it would have been positioned to exterminate almost every Jew on the planet.
At the time of the Holocaust the total number of Jews in the world was about 18 million. Hitler killed 6 million. Meanwhile, today the global population of Jews is about 15 million, with about 5 million in Israel and 6 million in the US, leaving 4 million scattered elsewhere.
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I am saying what the historicals facts are. What you are saying here is conjecture??
Can I politely enquire if you are Jewish??
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And again No_Slappz,
If we are going to use the Holocaust as the basis of our analysis.
If we look at it the Nazi’s also murdered the Gypsies, Jehovah Witnesses, disabled, to a lesser extent Afro-Germans.
Can you confirm if you also think if Germany had gained ‘world domination’ these or at least some of these groups would also be exterminated globally, and if so which ones, if any??
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Sigh.
Well, there’s a problem with this.
First of all, Abagond, you’re using a rhetorical trick here which is known as “the loaded question” or, more colloquially, the “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” gambit.
Basically, you allege that something has happened in the past and ask if it continues, insisting on a “yes” or “no” answer. If your target says “no”, he tacitly admits to doing something in the past. If he says “yes”, of course, he admits to doing it now.
The proper intellectual response to such a loaded question gambit is to break the question down into parts and answer them seperately.
However, you refine the rhetorical trick by playing a further one which presumes beforehand that anyone of a given complexion who attempts to discuss the complex history of white-indian relations in the U.S. must ipso facto be attemping to appologize for genocide.
Nevertheless, I will attempt to apply logic to the question, breaking it down into parts and answering those.
The parts are:
1) Has the U.S. committed genocide?
2) Has the U.S. committed genocide against Indians?
3) Is the U.S. committing genocide today?
1) and 2)
The first problem we run up against is your definition of “genocide”, which is oddly restricitive. About the only people who argue that genocide needs must mean mass killings on the level of the Holocaust are Jewish activist who wish to reserve the word for the Holocaust and nothing else.
Native American activists like Russel Means, Ward Churchill and Vine Deloria Junior have all argued AGAINST the definition of genocide which you post above because it doesn’t adequately encompass the Native American experience. The Native American population in the U.S. was never, in and of itself, the target of mass killings, though many separate Native American groups were. This is a point well recognized by even the most radical Native American historians such as Ward Churchill.
Instead, Native Americans prefer to use the United Nation’s definition of “genocide” which encompasses forced attempts at mass cultural change with an eye to eliminating a group from the face of the Earth (probably more threatening, actually, to group survival than actual mass killings). This, the Indians definitely suffered as a discrete racial group from about the 1880s on to the 1960s.
So if we use the U.N.’s definition of “genocide” (which, btw, the U.S. refuses to recognize precisely BECAUSE it could be applied to Indians), then yes, the U.S. has committed genocide against its Native American population. If we use the 8 step process you describe above, no it hasn’t.
By the same U.N. definition, the U.S. has committed genocide against its African American population, too, though one would be hard pressed to find this articulated as official federal policy, as was the case with the Indians. Some case could definitely be made.
3)
With the advent of the John Collier administration of the BIA, federal Indian policy swung decisively behind the idea of maintaining the Indian nations as discrete socio-cultural and political groups. Some radicals like Ward Churchill argue that this was only done in order to better rationalize the exploitation of Indian lands and there’s some truth in that. Also, from around 1950 to the end of the ’60s, assimilation policy made a brief and incomplete come-back in the BIA. From the Nixon administration on, however, the federal focus has been to maintain native groups as they are.
The U.S. thus stopped committing genocide upon the Indians in 1934 or – if ytou’re a stickler – in the early 1970s.
As for other groups…
The U.S. does not seem to be dedicated to forced, mass cultural or physical obliteration of any ethnic groups within its frontiers as a matter of policy. OUTSIDE its borders is another question. One could argue that the current crusade against Islam is a form of genocide, for even people like Obama seem to feel that forced cultural change must take place in Iraq and Afganistan. Obama probably doesn’t foresee using such change to eliminate entire ethnic groups: Bush certainly came close to that idea, however.
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In other words, you are claiming that if Germany had won WWII it would have stopped killing Jews. That’s a new one.
Well, there was this whacky idea certain members of the Nazi government had (most particularly Eichmann) of establishing a “Jewish homeland” in Madagasgar. So it’s not inconceivable that they would have stopped at some point.
However, I’d argue that the hatred which had been whipped up against the Jews was so strong that the Nazis probably COULDN’T stop it, even if they’d won the war and expulsed Jews from Germany, It would have been politically prohibitive.
Furthermore, the natural tendency of fascism its the prepetuation of radical othering.
As anthropology has shown, time and again, human groups don’t define themselves as such so much by what they have in common but by who they define themselves AGAINST.
Being that fascism was an attempt to form hyper-cohesive, unitary and homogenous national ethnic groups, it needed a correspondingly radicalized other. In short, if the Jews didn’t exist, Hitler would have had to make them up (in fact, he did, in a sense). My guess is that the Nazis would have gone on killing Jews until they had no more to kill. Long before then, they’d have turned on another ethnic group in order to keep the ball rolling. My best guess, given the historical evidence, would be the Slavs (sorry Mira, but I’m pretty sure you’ll agree given the history of Yugoslavia during WWII).
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Thad said:
“As anthropology has shown, time and again, human groups don’t define themselves as such so much by what they have in common but by who they define themselves AGAINST. “
What an idea. So how does that apply to White Americans?
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What an idea. So how does that apply to White Americans?
No, Abagond, that is true. We (whatever “we” means to any of us) define our group not as much on “we are THIS” but “we are NOT like THEY”. Seriously. The division between “us” and “them” is mainly based upon “we are different than them”. Not “we are this”. But: “we are not this (that our enemies are)”.
In other words, you can’t build identity on its own. You need another, “enemy” group to define your identity as the opposite of you enemies’.
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Thad:
I do not remember anything about forced cultural change in the UN definition of genocide – which itself was a compromise between the winners of the Second World War (notably, Stalin did not want mass killings based on politics to count as genocide – just those based on race, religion and ethnicity.)
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Thad:
You are right, the post takes it for granted that wiping out over a million Native Americans is genocide.
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With regard to:
“My guess is that the Nazis would have gone on killing[EUROPEAN WHITE] Jews until they had no more to kill. Long before then, they’d have turned on another ethnic group [IN FACT THEY HAD ALREADY DONE SO WITH THE GYPSIES] in order to keep the ball rolling”
Just for clarification I have decided to redacted the following by adding the words in capital letters enclosed in brackets
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What an idea. So how does that apply to White Americans?
Very much applies to white and white Americans. Whites didn’t see themselves as such until they began to run into categorically different groups on a mass scale following the birth of modernity. And the Americas was pretty much the laboratory for racialist and racist thinking in the world, whites being no exception there.
You are right, the post takes it for granted that wiping out over a million Native Americans is genocide.
First of all, Abagond, even Native American historians themselves are very divided on this question. There’s no consensus at all on how many Indians were in North America prior to contact, how many died from biological shock and how many died from wars and murder.
I can categorically state that there’s no point in U.S. history where the federal government set out to systematically murder 1,000,000 Indians. If you’ve got informantion to the contrary, I’d love to see it.
In fact, the best analyses I’ve seen (carried out by Native scholars themselves) shows that the Native American population was on the upswing by the second half of the 19th century at the latest. Some argue for earlier than that.
When it comes down to historical proof rather than simple rhetoric, the fact of the matter is, we just don’t know.
This is why most Native scholars insist on the U.N. definition of genocide. It is MUCH easier to prove that the U.S. did that as a matter of policy rather than mass killings.
I do not remember anything about forced cultural change in the UN definition of genocide…
Then you didn’t read it, apparently.
Article 2 of the UN Convention on Genocide quite clearly calls “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” genocide. “Forced cultural change” fits that description like a glove.
Article 2 in general, in fact, can be applied to Native Americans. Note that there is exactly ZERO mention of “mass killings”.
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In terms of percentages, the German genocide against the Gypsies was far worse than that against the Jews.
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J is correct. The Nazis already HAD turned on other groups and not just the gypsies. They were also ramping up on the Slavs by the war’s end.
As for Jews, white or black, I very much doubt Hitler would have had many qualms against killing them. Seeing as how Italy controlled Ethiopia, however (home of something like 95% of the planet’s black Jews at the time) and Italy was Germany’s ally, it would have depended upon how hard Hitler could’ve leaned on Mussolini regarding the question.
My guess is “pretty hard”.
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In terms of percentages, the German genocide against the Gypsies was far worse than that against the Jews.
Yes it was. The point being…? (Not being a smart-ass here, simply can’t see why this is an issue, precisely, given that I’m certainly not arguing that the Jews have been the only people to suffer a genocide in history).
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My best guess, given the historical evidence, would be the Slavs (sorry Mira, but I’m pretty sure you’ll agree given the history of Yugoslavia during WWII).
Well, in terms of major Nazi victims, Slavs are listed on the third place, after Jews and Gypsies. I am not sure how they measured this: by number of killings or percentage?
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j, you wrote:
If we look at it the Nazi’s also murdered the Gypsies, Jehovah Witnesses, disabled, to a lesser extent Afro-Germans…Can you confirm if you also think if Germany had gained ‘world domination’ these or at least some of these groups would also be exterminated globally, and if so which ones, if any??
If Germany had won WWII it would have continued its extermination policies as long as these enemies of the state were visible.
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Thanks…
Personally I have never been a ‘fan’ of an aspect of History when it talks what would have happened if Hitler succeeded and so on??
And there is also another reason why I am not concerned what Hitler would have done is that it had already been a feature of Blacks/People of Color lives for many years
“…[Aime] Césaire says, these unconcealed genocides were quickly “absolved” by the West on the pretext of their victims’ non-Europeanness. Only centuries later, when Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco turned fascism against their own kind, was there a popular awakening in the West of antifascist consciousness and organized resistance”
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j,
Inasmuch as Hitler is dead and Nazi Germany long gone, I do not concern myself with what MIGHT have happened if the Nazis had triumphed.
What DID happen was more than enough.
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No Slappz
Are you nuts? You are the one who brought this up! When I say you are not a serious commenter, this is just the kind of stuff I mean. (Thought that is hardly the worst of it.)
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abagond,
My previous comments were in response to a statement in someone else’s comment. Not my own.
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Thad:
I am speechless – even with my mad rhetoric self.
So like Native Americans just all fell over dead from smallpox and whites walked in and settled abandoned land, is that it? And, hey, it was never official government policy, so it does not count? And some say Native numbers were on the upswing, so there?
I mean, Thad, this is deep Stage 8 stuff:
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Have anybody read “Guns, germs and Steel”?
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🙂
Will comment there. But seriously, people, read that book. It’s really interesting, even if you don’t agree with what’s written in it.
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Abagond, there’s a couple of problems with your rhetoric – and yes, it’s rhetoric. You don’t want an answer, do you?
First of all, you’re collapsing history and presuming, somehow, that the U.S. government existed prior to 1789.
The main shock of small pox occurred in the early 17th century, perhaps even earlier. There’s excellent evidence, for example, that New England was underpopulated by small pox long before the Puritans showed up. Squanto’s testimony on the matter, just to begin with.
There’s zero evidence that this small pox epidemic of about 1600 was engineered. It was apparently picked up off of Basque whalers and European cod fishers who’d been using the area – perhaps since before Colombus.
In fact, the only evidence I’m aware of concerning conscious attempts to spread disease among the Indians comes from Bouquet’s and Amherst’s correspondence during Pontiac’s Rebellion in 1763: a full 150 years, at least, after the initial small pox epidemic which devastated the coastal Indians.
I’m willing to buy the idea that Amherst and Bouquet put their plan into operation and that this could be qualified as genocidal (against Potniac’s people, if not the Indians as a whole), but even then there are two problems:
1) Amherst and Bouquet weren’t representatives of the U.S., a country which didn’t even exist in 1763.
2) There’s no indication that this plan was any sort of government policy. It appears to be the work of two war criminals (presuming we use today’s definition of “war criminal”).
Abagond, millions of Indians died in the contacts between European colonists and the First Nations. That is not enough to qualify a situation as “genocide”, however, neither by the UN definition or your definition.
By the way, Abagond, this isn’t a WHITE reading of history but a Native reading of history. Also, as I mentioned above, it’s not a negation of genocide: it’s the recognition that genocide should RIGHTLY be defined by the UN and not according to the “8 step program” you’ve outlined above. Planned mass murder is not necessary to qualify a situation as “genocidal”.
So it seems to me that instead of implying that the United States used a time machine to engage in 16th century germ warfare, you’d be much better off in joining native activists in decrying the genocide which quite provably DID occur.
Presuming, of course, that your goal is to encourage social justice and not just spout rhetoric.
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By the way, Abagond, not even Ward Chuchill – who’s by far one of the most vocal and radical Native American activists, considers most of the East Coast to have been “stolen” by whites. For better or worse, at least 70% of the east coast region was negotiated for legitimately in treaties which even most native groups themselves recognize.
Native American history is a complicated affair, Abagond. It’s not quite the simple story you’d make it out to be.
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SMH
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Thad:
Since you seem to have an interest in this subject I am going to ask you this: To the best of your knowledge, do most White Americans see it as a genocide or not? And by genocide I mean either “We killed them to take their land” or even “Like what Hitler did to the Jews” since I doubt most White Americans know the UN definition (either your version or mine or some other version).
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To the best of your knowledge, do most White Americans see it as a genocide or not?
How the hell am I supposed to know, abagond? Do I live in the U.S.?
I’d say plenty do, given the persistence of the “Century of Dishonor” meme among white americans. Plenty of white americans who are 1/128th Cherokee also consider themselves to be “Indians” today (as do many black americans, just to keep it fair).
In 2004, I was doing research at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and working on the side helping them set up their “Our peoples” exhibit for the opening of the new museum on the Mall.
One night, Ana and I went down to Adams Morgan for some beers and we got to talking to some white guys at the bar. When we told them why we were in D.C., one of these dudes launched into an hour-long spiel regarding how he was really Native American and that we (a black and a white) couldn’t meaningfully understand the Native experience.
Said guy was as white looking as you could wish (blond and blue-eyed, even), had never set foot on a rez, had no knowledge of any native language, no knowledge of any native culture at all in fact. At first we thought he was making some sort of droll joke, a “let’s lead the foreigners on” sort of thing. But he was deadly serious: he believed that he was an Indian because one of his great-grand-somethings was an Indian (at least partially).
Then, a few weeks later at the NMAI, someone asked what I was researching. I responded “Oh, Indian affairs in the 1930s” and then got a half hour lecture from a very white women who claimed that “we Native Americans to the word ‘Indian’ and you disrespectful whites had better learn that”.
“Lady,” I responded “I’m studying the BIA. Y’know, the Bureau of Indian Affairs? And aren’t YOU an employee of the NMAI – the National Museum of the American Indian? It seems to me that if you’re serious about what you’re saying, you have bigger fish to fry than me.”
Americans are loons when it comes to race and are particularly loony when it comes to Indians – which, I’ll remind you, is a racial category which CAN be mixed in American mythology.
I’ll thus not hazard any guesses on what white americans believe about Indians any more. From where I’m sitting, it looks like increasing numbers of white and black Americans actually believe that they ARE Indians.
And, byt the way, it is precisely these white and black Indians who are most likely to rant about genocide.
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“We killed them to take their land” seems to be the consensus view in the States among Americans I’ve known, though of course there’s always the Flat earth Brigade to consider.
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“Americans are loons when it comes to race and are particularly loony when it comes to Indians.”
Yeah why is that? I couldn’t agree more, black, white, and brown people are crazy in America when it comes to race. My hypothesis is we are such a young and diverse country, people are not ready to accept a commonality. Yet Brazil is also a young diverse country and racism is totally different there.
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Flat earth brigade… Where have they been hiding lately? Ah… now I remember, I recall they set sail to “prove their point”, but in so doing fell to their demise. Therefore, they are no longer a threat.
I think that’s the way the story goes… LOL
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To colorofluv
Believe it or not there are still people alive today that believe the earth is flat!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_Society
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Thad said: “Americans are loons when it comes to race”
I agree on that!
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Some people wanted to hear the story of my experiment for the first day of my “Biology, race and culture” class at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Most of the class is very light – perhaps white, by Bahian standards – but 20% could call themselves black in the U.S. and have no raised eyebrows. Almost all are middle class.
So this is thew group of Brazilians who typically avoid talking about race amongst themselves because “em casa de enforcado, não se fala em corda” (“in a hanged man’s house you don’t talk about ropes”) – meaning that race is a potentially very explosive issue because while everyone considers themselves to be “white” or “pardo” (light brown), no one wants to look TOO closely at their ancestry.
So I asked the kids to divide themselves up by race. They milled about, hemmed and hawed, and finally did it by hair form: curly hair to the right, wavy hair in the middle, straight hair to the left.
(I SHOULD have said “OK, all you girls who are using hair-straightening products, move to where your hair would REALLY place you”, but I forgot.)
Interesting, no?
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Only interesting in the sense as I said elsewhere if ALL the present categories for ‘race’ and/or even ‘differences’ could be removed and done away with, humans would devise another set.
This in essence is what your class did in one sense…
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OOOps..thanks for relaying the information
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Not really. Hair form is one of the ways people talk about race in Brazil without talking about it.
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Hair form is one of the ways people talk about race in Brazil without talking about it.
This is interesting.
@J
Only interesting in the sense as I said elsewhere if ALL the present categories for ‘race’ and/or even ‘differences’ could be removed and done away with, humans would devise another set.
(I’m jumping from another post) What about eye colour, for example. It’s “not big deal” now, but what if a new division is based on eye colour. Then most of the black people and many white people would make one race, while others would be another race. And everybody would see that as “natural” and logical.
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Yes…I am aware that hair type is also a social category regarding race, but not hair per se though
However, within the ‘artificial’ experimental setting of your classroom. I suspect this was the ‘only’ category they could use (or perhap think of) without disturbing their sensitivities…
Or what other category could they use, if the subject is taboo?
…If you follow??
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Mira…
Spot on!!
With regard to:
“…What about eye colour, for example. It’s “not big deal” now, but what if a new division is based on eye colour. Then most of the black people and many white people would make one race, while others would be another race. And everybody would see that as “natural” and logical
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What about eye colour, for example.
Wouldn’t work here. Amber to brown is what 99% of cariocas have.
However, within the ‘artificial’ experimental setting of your classroom. I suspect this was the ‘only’ category they could use (or perhap think of) without disturbing their sensitivities…
You got it. I forced them to line up by blood type and tooth size as well. I didn’t want to be cruel and do skin color. That may have blown a few lids.
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Left handed and Right-handed race then ha ha
What do they call that in the social sciences ‘unethical’ putting your subjects, in this case your students through hell.
Then again there are some who suggest students do need such a shock ha ha
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Abagond said:
“Deep down whites think of blacks as monkeys. That makes it easier to kill them or, what is most commonly the case, to stand by and do little when they die in large numbers, as during the heroin and crack epidemics and the high murder rates that followed.”
Do you really believe this to be true? Then why did so many Whites rush to Haiti’s aid after the earthquake? I understand your point that some Whites are racist, but I think you are exaggerating a bit.
White have been genocidal in the past – no doubt. But looking at what happened in Rwanda and what is happening in some African countries right now (Congo, Sudan, Uganda), Black Africans have no problem with kiling each other.
By the way, Whites killed 50+ million Whites during WWII, so they are not above killing each other as well.
Perhaps, unfortunately, genocide is human nature and a part of the “sin” problem. It’s not confined to any one race.
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With regard to this point only:
“and what is happening in some African countries right now (Congo, Sudan, Uganda), Black Africans have no problem with kiling each other.”
This can be viewed as a ‘simplistic’ picture if you do not take on board issues of the politics of ‘neo-colonialism’
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Patricia:
Yes I believe that. I promised Uncle Milton a post on it but wound up writing this one instead. Thanks for reminding me.
To answer some of your points I will apply your style of reasoning to Chris Brown, who beat up Rihanna a year ago.
Question: Will Chris Brown ever beat up a girlfriend again?
Abagond: He has done it before so it is quite possible he will do it again. Those who beat up their girlfriends and wives tend to do it more than once.
Patricia Kayden: Do you believe that? I mean, look at what a nice man he is (Haiti). Besides, he is not the only one who has beat up his girlfriend (Rwanda). Some men beat up men too, you know (WWII). Maybe it is just part of human nature.
And while we are at it, here is Thad:
Thad: That is a loaded question, Abagond. You are playing rhetorical tricks. Maybe he beat her, but he did not “beat up” Rihanna (does not fit the definition of genocide; there were killings but hardly any “mass killings”). And look at what good health she is in! (Native American numbers went up at the end of the 1800s.) Besides, Chris Brown never publicly stated that he was making it a practice to beat her up (genocide was never stated government policy).
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Abagond, here’s a question: is there any conceivable native death in the context of white-indian conflict that you would be willing ton qualify as NOT genocidal?
War is not necessarily genocide, Abagond. Neither is murder.
There are two definitions out there for genocide: one, which you stipulate above, requires mass murder.
That definition is REJECTED by most native american scholars of genocide, including the most radical, because it does not adequately encompass the Native American experience.
The second definition, proferred by the U.S., qualifies ANY attempt to eliminate an ethnic group as genocide, including forced schooling, separating parents from children, etc.
My point – and it should be very clear by now – is that I stand with native activists in supporting the SECOND definition of genocide because it adequately encompasses native experience. My point is not that genocide didn’t occur.
To use your rather strained metaphor, it’s as if you were claiming that in order to be considered as “beaten”, Rihanna needs to have been hospitalized. My point is that she wasn’t hospitalized, but that’s not an adequate definition of “beaten”, anyhow.
You’re the guy who went about defining “genocide” so precisely above, Abagond. And whether you are aware of it or not, your definition is precisely the same used by white folks (many of the Jewish) who wish to claim that what happened to the Indians WASN’T really genocide.
You need to read Ward Churchill’s Fantasies of the Master Race, Abagond. this topic is a hell of a lot more complicated than you imagine it to be. The history of racism against Native Americans isn’t simply a generic “people of color” history or black history with a war bonnet on its head. It has very specific characteristics of its own.
Vine Deloria Junior’s “The Red and the Black” goes into this in some detail andd should be required reading by any black activist who wants to talk about Indians in the context of racism.
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Thad:
Thanks for the book recommendations.
Of course there is plenty I do not know about how Native Americans got wiped out. But let us not lose sight of the fact that they did get wiped out, that those who did the wiping out stood to benefit hugely and did.
Did the government round up natives and shoot them in the back? No. Wounded Knee is the closest thing to that that I know of. There were few mass killings in that sense. But in that a whole continent of people got almost completely wiped out, I count that as a mass killing. If a million dead – or even 100,000 dead – is not mass, I do not know what is.
It was more like Darfur than the Holocaust. In fact, it was pretty much a slow-motion, coast-to-coast Darfur. Given that racism was used to excuse it, it was genocide.
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But let us not lose sight of the fact that they did get wiped out, that those who did the wiping out stood to benefit hugely and did.
No, they didn’t. They had their land stolen from them. But unlike the Jews in Germany and the Armenians in Turkey, they weren’t “wiped out”. Sorry. That’s just not true.
The largest fall of the population was due to biological shock, not consciously directed policies of mass murder. This occurred long before the United States existed.
Wounded Knee is the closest thing to that that I know of.
If you want to argue that mass murder was committed, I suggest you look into the history of scalp bounties. That’s a better ground to argue from than Wounded Knee. Wounded Knee was hardly premeditated.
But in that a whole continent of people got almost completely wiped out, I count that as a mass killing. If a million dead – or even 100,000 dead – is not mass, I do not know what is.
Genocide, by any definition, is the consciously directed and planned attempt to eliminate a group AS POLICY, Abagond. Biological shock hardly qualifies, even if we presume that the occasional war criminal like Amherst attempted to use it as a weapon. The millions who died in Europe due to the black plague were not victims of Chinese and Indian genocide, even though the plague originated in those lands.
Again, you’d be better off arguing this sort of genocide against various groups of Indians and not Indians as a whole. Even Amherst wasn’t looking to kill off his native allies. There’s no doubt in my mind, however, that Plymouth Colony engaged in genocide against the Pequods.
But again, this wasn’t “against Indians”. Even while the puritans were burning the Pequods in their villages, they were working together with various other native groups who were their allies. At no time during that war did “Indians”, in general, become a target.
To repeat my metaphor above, Hitler’s genocide was mostly directed against Jews and Gypsies, not against whites, for all that Jews and Gypsies were white.
By the time the U.S. government actually attempted genocide (the post Civil War period), the Indian population in the U.S. was well on the upswing. If you want to talk “America” and genocide against “the Indians”, you need to look at the forced assimilation policies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These policies were quite clearly centrally planned and directed against Indians as a whole. Their goal was to make Indians disappear. They were strictly genocidal, following the UN definition of the term. And it is for this reason that Indian activists who are SERIOUS about this issue (and not just trying to score rhetorical points with whites over beers) talk about this sort of genocide, which is very actionable under international law, and not mass murder, which is nect to impossible to prove in this case.
Finally, Abagond, if you’re going to write about native history, you need to LEARN SOME OF IT.
It is a hell of a lot more complicated than a “slow motion coast to coast Darfur”, as you would have it.
I’d be happy to send you the first chapter of my thesis, if you like. It attempts to be a sort of “history of white-native contact for dummies”, written for Brazilians who presumably know nothing about U.S. native history.
The Indian wars of north america were rarely strictly racial, Abagond, nor did they involve the planned and centrally directed attempt to eliminate Indians as a whole until the 19th century. Even then, it wasn’t until the LATE 19th century that this impetus really congealed along racial lines.
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Thad:
Yes, please send it. Thanks.
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Thad:
1. I am not trying to score rhetorical points. I honestly believe what I am saying because to the best of my present state of knowledge it is true.
2. If I were Native American I would be pushing on the cultural genocide angle too. It is way easier to prove and it was done by a government that is still in operation. You cannot sue “white people”, but you can sue the American government. And even apart from all that, cultural genocide has done far more long-term damage to natives: numbers can recover way more easily than can cultures.
3. You seem to notice the forest or the trees depending on whichever will make white people come out looking better. You did that with Sally Hemings and you are doing it now again with dead Indians.
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1. Either am I. And ditto. And I would suggest that until you start really reading Native history, your present state of knowledge is probably more based on prejudice than anything else.
2. This is indeed why they are pushing this angle.
3. Abagond, you have to be arguing in EXTREMELY bad faith or not listening to a word that I’m saying if you think that either this post or the Hemmings post makes white people “look better”.
In both cases, the situation was actually far grimmer than your two-dimensional, four-color superhero version of history would have it. I’ve pointed this out several times, but you apparently don’t care to listen. That’s your look out, not mine.
But I find it grimmly amusing that I’m providing you with all the ammo needed to REALLY nail the U.S. with a charge of genocide and make it stick and yet you somehow teist this around in your mind as “defending white people”.
Go figure.
Have you noticed, Abagond, that you don’t believe it’s really history unless it somehow makes you feel better as a person? If it doesn’t speak to your immediate political concerns, then you think it ain’t history.
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Thad said (in corrected spelling):
“But I find it grimly amusing that I’m providing you with all the ammo needed to REALLY nail the U.S. with a charge of genocide and make it stick and yet you somehow twist this around in your mind as “defending white people”.
Go figure.
Have you noticed, Abagond, that you don’t believe it’s really history unless it somehow makes you feel better as a person? If it doesn’t speak to your immediate political concerns, then you think it ain’t history.”
The first time you read my post it seems you read it as a cheap piece of bash-whitey rhetoric. Fine, we all make mistakes.
Please read the post again but this time ASSUME that I mean just what I say. Try not to read any motive into it other than maybe, “Oh crap, most of Abagond’s family is in America and they are not white”.
After that, while still in my shoes, think about what would most trouble me about your comments.
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Seriously, Abagond: every single description you make of the world has a clear-cut victimizing group and a clear cut victim group.
Every one.
Ever notice that?
It’s as if you can’t conceive of history with out bad guys and good guys.
Prove me wrong, man: show me one post of yours that deals with history and doesn’t eventually try to boil things down into two clear cut good and evil sides.
Worse, these groups are presented by you as essentially homogenous and reducible to one single characteristic. So you say “white” in the context of Native History and, all of a sudden, you have your historical North Star to guide your rhetorical steps. Whites are essentially the same – General Custer, Alice Fletcher, the whites who lived married into Indian groups and fought for them – they all have essentially the same interest in eliminating Indians from the Earth. And, on the flip side, Indians to you are essentially generic victims, whatever relationship they might have had to white power structures, whatever their tribes and nations. They are essentially cast as equal and the same, facing whiteness.
I mean seriously, Abagond: all you need to do to orientate yourself in history is ask “what is the color of the actors?’ and you immediately know everything you intend to ever know about the topic.
It’s reductionism Abagond, pure and simple. Determinist reductionism. Your thermometer for historical validity is whatever political project you feel needs to be pushed in the here and now.
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Thad said:
“Prove me wrong, man: show me one post of yours that deals with history and doesn’t eventually try to boil things down into two clear cut good and evil sides.”
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Todd:
Like Bay Area Guy, you are making my position more extreme than it is to discredit it.
I never said whites are pure evil. I know there are good whites – like the white abolitionists and so on. Something not accounted for in your model of me.
If you think whites got all the land they have in North America mostly through biological shock, you are fooling yourself. You are not facing up to how little whites value the lives of those who are not like them. Whites are STILL like that.
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OK, let me restate it: is there any history you’ve written that has touched on the concept of race, Abagond, and has not involved the notion of clear cut villians and good guys?
I’m willing to believe that you can write about the Byzantine Empire without dichotomizing, but I highly doubt you can do the same, consistently, with any historical formation which you see as building part of your identity.
The problem with your writing isn’t the supposed “whites are pure evil” premise, Abagond: it’s the reliance on portraying abstract social units as if they were individual actors, conventiently ignoring the fact that sociology isn’t simply psychology writ big.
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I think this is the only place I could put this article/link:
New Colonialism: Pentagon Carves Africa Into Military Zones
http://www.countercurrents.org/rozoff070510.htm
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I think that this is a pretty good article. I’d like to know what are you opinions on the following issues, abagond:
– On that scale of stages, where would you place the Irish Catholics? Catholics as a whole faced a good degree of discrimination in America in the 19th century, even in the 20th Century (making JFK’s inaugration as president of the USA more special, since he’s the first Catholic prez in the country’s history), and even in Europe. Like Africans/Arabs, Some commentators on race,culture,ethinicity and the like thought that countries like Spain and Ireland would not be as progressive nor productive as the other Protestant countries. I’d think that they’d be up there with the Mexicans, but i’d like to know what thoughts you have on it.
– Just touched briefly by Thad, The Armenian genocide is a hot issue. It’s pretty controversial, since even though most historians on Ottoman/ Turkish history, Armenian history or on World War I would say that the Ottomans commited genocide against the Armenians, there are still a substantial number of historians, most Turkish but not all of them, who claim that it doesn’t reach that standard of genocide. Most would claim that Armenians were certainly massacred by the millions, but Turks were also murdered as well by Armenians. The more extreme voices would even claim that there were more Turks killed than Armenians. So i’d like to know what do you think of that.
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@Mira
“None of the ex-Yugoslavian republics want to talk about it that way (because it doesn’t suit their interest), but that doesn’t change the fact it was a civil war.”
1) Well, I suppose it barely cuts the definition for a civil war considering at least 80% of all people who died during the war were Bosniaks. It was also an extremely lopsided civil war since most war factories were in Serbia, and Serbia channeled generous military supplies to the Serbs in Bosnia while the other ethnic groups scraped by with whatever defense they had.
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SERIOUSLY? Most “white” Americans don’t even know the history of the Native American genocide because they IMMIGRATED here AFTER IT. Which means that they aren’t really “plain out white Americans” they have there own cultural ancestry which is GREATLY OFFENDED BY YOU GROUPING THEM WITH EVERY OTHER WHITE PERSON IN AMERICA WHO OBVIOUSLY CAME FROM SOMEWHERE ELSE BECAUSE WE ALL DID UNLESS WE WERE NATIVE AMERICAN WHICH SOME OF US ARE IM 1/8 NATIVE AMERICAN. SO STOP SAYING I’M RACIST AND FORGOT THE GENOCIDE OF NATIVE AMERICANS BECAUSE I’M WHITE AND AMERICAN BECAUSE THAT IS NOT TRUE FOR ALL WHITE PEOPLE.
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@Kiwi,
I do think that late 19th century / early 20th Century Chinese-Americans did reach level 7. You look at places like Idaho, Montana, Oregon, etc. go from 15-30% Chinese down to less than 0.2%. the labour force of California went form 25% Chinese to maybe 2%. If that is not called extermination, I don’t know what is. They had posses who went from town to town (already past level 4), round them up and kill them if they were not lucky enough to escape.
I argue that they might be somewhat beyond stage 1 today. By labelling them as Perpetual Foreigner, they are more like at stage 2. They were still stage 3 until after the Vietnam war.
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@Anna Stevens
So that means that you know about it? Why do you think the others don’t need to know?
Of my 8 great grandparents, 2 came to the USA after the civil war (1 of whom was lynched), 3 never came to the USA . Of the remaining 3, 2 were white and the other was some unknown mixture that my grandmother didn’t want to talk about. Yet, I always wanted to know why the Native American genocide was not taught to me and why I had to exert so much effort to learn about it.
Why do people need to deny it or pretend like it never happened? Why do white people who might be 1/8 Native American need to make excuses for all the other white people?
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When cultures collide, one wins and one loses. What becomes of the losers?
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@egbegb
Would it be remiss of you to clarify your statement?
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I would argue that white American progressed to
Stage 2 to all Asian Americans until the 1965 Immigration acts (“Aliens ineligible for Naturalization”, the removal of land titles put into the names of their US born children, etc.)
Stage 3 to all Asian Americans during the wars with Asia, esp. during the Korean and Vietnam Wars
Stage 7 with Chinese Americans from 1880s-1900s
Stage 3 with Filipinos 1890s-1910s (Stage 5 in the Philippines itself) and again to stage 3 in 1930s-1940s
Stage 7 with Mexican Americans in the mid 1800s, and back up to stage 3 in the 1930s.
White America is stage 8 for most American Indian tribes, even for many of the extant ones, because they insist that they are extinct, but then deflect on how that happened (disease, it couldn’t be helped).
For the tribes that white America still acknowledges, they are in stage 4-5. Many organizations (eg, Stand Up California) exist to obliterate native American tribes to support white corporate interests. And listening to congressman rhetoric, they are already in stage 5.
–> the obliteration movement has never stopped
And this country is moving perilously close to advancing to stage 2 with Muslim Americans. That is exactly what Trump wants to do. To some extent, the USA is also exhibiting stage 3 behaviour with the dehumanization part.
If war ever broke out with China (and it has just escalated one more notch in the past month), then Chinese-Americans will quickly advance from Stage 1 to Stage 5 in a matter of weeks. The telling part would be if Americans can justify themselves going to stage 6.
The USA military has pledged to continue to move warships through the South China sea and to fly planes directly over the artificial reefs. I really hope a diplomatic solution is reached soon.
What would happen if Japan decides to join in this activity (as a US ally)?
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Let’s look at the facts here. There was no genocide against the Indians. Most of them died from lack of immunity to disease. If modern medicine couldn’t prevent tens of millions of people dying from CCP Virus in the last 3 years, does it really surprise you that the medicine of centuries ago couldn’t save the Indians from much deadlier diseases?
If the Bantu tribes of South Africa hadn’t been so immune to our European diseases, we would have a Boer majority in South Africa today, and the country would be a prosperous Western nation that was respected like any other Western nation.
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BTW, Muslims are Americans (or any Western nationality) in a technical sense only. They aren’t true members of Western civilization. They should be told to get baptized or leave. Our lands for our volk.
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