Ghost Dance

« Thanksgiving 2016

Ghost Dance

Fri Nov 25th 2016 by abagond

The Ghost Dance (1889-1891) was a dance that spread like wildfire among Native Americans in the western US in 1890. It came with Ghost Shirts and Ghost Songs. It was a last desperate attempt to end White rule. It led to a US military crackdown that was the end of all hopes.

It was started by Wovoka, a Paiute from Nevada, who lived not far from where the Transcontinental Railroad crossed into California, the railroad along which the Ghost Dance would later spread. In January 1889 the moon covered the sun and Wovoka had a vision. He saw all the dead coming back to life. The Creator showed him the dances and songs needed to bring it about.

The Red Messiah: Wovoka taught a way of peace. He had a scar on his wrist and face. They say he worked miracles. People came from near and far to see him. Many thought he was Christ come back to earth as a Red man to judge White men, the Christ-killers, to put things back the way they should be.

The Ghost Dance spread among the Paiutes, Shoshone, Arapahoes, Cheyenne and Lakota Sioux, but not among the Yankton and Santee Sioux, Navajos, Pueblos or Natives in California. In general, it spread among the most desperate, like those the US government was starving into submission.

It reached its height among the Lakota Sioux in the western Dakotas, who said the Ghost Shirts would protect them from guns, who said Whites would be destroyed. The Dance was big on the Standing Rock reservation (where the #NoDAPL protests are now taking place) and the newly established Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations.

The dance: Thousands gathered. They made you go through a sweat lodge and then put on a shirt with a crow, fish, stars and other symbols on it. They put a magpie feather and an eagle feather in your hair. Then you joined a great circle of dancers, holding hands. It was not a glad time yet people were expecting something wonderful. They sang songs like:

Mother do come back!
Mother do come back!
My little brother is crying for you –
My father says so!

They danced and danced and danced, all day and deep into the night. You danced till you dropped, falling out of the circle. Then you had a vision. All the visions ended the same way: a great camp of all the Sioux who had ever lived joined together in joy, with plenty of bison to live on. But then you would wake up into the terrible, unhappy world and start wailing.

And then it got worse:

The US military cracked down, Sitting Bull was killed, the last leader capable of leading a Sioux uprising. And then, on the fourth day after Christmas, the 7th Cavalry, defeated 14 years before by the Sioux at Custer’s Last Stand, killed over 153 unarmed men, women and children – by the stream where Crazy Horses’s heart lay secretly buried: Wounded Knee.

– Abagond, 2016.

Sources: mainly “Speaking of Indians” (1944) by Ella Deloria (has an eyewitness account); “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” (1970) by Dee Brown; “Man’s Rise to Civilization as Shown by the Indians of North America” (1968) by Peter Farb.

See also:

Posted in stuff | 117 Comments

117 Responses

on Sat Nov 26th 2016 at 18:57:31 Herneith

The white man has a lot to answer for!

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Sat Nov 26th 2016 at 19:48:29 Ben Munday

“I have terrible dreams. Horrible nightmares. But then I wake up. And the nightmares continue.- Anonymous

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Sat Nov 26th 2016 at 19:48:41 Fan ...

“The white man has a lot to answer for!”

typical white man response:

What disease ridden blankets?? Prove it! That’s just hearsay.
But, but, I never killed any injuns, Besides, my ancestors won (stole) this land fair & square a really long time ago. Quit living in the past. Stop being so hyper-sensitive. Quit drinking and get a job. Stop behaving like savages and act like civilized white people. Give us your best land and STHU. So what we’ve broken a few treaties.. everybody lies. No one is perfect. We’ve given you people gambling casinos, what more do you want? So what, a little cold mist sprayed on ya after dark ain’t gonna hurt your freakin’ protest over a few gas/oil pipelines. On second thought it wasn’t us who hit the protestors with cold water in the middle of a cold night… must’ve been some ghosts!!
Who me?? I’m not racist towards Indians. I’m at least 38% Cherokee Native Amerikan myself.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Sat Nov 26th 2016 at 22:50:47 Allen Shaw

An excellent presentation of the time; however it shows what happens when superstition overcomes common sense.

I believe in morals but not miracles.

Everyone has to become educated and start participating in local politics with knowledge of how their representative thinks and acts on issues.

Talking about the President and not having any knowledge of the local politics is folly.

Yes, Abagon, I know how much you want to change the subject; however a person caught in the ocean can only think about swimming to safety.

LikeLike
on Sat Nov 26th 2016 at 23:18:34 sharinalr

@Fan…

” I’m at least 38% Cherokee Native Amerikan myself.”—Now you know most of them are only 16% Native Amerikan.

LikeLike
on Sun Nov 27th 2016 at 00:58:57 Michelle

Making a prediction on how things are going to be next year???

LikeLike
on Sun Nov 27th 2016 at 04:35:24 dorisjean23

Those ghosts just might be coming back.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Sun Nov 27th 2016 at 14:01:52 Mary Burrell

Interesting read.

LikeLike
on Sun Nov 27th 2016 at 14:55:04 Herneith

@Allan:

What does your post have to do with the topic at hand?

LikeLike
on Sun Nov 27th 2016 at 15:40:56 v8driver

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/na-indianwartimeline.html

LikeLike
on Sun Nov 27th 2016 at 22:36:37 Allen Shaw

Herneith

@Allan:

What does your post have to do with the topic at hand?

The people who participated in the ghost dance were seeking miracles, that is all.

There real leaders should have known better and should have found a better response.

A lot of useless deaths occurred.

LikeLike
on Sun Nov 27th 2016 at 22:48:27 abagond

@ Allen Shaw

“There real leaders should have known better and should have found a better response.”

Such as? What do you tell people who have just been marched off their land onto reservations where there is not enough food to eat, all because of the US government? Where military solutions have been tried and failed?

LikeLike
on Sun Nov 27th 2016 at 22:51:34 abagond

@ v8driver

Great link! Thanks!

LikeLike
on Mon Nov 28th 2016 at 00:14:50 Allen Shaw

abagond

@ Allen Shaw

We are talking about history and we are talking about the facts of life.

The history of wars between “Native Americans” is not as clear as the conflict between the “Whites and the “Native Americans”.

Over the past years the conflict has been written and rewritten to the point that the “Native American” has been projected to be reduced to some helpless person. You would never know how powerful they were within their groups. You would almost believe they had no intelligence.

The leaders were wise and allowed themselves to be out talked by some superstitious would be religious leaders.

I can not answer your question because this is now and that was then; however telling someone that bullets would not go through a shirt would not have been my advice.

Why not just tell them to commit suicide?

I know many contributors to this blog are far more well read, and I believe more intelligent then I; however I have paid attention to the past thousands of years of history and I see nothing but conquest of one group over another. The problems of the Native American was just one more step in the progress of some consolidation of people.

The English made reference to the “White” mans burden, yet it cannot be determined at this time whether the White man will be the winner or just another contributor to the final version of man.

In the United States the White and Black is slowly giving way to the Brown and those Native Americans who do not live on the federal reservations are slowing merging into the “Brown” race. More Whites are adopting Black children, changing their social mores and more inter racial marriages and encounters are happening.

The grandchildren, of today’s individuals who are 21, will wonder what this conversation is all about.

The continued consolidation of Blacks into the Southeast of the United States and the major metropolitan areas of the balance of the nation is going to be unhelpful in solving the Black problems and in a way is like telling the Native Americans to wear a special shirt to save themselves.

So you tell me what we should tell the African American today that will help them reach a safe goal.

We do not need to know what the Native American Chief’s should have said.

Thanks for keeping your blog going and allowing “thoughtful conversations” to take place!

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Mon Nov 28th 2016 at 02:56:41 Mbeti

I don’t like to admit it but the left in general and agabonds blog as an example are apprentlly addicted to pain and suffering.
No wonder a day or so to after the election I had a great sense of wellbeing – uh maybe caus the election and Potus are not everything nor all bad etc etc

Anyway wouldn’t it be nice to read some happy stories about native americans ,how about some pictures of beautiful happy native americans ,
What you mean I would have go offsite and google such content and maybe put it on my own blog, nah I’m not done with being negative and unhappy most of the time.
Unhappy holidays

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Mon Nov 28th 2016 at 03:58:54 abagond

@ Mbeti

I try not to be too much of a downer. It is why I did not write about Michael Brown till Ferguson burned – it was too soon after Eric Garner.

On the other hand, the election has put me in a mood where the Ghost Dance felt right, if that makes any kind of sense. I was not in the mood to write a shiny, happy post. Maybe this one will tide you over:

https://abagond.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/r-e-m-shiny-happy-people/

That said, I will try to do some positive posts. Mr Shaw would like that too, I believe.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Mon Nov 28th 2016 at 20:59:11 abagond

@ Kiwi

In the post I blamed Wounded Knee on the 7th Cavalry and implied it might have been revenge. I did not make it about race. Even the broader military crackdown that it was part of was blamed on the US military not on “the White man”.

Wovoka and the Ghost Dance were framed in terms of “Whites”, “the White man” and “White rule”, but according to my sources, both White and Native, that is how people saw it then. No one brought up Blacks.

That is not to say Blacks are innocents. Hardly. They took part in the Indian wars too (on both sides). More generally, Blacks take part in anti-Native (and anti-Asian) racism, thus helping to support White racism:

https://abagond.wordpress.com/2013/11/02/the-three-pillars-of-american-white-supremacy/

Sitting Bull himself was killed by Native police officers – just as Freddie Gray was killed by Black police officers. That hardly means White racism had nothing to do with it. To suggest otherwise is a mystification.

LikeLiked by 2 people
on Wed Nov 30th 2016 at 04:19:58 Mbeti

@abagond
Thank you for responding.
I always feel like its some special reward when you the blog owner respond to my comments.
I will also take this time extend my sympathies for how you and many others felt due to the election and I will also say that the Post “Programming note #30” was very interesting and indictive of just how “emotionally” invovlved we all are regardless of our positions.

Anyway abagond you run an excellent blog regardless of what I think sometimes about some of the content.

And speaking of ghosts your most recent post inrelation to my comments and commenting is spooky to me ,in a good way 😊

LikeLike
on Sun Dec 4th 2016 at 10:36:56 Omnipresent

Kiwi

* sarcasm ‘Are you a Leo? Hard on the outside but sensitive in the middle’ ?*

Abagond said that black people are not innocent but not only do you want him to throw more of them under the bus, you want him to get in the drivers seat and repeatedly go forward then reverse over them. Does the fact that no one has agreed with your thinking for some time now not ring any resounding bells?

You are coming from a bad, f*cked up place with your commentary and YOU know it. Get a life

LikeLike
on Sun Dec 4th 2016 at 16:09:17 jefe

At least Abagond is willing to admit that

Blacks take part in anti-Native (and anti-Asian) racism, thus helping to support White racism:

as well as expounding that blacks also engage in internalized racism, another type of expression of racism, as well as having power to hurt others:
(https://abagond.wordpress.com/2008/08/08/all-blacks-are-racist/)

despite that nearly all of these arguments are expressed in terms of supporting White racism (which is probably largely the case, and consistent with the cases that Kiwi normally refers to). These statements do little to examine the possibility that someone (black or otherwise), might exhibit racism in an effort to dismantle white racism, or for other purposes (eg, to remain exclusive for other goals that may disadvantage others).

At least half the commenters on this blog insist that it is impossible for blacks to perform racist behavior (whether it is to support white racism or not). I have to give credit to Abagond that he does not support that argument. I am interested to learn what other arguments he will explore (eg, racism that is not an expression of support for white racism).

LikeLike
on Sun Dec 4th 2016 at 22:23:05 gro jo

“Kindly shut your mouth and get off your moral high horse. It’s disgusting.”
Kiwi, that’s solid advice wish you should heed.

LikeLike
on Sun Dec 4th 2016 at 22:27:13 gro jo

wish should be which above

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 5th 2016 at 01:55:25 jefe

Kiwi,

“in opposition to White racism”

Do you mean in apposition (ie, alongside, in addition) to White racism? When I read “opposition”, I take that to mean opposing, resisting, combating, which did not seem to represent what you meant in the rest of the sentence.

While Abagond has occasionally mentioned that blacks can be racist and even have the power to express and enforce their racism, it is nearly always in the context of support for white racism. That is already light years ahead of half the commenters on this blog who insist that blacks in the USA can never be racist (due to their unique history). Yet they can easily rattle off cases / examples where Native Americans, Asians, Latinos are racist as their experience of white oppression somehow enables them to be racist (whereas the black experience in America somehow exempts them). The explanation of why that (the racism exhibited by all POC except blacks) occurs seems to be based on the notion that racial oppression in the USA is a color-based hierarchy with blacks on the bottom, whites on top, and everyone else somewhere intermediate on the totem pole.

Yet, I fail to see how the racism embedded with issues such as the Dakota Access pipeline can be expressed as a form of colour-based racial hierarchy (with blacks on the bottom), or if that notion of racial hierarchy can explain how blacks (or other POC) fit in to the pipeline issue or its associated racism.

It would be great if Abagond had a little think about this idea about the different kinds of racism exhibited by POC which could be in support of white racism, in opposition to white racism or in apposition to white racism and share it on his blog to try to stimulate some discussion on the topic.

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 5th 2016 at 16:26:41 Afrofem

@Kiwi

“In a society where Blacks feel disempowered, they vent their rage and frustration by attacking weaker groups rather than confronting those in power.”

LOL! Is this your homework assignment from the Asian Supremacist blogs you frequent? [Now that you’ve absorbed bucketfuls of bile, go to Black blogs, chastise those Negroes and try to convince them of our lack of privilege.]

Asian American “weakness” is a howling fallacy. NE Asian Americans are the most privileged non-European group in this country. When the Pres.-elect was insulting other groups for political gain, he left Chinese, Japanese and Korean Americans off the official scorn list.

However if you want to beat the bones of that dead horse, be my guest.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Mon Dec 5th 2016 at 17:54:15 jefe

Afrofem,

You have expressed an opinion, a belief. Received. Thank you.

Did you ever stop to think for a split second that some of your beliefs might in fact not be fully reflective of reality or possibly even wrong (in the sense that it is not the only one)?
#1 they were not left off the scorn list (I can think of a few examples).
#2 what about native americans? Were they on his scorn list during the presidential campaign? (I know they have been in the past.)
#3, you are still thinking about single-dimension privilege. It suggests that you think of white supremacy along a single dimension (the first pillar). On other spectrums or pillars of white supremacy, blacks may end up having higher privilege. For example, we will have (in fact already have) black presidents, secretary of state, supreme court justices, etc. before any Native American or Asian (which is probably still decades, if not centuries away). Blacks generally have had less need to carry special ID cards or passports to confirm their legal status in the USA. And whereas it has become taboo to publicly express racist caricatures of blacks (albeit less taboo since Trump has been elected), it has never been taboo in the mainstream to do that to Asians and Native Americans.

This stuff may seem like nothing to you or inconsequential (or you may call it something other than privilege as you might abhor that word – that is fine), but it does have impact on education, housing, employment, police protection, social services, health, etc. And yes, it can also mean that one has an X on their back. (just ponder for a moment who have been the largest victims of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the US).

I fully accept that your worldview is what it is, but consider that others, including other POC and even some other blacks might not share the same world view exactly. I am not asking you to change your view, but consider that other narratives may also be valid and also correct.

I really hope that a Trump administration will help everyone (the disenfranchised in whatever respect) recognize some shared interest in dismantling EACH and ALL of the pillars and stop the oppression olympics. I am looking for some silver linings in the present situation.

LikeLike
on Tue Dec 6th 2016 at 01:03:32 Afrofem

@jefe

I wrote a series of comments this past September addressed to you that delved deeper into the three pillar argument. Since I can’t locate the intro comment, I will have to duplicate it here. Peruse the comments and I will discuss this further:

@jefe

On quite a few threads there has been disagreement between us about the nature of White Supremacy in the USA. You have maintained a view that a three pillar (or more) model is most descriptive. This comment of yours from the Yellowface thread is typical:

“…I don’t agree with… other paradigms that many have presented on this and other threads.
1. The USA’s system of racial oppression is a vertical one. The system of racial oppression (or alternatively, white supremacy) does not follow the model of whites on top, blacks on the bottom, and everyone else in-between. The better model is the three-pillar model (or maybe multi-pillar model) that Abagond described in the post by that name. Yes, white is on top, but the rest is not arranged in vertical progression. Native and Asian Americans (and Latinos and Muslims) are in completely different pillars, and face a rather different sort of oppression. .”

https://abagond.wordpress.com/2016/05/26/yellowface/#comment-316769
I have maintained a view that White Supremacy is primarily a vertical construction, with White/European people on top and Black/African people on the bottom and everyone else arrayed between the two in color coded fashion.

The comments on this thread made me curious enough to re-read Abagond’s Three Pillar post. I also decided to go to the source material written by Professor Andrea Smith (University of California, Riverside). Professor Smith wrote a paper in 2012 called Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy. Abagond wrote a post on based on that paper in 2013.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2013/11/02/the-three-pillars-of-american-white-supremacy/

Abagond’s self-imposed 500 word limit means that some subjects are presented in summary fashion. The main ideas are there, but some of the nuances may be lost. I researched and found Professor Smith’s paper in .pdf format and saw that some of our disagreement is based on a false dichotomy. You and I have been arguing either / or when a clear view of the superstructure of White Supremacy demands a both / and understanding.

The .pdf can be found here:

Click to access smith-racial-formations-article1.pdf

Professor Smith’s description of the superstructure covers both our concerns and raises fresh questions. I don’t agree with all of Professor Smith’s views or conclusions, but they certainly are thought provoking and complex.

Smith’s descriptions include:

◎Multiple Logics: Abagond did an excellent job of covering Professor Smith’s “logics” or Pillars of American White Supremacy. Reading his post will educate people unfamiliar with the pillars on their place in the White Supremacist-Settler/Colonialist superstructure.

◎Slavery and Racial Hierarchy
◎Orientalism and Perpetual Foreign Threats
◎Indigenous-Settler Pillar and Genocide
◎Complicity with White Supremacy
◎Imagining Alternatives

I will place further comments about about Professor Smith’s descriptions in the Three Pillars thread to avoid completely derailing this thread.

A link to the first comment:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2013/11/02/the-three-pillars-of-american-white-supremacy/#comment-335708

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Tue Dec 6th 2016 at 02:48:23 Solitaire

@ Afrofem

“Since I can’t locate the intro comment”

I think it was on the Aaron Mak thread?

LikeLike
on Tue Dec 6th 2016 at 03:02:13 Solitaire

@ Jefe

I hope you already know from previous conversations that I agree with your general stance about the oppression olympics, the three pillars, etc. What I’m about to say doesn’t mean I’ve changed my opinion on that.

But Kiwi’s initial comment on this thread really seemed off-base to me. Yes, it is true that some African Americans took part in the atrocities against Native Americans, but it’s a huge leap to claim that means there is “[n]o point in pinning it on the White man.” White people were the ones who started the wars against Natives, who advocated genocide, who came up with the idea of reservations, who sent missionaries to eradicate Native religions, who established federal boarding schools designed “to kill the Indian and save the man.” There may have been some black people who participated in these things, but that doesn’t shift the burden of responsibility off the shoulders of whites.

LikeLike
on Tue Dec 6th 2016 at 04:46:13 Afrofem

@Solitaire

Thanks! Great memory.

LikeLike
on Tue Dec 6th 2016 at 06:36:38 jefe

Solitaire,

I agree that many of Kiwi’s assertions are way off base (including the ones you bring up) and I do not accept the rationale behind some of them. Most of my questions are about asking him to clarify his stance.

At the same time I cannot accept that the system of white supremacy is along a single dimension spectrum although many people may experience it in that way.

LikeLike
on Tue Dec 6th 2016 at 17:22:13 Solitaire

@ Jefe

“Most of my questions are about asking him to clarify his stance.”

Gotcha. That makes sense.

———–

I hope when you get a chance, you will read Afrofem’s posts on the Three Pillars thread even though they are quite long. I read them back in September, and I felt she put a lot of thought and work into comments that could further the ongoing discussion the two of you have been having about the ways in which white supremacy is experienced.

LikeLike
on Sun Dec 11th 2016 at 14:10:03 michaeljonbarker

@ Kiwi

For most of your examples Asians are under represented because Asians choose not to persue those things. It’s not because they are being held back its because their are more lucrative ways to make a living.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Sun Dec 11th 2016 at 22:34:37 Afrofem

@ Kiwi

We will have to agree to disagree. I have seen and experienced the effects of Asian American privilege since I was a child. That privilege is a tangible benefit of not being Black.

I have also seen Asian Americans of various ethnicities defer to European Americans even when gravely insulted by them in public. Seeing those displays reminded me that Asian American privilege has its limits in this country.

To me, Asian Americans are people with all of the genius, flaws and complexity of other people domestically and globally. That being said, I will not be gaslighted into accepting something my life experience contradicts.

If you wish to continue raging about real and perceived slights and disadvantages against Asian descent Americans, be my guest. You obviously have more time on your hands than I do.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Mon Dec 12th 2016 at 06:08:52 Solitaire

@ Michael Jon Barker

While I don’t agree with everything Kiwi said, he is right to point out that you’re basing your statement in stereotypes that position Asian Americans as being only interested in lucrative careers like medicine or import-export.

Like any other race, there are people within the larger group of Asian Americans who feel called to write, to act, to perform music or comedy, to create art. While these may be unreliable fields compared to medicine or engineering, they can be highly lucrative at the highest levels. Most artists and entertainers, of course, dedicate themselves to their craft for reasons beyond money, but let’s not forget how much top movie stars, recording artists, etc., can make.

There has already been considerable discussion (with many examples) elsewhere on this blog about the difficulties faced by gifted Asian Americans in these artistic fields due to discrimination, stereotypes, and white-washing. Their lack of representation is not their own fault.

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 12th 2016 at 17:44:27 Afrofem

@Solitaire

“…the difficulties faced by gifted Asian Americans in these artistic fields…”

While discrimination, stereotypes and whitewashing are factors in the paucity of Asian Americans in the artistic fields, one more major factor should be added—–the parents of artistic Asian Americans. I’ve lost count of the number of Northeast Asian and South Asian young people who have remarked (some with great bitterness) about intense parental pressure to focus on STEM (Science, Technology and Medical) careers as a guarantees to successful futures. Asian American parents tend to regard artistic careers as an unsuitable career gamble and waste of time.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Mon Dec 12th 2016 at 17:52:53 Afrofem

@Kiwi

“In California, Asians historically faced greater prejudice and legal barriers than Blacks.”

This argument is not valid. Historical prejudice and longstanding legal barriers against Asian Americans faded in the 1970s as a direct result of the Civil Rights Movement.

At this moment in time, Americans of Asian ancestry (particularly NE Asian American groups) are quite privileged, especially in California and the West Coast.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Mon Dec 12th 2016 at 17:54:33 Afrofem

@Kiwi

“You supported Davon Neverdon’s acquittal for the murder of Joel Lee. “

Provide a link and a quote to back up your (oft-repeated) claim.

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 12th 2016 at 18:24:30 Afrofem

@Kiwi

“…America’s birth as a nation, Blacks and Whites both fought and killed Natives, working together to steal their land.”

That comment touches on the Three Pillars post and my comments in that thread. You are referring to Complicity with White Supremacy. Professor Andrea Smith stated:

“…we see that we not only are victims of white supremacy but are complicit in it as well. Our survival strategies and resistance to white supremacy are set by the system of white supremacy itself. What keeps us trapped within our particular pillars of white supremacy is that we are seduced with the prospect of participating in the other pillars.

For example, all non-Native peoples are promised the ability to join in the colonial project of settling indigenous lands. All Non-Black peoples are promised that if they comply, they will not be at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. And Black and Native peoples are promised that they will advance economically and politically if they join U.S. wars to spread “democracy.””

Professor Smith writes that one way non-European people can avoid the seductive trap of aiding White Supremacy oppress groups in other pillars is through working with allies:

”people-of-color organizing must be premised on making strategic alliances with one another, based on where we are situated within the larger political economy. Coalition work is also based on organizing not just around oppression but also around complicity in other peoples as well as our own oppression.”

https://abagond.wordpress.com/2013/11/02/the-three-pillars-of-american-white-supremacy/#comment-335713

White people were the main drivers and beneficiaries of Native land theft and genocide. Your implication that Black and White people were equally involved in that project is both intellectually dishonest and historically inaccurate.

In fact, the repeated tossing in of “what about the Native Americans” in a discussion about Asian American privilege relative to Black people is a diversion and deflection. It is a way for you and others who employ that gambit to avoid the heart of this discussion——-the very real racial/color hierarchy in this country. Purposely left unsaid are the myriad ways Asian Americans help White Supremacy and White Supremacists oppress Black people.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Mon Dec 12th 2016 at 22:06:15 gro jo

“If you were on a Black jury for the prosecution of a Black man who murdered an Asian in a hate crime you, like gro jo, would have promptly acquitted the killer like the rest of the jurors.” Kiwi, stop, you’re too funny.
Why do you insist on dragging me in your tawdry disputes with others? If you want me to insult you, attack me honestly. When are you going to volunteer to be the poster child for the Asian discrimination case against Harvard? What!? Your grades weren’t good enough to even be considered for the Ivy league? No wonder you’re bitter! Don’t despair, contact Mr. Edward Blum, I read he was looking for an Asian Abigail Fisher. How’s your mission to free Asian women from evil Asian pimps coming along? I’ve heard nothing about it, did some Asian “godfather” make you an offer you couldn’t refuse? Oh well, we can’t all be heroes. Try to freshen up your Davon Neverdon jokes. Repeating yourself is getting stale.

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 12th 2016 at 22:12:02 gro jo

“Asians are not better represented in the police or military than Blacks.
Asians are not better represented in the government than Blacks.
Asians are not better represented in sports, music, or entertainment than Blacks.
Asians do not outnumber Blacks in most parts of the US.
Asians do not have greater access to citizenship or voting rights than Blacks.
Asians are not better represented in academia or literature about race than Blacks.
Asians do not get a racial bonus when applying to top schools, unlike Blacks.
Asians do not attack, loot, or burn Black shops in Asian neighborhoods.
Asians do not pass laws that try to drive Blacks out of their neighborhoods.
Asians do not acquit other Asians who murder Blacks in hate crimes.
Asians do not produce songs encouraging hatred or violence against Blacks.
Asians do not have politicians who openly proclaim that Blacks are dirty.
Asians do not have civil rights leaders who mock the languages Blacks speak.”
Kiwi, you slimy hypocrite, did you forget your darling grandad, Sheriff Harry Lee?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Lee_(sheriff)

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 12th 2016 at 22:12:23 Solitaire

@ Afrofem

I don’t deny this, but parental pressure is more complex than that. It isn’t just artistic fields that are considered a waste of time, but pretty much anything besides medicine, law, engineering, and possibly business (depending on the specific family). Certain STEM fields like astronomy, geology, and vet med are generally seen as a waste of time. I’ve known a kid who had to fight his family in order to study nuclear physics instead of medicine. I’ve also seen bitter fights over what specialty of medicine is considered an acceptable career.

Even though Asian Americans are overrepresented in the computer industry, I’ve known several students whose immigrant parents were deadset against their studying computer science because they equated it with video games and were ashamed that their child would want to work at something so “frivolous.”

Parental pressure usually occurs in the immigrant generation, sometimes into the next, but typically by the first or second generation it is no longer an issue.

There are always some kids who buck their parents even in the immigrant generation to do what they love, and this becomes increasingly the case with each subsequent generation. Racial discrimination and stereotyping in the work world, though, does not decrease in a similar fashion.

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 12th 2016 at 22:42:28 Solitaire

Re complicity with white supremacy, it could probably be argued that the Chinese who built the western railroads were also complicit in white supremacist action against Native Americans.

• The railroads were built on land that had belonged to Native Americans, often taken from them by thievery, lies, or war.

• Railroads were the main reason that the buffalo were hunted to near-extermination.

• The rounding up of the Plains people into reservations (which originally they were not allowed to leave without permission, like a prison or concentration camp) was largely seen as a way to protect the railroads and trains.

The Chinese took part in this at least indirectly. As with African American complicity, that does not change the fact that white people were the prime movers of the atrocities against Native Americans. But it does mean that no one’s hands are spotlessly clean.

LikeLike
on Tue Dec 13th 2016 at 01:15:35 Solitaire

@ Lord of Mirkwood

Complicity and responsibility are two different things.

The railroad laborers faced horrific conditions. The Chinese in particular were subjected to all sorts of violence and ill-treatment.

From the standpoint of a Native American, though, those laborers (Chinese and otherwise) were illegally trespassing to construct something that would convey disaster to the peoples of the Plains.

LikeLike
on Tue Dec 13th 2016 at 05:53:47 jefe

Wow, so many stereotypes thrown back and forth, it is amazing that we have so many experts here!

I can’t fully agree with either Kiwi or Afrofem here.

One might argue that both Asians and blacks were largely complicit in the Native land theft and decimation by whites. I don’t think either one did a lot to stop it. We can’t say they were responsible for it either. For example, when the five civilized tribes were driven out of the south / southeast (eg, the Trail of Tears) and whites brought in their slaves, I cannot say that that made blacks any more responsible than, say, Chinese who built railroads, dug mines, or built the agricultural infrastructure on Indian land that the US broke treaties to snatch up. And when the land was made available for whites to settle, both blacks and Asians were excluded from that possibility （albeit for different reasons).

We can easily find examples where blacks were complicit in anti-Asian discrimination and where Asians were complicit in anti-black discrimination and where native Americans were complicit in both. I will be the first to admit that the efforts of both Chinese and Native Americans setting up their own schools in the South during Jim Crow had an anti-Black element to it — they did not want to get swallowed up into the Colored classification. That is very different from stuff like the Indian Boarding schools, something that whites did.

Regarding privilege, assuming that we can argue its existence, it is too complicated and would be constructed along too many spectra to make any sweeping statement. On some spectrum blacks have more privilege; on others, Asians have more privilege. To argue which is better or worse is an exercise in Oppression Olympics, which is getting us nowhere to solve the problems.

I do acknowledge that there remains some truth to the notion blacks sometimes treat Asians as white surrogates. Whereas most of the effect is negative to Asians (eg, black angst against whites is often expressed against Asians, which seems to demonstrate complicity in white racism, and in some cases, in opposition to white racism), some of it might be interpreted as negative to blacks.

The best example off the top of my head are the Chinese grocery stores in Jim Crow Mississippi. Middle class blacks (referring to those who often owned their own house and who had enough spare money to actually spend money in stores) preferred to shop in the Chinese stores instead of either the white or black stores. They might have preferred to shop in the white stores (and not the black stores), but whites treated them as poorly as the other colored labourers, whether they had money to spend or not. But Chinese grocers extended them considerably more courtesy than they did towards the poorer labourers, and black middle class customers viewed this better treatment in Chinese stores as something special, something they would not get in black stores. Arguably, Chinese grocers exploited this white surrogate status to their business advantage.

LikeLike
on Tue Dec 13th 2016 at 06:55:47 michaeljonbarker

Solitare said,

“While I don’t agree with everything Kiwi said, he is right to point out that you’re basing your statement in stereotypes that position Asian Americans as being only interested in lucrative careers like medicine or import-export.”

The American Asian economy is far deeper and broader then “medicine, import-export” and is not tied to STEM. That only reflects a sliver of the Asian American economy. Nor are they a “nation of shop keepers”. Those are stereotypes.

It is common to see Asians who are homeless dig through trash cans to recycle in L.A. There are other Asians who live in Beverly Hills who are worth multi-millions. The economic spectrum runs from very poor to very rich and everything in between.

Some Asians don’t go to college and are entrapenuers and business owners. Every business, skill trade ect that Americans do Asians engage in as well.

The difference between Blacks and Asians is scale. Blacks are no different in the things that they persue then any other American. But what effects the scale of achievement is the obstacles (mass incarceration) and hindered education within society that keeps some Blacks from gaining the same ground as whites and Asians.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Wed Dec 14th 2016 at 04:34:51 jefe

@MJB,

The difference between Blacks and Asians is scale.

Actually, the main difference is the history. There is no historical narrative which captures 80% of the Asian American experience like slavery and Jim Crow do for the majority of blacks.

Scale is not the main difference. Soon Asians will catch up numerically with blacks, yet they will still face a different set of circumstances.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Wed Dec 14th 2016 at 21:46:10 Afrofem

@ michaeljonbarker

“…what effects the scale of achievement is the obstacles (mass incarceration) and hindered education within society that keeps some Blacks from gaining the same ground as [W]hites and Asians.”

Scale is important. So are frequency and intensity. The greater scale of obstacles that hinder many Black people is matched by the frequent (nearly incessant) interference in Black community development by outside entities such as biased media, police and culturally incompetent teachers.

The greatest difference between Black communities and other communities is the intensity of control of Black community affairs by outside forces. Many Black people feel that Black communities in the US operate as internal colonies. Raw materials are exported to the colonial power (White America and their allies) in the form of cultural assets (music, dance, fashion), cheap or free labor (prisons are a main conduit) and whatever cash can be siphoned from Black households through various public and private schemes.

The colonized are required to purchase manufactured goods from the colonial power. The colonized have no independent political power. The colonized have no independent social or financial infrastructure like schools, cultural centers or banks. The colonized don’t control any sector of the greater economy. The colonized are physically controlled in designated territories by aggressive and violent colonial military (police) or paramilitary (White vigilante) forces. The colonized are propagandized from childhood to adopt the colonizers language, religion and worldview. That includes seeing themselves as violent, criminal and dimwitted subhumans.

Attempts by the colonized to self determination are met with ridicule, alarm, bureaucratic thwarting (such as freeway construction through Black urban business districts in the 1960s and 1970s) and in extreme cases, vandalism or violence. One extreme example was the 1921 Tulsa, OK race riot where Black homes, churches and the entire Black business district was looted and burned to the ground by White mobs.

While other non-European groups experience obstacles in US society, they generally don’t face the same scale of obstruction, frequency of meddling or intensity of repression from the colonial power. They are free to build businesses, schools, a financial sector and neighborhoods free of random state violence.

LikeLiked by 3 people
on Thu Dec 15th 2016 at 20:55:44 resw

Kiwi’s once again derailing a thread to voice his anti-black rhetoric and tout phony anti-Asian claims, with not a shred of evidence as usual.

And of course abagond lets him get away with it since kiwi didn’t oppose abagond’s beloved candidate.

LikeLike
on Thu Dec 15th 2016 at 22:41:48 resw

@Kiwi

” That you try to deflect and make it about anti-Blackness…”

Of course that never happened. I simply mentioned your “anti-black rhetoric” that has nothing to do with the Ghost Dance, for example:

“Blacks receive a racial bonus, which disproportionately benefits immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa”.

Not only is that completely INaccurate since most foreign students by far come from Asian countries, it is completely UNrelated to the Ghost Dance.

LikeLike
on Thu Dec 15th 2016 at 23:36:51 Afrofem

@Kiwi

“…Americans of African ancestry are quite privileged, especially in the highest positions in the United States, like the presidency, department of justice, and supreme court.”

Hmmm. One of your favorite strawmen. The Faces in High Places fallacy.

This fallacy is also one of your weakest. If Black Faces in High Places were truly an indication of Black privilege, then every eighth imprisoned person on the planet would not be Black. Black people would not have the lowest health outcomes in the country. Nor would Black people be at the bottom of household net worth in this country.

Those Black Faces in High Places are simply White Supremacist window dressing of a now bygone era. They were servants of US empire and not servants of the Black population.

LikeLiked by 2 people
on Fri Dec 16th 2016 at 01:06:28 michaeljonbarker

History narrates how scale intersects with different groups affected by racism.

The structures and forms are the same but it’s the scale that determines the degree of damage.

LikeLike
on Fri Dec 16th 2016 at 01:34:13 resw

@kiwi

“When Blacks apply to top schools…”

Of course you are moving goal posts. Regardless, that does not “disproportionately benefit immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa”. Nor does it have anything to do with Ghost Dance, you know, the topic of this thread.

“If you want to complain about derailing, then take it up with people like Afrofem and gro jo….none of that bothers you because they’re Black”

LOL. Nice try, but I’ve called out Afrofem and gro jo for derailing many times, among other things.

LikeLike
on Fri Dec 16th 2016 at 01:38:36 gro jo

“@ gro jo

Unlike Blacks, Asians don’t actively cover up massacres of Blacks, as Colin Powell did for the My Lai Massacre.” Why not, is it because they are too savage to hide their misdeeds? Did Edward Blum hire you as poster child for his crusade against Affirmative Action in Ivy league college admission? How’s your crusade against Asian pimps coming along? Why are you so reticent to brag about your ‘accomplishment’ in that field? When are you going to free Chinatown of Asian thugs who prey on its denizens? Asian criminality didn’t start yesterday. Enjoy this bit of Chinese-American history. https://infamousnewyork.com/2014/03/06/tong-wars-gangs-of-chinatown-map/
If you’re related to any of the characters described in this post, feel free to own your history.
Abagond, how come your blog develops a bad case of dandruff around this time of the year?

LikeLike
on Fri Dec 16th 2016 at 01:41:32 michaeljonbarker

Kiwi
“The fact that Natives were the victims of genocide (including by Blacks) but Blacks were spared extermination says it all”

The scale of racism waged against Native Americans was greater because whites thought them to be unteachable and not good slave stock. Thus genocide, isolation and abandonment.

The scale of Native American genocide committed by Blacks is miniscule compared to what whites committed. Nor does the fact that it occurred explain the “why” behind it. Blacks involved in such acts were driven to it because of white supremacy.

“This proves that claims of Blacks being the poster child of racial oppression are politically motivated rather than based on fact.”

That statement is wrong on so many levels. You are presuming Blacks want to be cast as victims. If being “politically motivated” leads to being able to live your life free from racial interference then that shows the dexterity of the human spirit. The right and need to be free.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Fri Dec 16th 2016 at 03:26:04 abagond

@ gro jo

That is snow.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Fri Dec 16th 2016 at 05:29:34 Afrofem

@gro jo

“Abagond, how come your blog develops a bad case of dandruff around this time of the year?”

Too funny…one of the best laughs I’ve had this week!

LikeLike
on Fri Dec 16th 2016 at 06:05:38 Afrofem

@Kiwi

“…legal barriers against Asians are still current…They [Black people] were more involved in the genocide and land theft from Natives than even Whites were after you adjust for population sizes.”

You are resorting to lazy accusations masquerading as meaningful arguments. Try backing up your slew of wild allegations with facts, figures and links.

I repeat, the tossing in of “what about the Native Americans” in a discussion about Asian American privilege relative to Black people is a diversion and deflection. It is a way for you and others who employ that gambit to avoid the heart of this discussion——-the very real racial/color hierarchy in this country.

Which community benefits from the current color caste system and which doesn’t? Which ethnic groups enjoy lives of privilege in healthy, intact communities with good schools, high household net worth, business opportunities and freedom from state and vigilante violence?

LikeLike
on Fri Dec 16th 2016 at 09:48:46 gro jo

Kiwi wrote: ” Blah blah blah, Joel Lee. Blah blah blah, Native land. Blah blah blah, Nothing else you say matters.”
Sorry, I didn’t get what you were trying to say, I don’t do gobbledygook!

LikeLike
on Fri Dec 16th 2016 at 13:23:19 resw

@Kiwi

“It does. ”

You say it does, the actual stats say otherwise. The only foreigners who are disproportionately accepted to US colleges are people from Asian countries, who by the way, make up a MAJORITY of foreign students.

And again it’s not relevant to Ghost Dance.

“Obviously”

LOL. You were the first to derail the discussion with talk of Joel Lee, as if he’s relevant to the discussion. And now you’re blaming people for responding to your nonsense.

And yes, Afrofem has done the same, and I’ve called him out on it. But sorry, this time it’s you.

LikeLike
on Fri Dec 16th 2016 at 13:27:53 resw

And of course abagond is quick to tell nomad when something’s “OFF TOPIC” but silent here. I wonder why?

LikeLike
on Fri Dec 16th 2016 at 18:00:35 abagond

@ Kiwi

“You’re right. Blacks made up over 20% of the US frontier forces in the 1890s, well above their share of country’s population. They were more involved in the genocide and land theft from Natives than even Whites were after you adjust for population sizes. Calling Blacks merely “complicit” in White supremacy is more intellectually dishonest and historically inaccurate when you account for the fact that Blacks were active participants in atrocities against Natives.”

Can you back that up?

But even if true, that might be like saying Blacks in the 1960s were more anti-Asian and imperialistic than Whites because they fought in Vietnam at higher rates – which seemed to have less to do with their anti-Asian racism, though real, than not being able to get in or afford college. It is like saying Blacks are more given to crime because they have a higher incarceration rate.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Fri Dec 16th 2016 at 18:55:48 Allen Shaw

@ Kiwi Study the history of the Buffalo soldier.

Yes the service person did a lot of killing.

What does that have to do with anything?

LikeLike
on Fri Dec 16th 2016 at 19:37:45 jefe

@MJB

I got a long response to this.
And I apologize for the digression from the post topic. If Abagond declares it off topic, I will try to move it elsewhere.

History narrates how scale intersects with different groups affected by racism.
The structures and forms are the same but it’s the scale that determines the degree of damage.

Yeah, but how are you measuring scale? How are you measuring degree of damage? How is the historical narrative affected by the actual scale and degree of destruction? How do we discuss this without devolving into a game of Oppression Olympics? I am going to present an argument about scale and degree of damage to illustrate why that is not a proper way to look at the historical narrative (This is NOT an expression of Oppression Olympics).

If your argument is limited to talking about scale and degree of damage, then the by far, Chinese and Natives in the US have suffered a far greater damage than people of African origin in the US, especially if you are talking people’s lives (which should be regarded as more important, as without life, we cannot talk about a fair judicial system or livelihood opportunities or family life or life prospects for descendants). There are several different ways of looking at this.

Look at numbers (and I am asking you to consider the argument instead of exact numerical accuracy – I am sure the factoid and factlet sleuths will come out of the woodwork). I have seen it quoted here on this blog and numerous other sources that the *historical* (pre-1965) African American population of the USA was sourced primarily from a founder population of about 600,000 surviving African slaves and indentured servants, many of whom were the survivors of the middle passage. If we look only at pre-1965 Chinese migration to the USA, we had about 375,000 surviving (the trans-pacific passage) migrants enter the western states between 1848-1882, about 175,000 entered during the exclusion and immigration restriction era (1882-1965), mostly as paper sons and a few paper daughters plus at least 50,000 to Hawaii – or a total over 600,000. Neither of these estimates cover all the migration numbers, but that is not the main point, which is that comparable numbers of living Chinese and Africans entered the USA pre-1965 (one of the parameters of “scale”) but ended up with very different results.

Yet, in 1965, the Chinese population in the USA (including Hawaii) was about 300,000, the population at the time the first Model Minority article appeared, and this figure was quoted in the 1966 US News and World report article. And most of this number reflects a large rebound traced to the paper sons to the Mainland USA and the annexation of Hawaii. The majority were American born. At the same time (1965), the black population of the USA was almost 21 million, or 70 times the number of Chinese in the USA. Why does a similarly sized founder population end up with such a stark difference in results? When I hear people talk about who has an X on their back there is simply no comparison. It is a ridiculous assertion.

This scale of death and destruction still pales to Native Americans. A founder group of 20-25 million was left with about 600,000 in 1965.

Of course, one can choose to poke holes into arguments like these. For example, how can we compare a degree of destruction between ethnic cleansing (Chinese), slavery (blacks) and genocide (Native Americans). We can’t, hence the pointlessness of Oppression Olympics. But one reason why we don’t hear much about the ethnic cleansing and genocide is because there are so far fewer descendants left to discuss it or remember it, and the mainstream historical narrative of the USA has chosen to downplay it, or even omit it. (hence the fallacy in your argument that the historical narrative reflects the scale or degree of damage).

One might argue that not all blacks in 1965 were descendant from the survivors from the middle passage. But neither were all Asians in the USA in 1965 ethnic Chinese. We had a couple hundred thousand Japanese enter the USA mainland and Hawaii, similar numbers of Filipinos and some Koreans and Indians as well. All told, well over a million Asians came to the USA pre-1965, perhaps even more than the entire number of people of African origin entering before 1965 (I am sure one of the factoid sleuths has a figure). However, we still had only about 1 million Asians in the USA in the 1960s, the majority of which were American-born Japanese. There were 20 times as many blacks as Asians in 1965.

Of course, we can trace this to the disparate history of each. Slaves were chattel property, akin to livestock. A slave is worth more to his owner alive than dead (at least during his productive years), and the owner could also increase his wealth by increasing his slave ownership. Accordingly, just as the owner could increase his wealth by breeding livestock, he could increase his wealth by breeding slaves (or in some cases, breeding with slaves). Such a case did not exist with Native Americans or Asians. Native Americans were definitely worth more DEAD (in order to seize their land), and for Asians, especially Chinese, once the value of their labour was no longer valued, neither were their lives. This does not imply that anyone’s condition was better or worse than another, but it does mean that we have larger number of descendants to remember their ancestral experience and a larger reminder to the current white population of one of their great crimes that they wish they could forget. They have managed to forget what they did to the Chinese (just like you have forgotten) and find ways to rationalize what they did to the Natives. Few survivors make this easier.

Why do I need to keep on using the term pre-1965? The Immigration and Naturalization law was changed in 1965 and became fully effective in 1968. It benefited both Asians and Africans, but more Asians came than Africans. What was largely an American born population in the 1960s became majority immigrant by the 1980s and this has redefined the Asian American experience, as least both in the minds of the newer immigrants and in the black and white populations. However, the black American experience has not been redefined by the newer immigrants and still retains the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow as its primary historical narrative (but certainly not its only narrative).

Kiwi zeroed in on the problem of university admissions to illustrate the disparity in the historical narrative and experience and the scale of the problem. I, however, do not see that as the main problem. There is simply way too much disparity in the Asian American experience to reach a consensus. Not only did each ethnic group pre-1965 (eg, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos) and geography (eg, Hawaii v. mainland USA) have a very different experience, this has been further complicated by the 20th century wars and post-1965 stock, which includes a large brain drain population and a significant refugee population as well (not to mention the type you meet more often – the wealthy foreign investor).

The diversity and disparity in the experience has not led to a unified historical narrative, unlike the historical narrative associated with the black experience in the USA. It is the disparate historical narrative, not the scale and degree of damage which demarcates the difference in the perception.

This situation has led both you and Afrofem to come to conclusions which, simply put, are spurious.

On other threads, you tried to argue how wealthy foreign property investors are proof of bridges of culture, family and wealth that Asian Americans have to Asia. However, several commenters pointed out to you that the wealth they bring to the US benefits primarily whites, and has little to do with most Asian Americans or their communities.

But Afrofem’s statement that “Historical prejudice and longstanding legal barriers against Asian Americans faded in the 1970s as a direct result of the Civil Rights Movement.” is, well, rather misleading, and perhaps even a bit dishonest.

OK, yes, historical prejudice and longstanding legal barriers against Asians faded in the 1970s. However, it did also for blacks. In the 1970s, many blacks entered occupations heretofore denied to them. What’s more, most blacks nowadays are middle class and own their own homes. And for blacks, it was more a direct result of the Civil Rights movement.

For Asians, it was a more indirect result of the Civil Rights movement. Yes, in the 1970s, they enjoyed many increased opportunities due to relaxing of prejudice and legal barriers. But, by far, the main reason was that the Asian population changed due to the change in immigration policy (which did have an indirect relationship to the civil rights movement, but also to USA’s role as global policeman). In the 1960s, the majority of Asians in the USA were descendant of migrant labourers of prior generations. By the 1980s, “Brain Drain” had become the more dominant type of Asian American, especially the kind encountered by whites – that is, well educated, especially in certain fields, but of foreign origin, and a group that was totally unconnected to the pre-1965 experience. This is what is largely responsible for rewriting the historical narrative and current experience, not so much the fading of “historical prejudice and longstanding legal barriers”.

For you, the kind encountered mostly by you is the wealthy foreign investor, but this group still has not yet replaced the “Brain Drain” narrative, although it might in the future – who knows?

The “African American” experience now includes a fair number of post-1965 immigrant stock, but their impact has been too low to rewrite the narrative. However, if we were to accept Afrofem’s explanations of what happened to Asians, then one might believe that we could do the same thing with blacks. Why don’t we simply exterminate or otherwise remove 80-90% of the slave descendant stock and replace them with brain drain African immigrants? Then blacks would have higher education and income than whites and the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and mass incarceration wouldn’t even make a footnote in our history textbooks. Would it be fair to ascribe such a policy to a “direct result of the Civil Rights movement”? or the need for whites to forget their past?

I do not fully support Kiwi’s methods when he tries to use historical examples of blacks complicit in serving a racist system to point fingers at blacks (and away from others). It would probably be better if he used less incendiary methods to illustrate how a double standard exists without coming across as anti-black (which I actually do not think he is, any more than I think Afrofem is anti-Asian). It is not right either to dismiss black success at the higher levels of government as something fake or complicit in a racist system any more to dismiss Asians working in STEM fields as something complicit in a racist system. And for some people (eg, Thurgood Marshall, among others), I think it is just plain wrong. It also reflects confirmation bias – recognizing only the observations that confirm one’s own biases and dismissing the rest.

MJB, you have frequently made assertions about Asian Americans that look just like stereotypes. But my point here is to point out how the perception of “scale and degree of damage” has been shaped more by historical narrative than the other way around.

LikeLike
on Fri Dec 16th 2016 at 20:14:20 michaeljonbarker

Thanks Jeff for the response. It will take me a bit to absorb your point of view and respond back as this is a busy time of year for me.

LikeLike
on Fri Dec 16th 2016 at 22:59:15 gro jo

“Look at numbers (and I am asking you to consider the argument instead of exact numerical accuracy – I am sure the factoid and factlet sleuths will come out of the woodwork).”
Factoid and factlet sleuth reporting for duty sir! You omitted the “cargo” lost during the middle passage. Are you trying to argue that Asians suffered the same wastage during “the trans-pacific passage”? Is there really no difference between voluntary (trans-pacific) and involuntary (middle) passengers? Your sophistry is almost impressive, but not quite. You omitted the number of ‘Asians’ who packed their bags and went back to Asia, if they were anything like the Italians, at least half of them voluntarily went back home.
“It would probably be better if he used less incendiary methods to illustrate how a double standard exists without coming across as anti-black (which I actually do not think he (Kiwi) is, any more than I think Afrofem (or gro jo) is anti-Asian).”
The material in parentheses are my emendations to Jefe’s quote. If you can claim that Kiwi isn’t “anti-Black”, I’d like to know your criteria for such claim? All his nonsense about Joel Lee, Black criminality, etc., where is it all coming from?

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Fri Dec 16th 2016 at 23:14:47 gro jo

““Blacks receive a racial bonus, which disproportionately benefits immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa”. ”
Right, the bastards, they should stop scoring so high on the SAT. It’s not fair.
http://www.ebony.com/news-views/cameron-clarke-receives-perfect-sat-score-981#axzz4T2rrhCGr
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/05/ahead-of-her-time/
http://africansuntimes.com/2014/04/african-american-youth-with-5-0-gpa-a-2100-sat-score-a-nigerian-name-many-ivy-league-school-scholarship-offers/
http://www.unz.com/article/the-iq-gap-is-no-longer-a-black-and-white-issue/

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Fri Dec 16th 2016 at 23:16:01 Afrofem

“how can we compare a degree of destruction between ethnic cleansing (Chinese) [&] slavery (blacks) “

Technically, Chinese immigrants were not subject to ethnic cleansing, but to ethnic exclusion. They were not allowed to bring wives and family members to the US territories in the 1800s. The White elite wanted their labor, not their families. The White working class did not want them at all since they were competing with Chinese laborers economically.

Working class Whites had the political power to push through a series of exclusion acts at both the state and federal levels. The federal ones included the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the Scott Act of 1888, the Geary Act of 1892 and it’s reauthorization in 1902 that extended Chinese exclusion to Hawaii and the Philippines.

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/chinese-immigration

The low numbers of mainland Chinese descendants in 1965 have more to do with severely restrictive immigration policies. Those policies resulted in the Chinese not being able to establish families in great numbers. The Chinese were not removed from specific territories through ethnic cleansing, they were not allowed to enter specific territories and establish themselves.

◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎

The Chinese laborers also experienced a great deal of White mob violence in the mid to late 1800s. The people of China put an end to that type of violence with a boycott of American made goods in 1904 -1905. More about that boycott:

https://abagond.wordpress.com/2016/05/12/the-asian-supremacy-argument/#comment-316058

LikeLiked by 2 people
on Sat Dec 17th 2016 at 05:00:24 Afrofem

“Look at numbers (and I am asking you to consider the argument instead of exact numerical accuracy – I am sure the factoid and factlet sleuths will come out of the woodwork)”

Yes, let’s look at the numbers and when dealing with numbers, facts are critical.

According to my reading, up to half a million African captives were forced to the shores of the current US. They arrived in roughly equal numbers men and women. Between 1800 and 1850, Black couples produced an average of six to eight children. The Black population was further augmented by sexual imposition by White slave owners and others.

After legal emancipation (1870 to 1900), stable Black family units formed and averaged seven or more children per household. That accounts for further increase.

http://www.elderweb.com/book/appendix/1800-1990-changes-white-and-black-fertility-rates

On the other hand, voluntary migrants from China in the 1800s were primarily male. Due to US exclusion laws, few Chinese women entered the US and formed families with the existing Chinese male population. The paucity of Chinese women account for the lack of increase in the Chinese American population prior to 1965.

LikeLiked by 2 people
on Sun Dec 18th 2016 at 17:07:28 jefe

@Afrofem,

My reply was actually to MJB to illustrate how the historical narrative may impact the scale and degree of a phenomenon more than the other way around.

Ha-ha. Today you are the perfect example of what I am talking about. Thanks for being today’s pet lizard.

Technically, Chinese immigrants were not subject to ethnic cleansing, but to ethnic exclusion.

Sorry, but no. You have it backwards. This statement is at best misleading, if not downright dishonest.

Chinese immigrants (and their children, if any) were specifically subject to ethnic cleansing. Ethnic exclusion was just one of a series of programs over a period of time to effect the general policy of ethnic cleansing.

The ethnic cleansing can be traced back at least to the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad (1869), passing through extensive mob violence (including the largest public mass lynching in the USA in 1871) and expulsion across the western states, through the passage of the Paige Act(1875) to block females from entering (and thus giving males access to females), onto the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) and the subsequent series of acts you mentioned, together with the purging from town after town, settlement after settlement for the next few decades. In the book, Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans by Jean Pfaelzer, the author identified no less than 253 towns from which Chinese were purged in California alone. There were hundreds of more such events in towns across other states in the western half of the country.

Even looking at the Chinese Exclusion Act itself, it was specifically about race, not even national origin. It was targeted specifically at one racial group.

Also, it is disingenuous to claim that the blocking of Chinese women from coming to the USA, and the prevention of Chinese men who went to China from coming back is not a form of ethnic cleansing. It was specifically designed to prevent the formation of families or birth of children of the target racial group. How is this any less ethnic cleansing than, say, a race-based sterilization program?

To rename it ethnic exclusion and deny that it was ethnic cleansing, is tantamount rewriting the historical narrative to fit one’s preferred version of history. One of these preferences could be to redefine the scale and degree of damage to be congruent with other narratives put forward.

This is analogous to say that American Indians simply abandoned their settlements or succumbed to Eurasian diseases, and Europeans came in to “settle” this empty land. Whose interests does this historical narrative serve?

The Chinese were not removed from specific territories through ethnic cleansing, they were not allowed to enter specific territories and establish themselves.

This is a pure rewriting of history. Exceedingly dishonest. They were removed from specific territories through ethnic cleansing.

The book mentioned above identified 253 towns in California alone where this very thing occurred, and made reference to events in other states (eg., Washington, Oregon) where similar or worse things occurred. Those not removed, or who stood up to removal, were killed. The Chinese population made up 30% of the population of Idaho in 1870 and less than 0.2% (1920-1940). Other states faced analogous cleansing of their populations.

Finally, the fact that blacks could have 7-8 children per couple, and Chinese could only have, well, ZERO, further substantiates the ethnic cleansing taking place. It is disingenuous to suggest that the reason is due to a paucity of women. The paucity of women was by express design, not by chance. And not only were they denied Chinese women, anti-miscegenation laws denied them white and Mexican women as well. Denying the right to marry, to have children, to form families are all steps to ethnic cleansing.

On the other hand, voluntary migrants from China in the 1800s were primarily male. This is also another rewriting of the narrative.

Yes, the majority were male, but most of the millions who left China were sold into indentured servitude, even kidnapped or as prisoners. For example, one clan would raid another, capture their males and sell them into servitude. The term in Southern Chinese dialects calls it “selling piglets” and middlemen (ie, coolie brokers) got rich off of it. We cannot call it voluntary. It would be called “slavery” in modern usage.

Or course, this was not exactly chattel slavery, and I am not trying to compare it to the sort of slavery from Africa before the civil war. But be aware that the coolie trade was designed as replacement to the African slave trade and mirrored it in myriad ways.

LikeLike
on Sun Dec 18th 2016 at 17:08:31 jefe

@grojo,

You are by far, the champion of sophistry on this blog, especially with your factoids but you will at least to have to check your factoids on this one.

Are you trying to argue that Asians suffered the same wastage during “the trans-pacific passage”?

No, I am arguing that Asians suffered a much higher degree and scale of “wastage” in the Trans-pacific and Trans-Indian passage than Africans in the Middle Passage.
If you take the figures from Abagond’s post “Coolies” (and I have found figures in the same ballpark from many other sources), we have:

(https://abagond.wordpress.com/2014/06/02/coolies/)

12m Africans were involved in the middle passage and human trafficking from Africa over a period of over 400 years. Mortality was high and about 15-20% died on the trip, approximately 2 million (this is the Wikipedia figure, but I would certainly consider sources that place the rate higher – it would have no effect on the argument). 40-50m Asians were involved in the coolie trade over a period of less than 100 years. Mortality was high, but it was not a majority. I cannot find any definitive exact figures but the estimates are between 15 to 40%. So, about 2m Africans died in the middle passage. However, about 6-20m Asians died in the coolie trade, a scale that perhaps exceeded the entire 400-yr Middle Passage, live or dead, and the absolute mortality numbers (not rates) were triple or quadruple. If we look at the average scale of death per year, then the coolie trade was easily 15-20 times as high as that of the Middle Passage. And since coolies were not chattel property, there was even more incentive to work them to death than it was for Africans. Mortality rates of coolies were considerably higher than African indentured servants and slaves.

If we are talking about scale and degree of damage, then the Middle passage does not even come close.

Is there really no difference between voluntary (trans-pacific) and involuntary (middle) passengers?

Except that that inaccurate simplification is a false comparison. Who said that the Trans-pacific coolie trade was filled with “voluntary” passengers? That was the historical narrative created by the British and other Europeans to hide what was really happening. The majority certainly cannot be called “voluntary”, as many were either kidnapped, sold to pay debts, prisoners of clan violence and sold to coolie brokers, or at best tricked or deceived into signing misleading contracts. All of these methods of “labour recruitment” are called slavery today. I work in Corporate Social Responsibility, and this is the term they use to call this very thing.
Many of these same techniques were used to obtain passengers for the Middle passage. It is disingenuous to suggest that the “passenger recruitment method” was something completely different.

You omitted the number of ‘Asians’ who packed their bags and went back to Asia, if they were anything like the Italians, at least half of them voluntarily went back home.

Except that they were not anything like the Italians. A small number did go back voluntarily. Of those who went back, the majority were not voluntary. They were forced to leave at the barrel of the gun or other violent means. But most of the Asians did not go back and the majority of those who stayed were killed.

But originally, my actual argument is not about Oppression Olympics (which you and others try to convert it into, which is very sad), but about how the historical narrative may demarcate the scale and degree of damage of an event, often more than the other way around. The white account of the interaction between Europeans and Natives in the Americas constantly emphasizes how Natives either abandoned the land or died from infectious diseases, or how they were so few in number in the first place. Likewise, the white account of the coolie trade would lead you to believe that it was something completely different to what it actually was.

LikeLike
on Sun Dec 18th 2016 at 18:35:33 Afrofem

@jefe

“Ha-ha. Today you are the perfect example of what I am talking about. Thanks for being today’s pet lizard.”

Hmm. I wondered when your “Good Cop” facade to Kiwi’s “Bad Cop” act would finally slip. Good to know all it takes is factual information. Perhaps it will fall completely with more factual information—–which will be forthcoming later this week….

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Sun Dec 18th 2016 at 19:34:17 sharinalr

Afrofem

I’m beginning to believe Jefe simply supports kiwi anit-black attitude. That is why he never confronts him on it and excuses it.

LikeLike
on Sun Dec 18th 2016 at 19:39:55 sharinalr

Jefe,

Don’t try to use the white account on natives as effective logic on the wite account of coolie. The white account I always got was simply that natives were violent and they took the land in war efforts or self defense bs etc. Never was it a matter of a few of them or they abandoned land.

LikeLike
on Sun Dec 18th 2016 at 20:13:29 Solitaire

@ Sharina

You are correct about the “violent sav*ges” narrative, but there is also a narrative that says the continent was a “howling wilderness” thinly populated with “prim*tive people” who did not know how to work the land so God gave it to the superior and more numerous whites. This narrative has been displaced in recent years so maybe you’ve never run into it in your studies, although I do still see people seriously arguing it both online and in real life.

Concurrent with this is the fact that early colonists would find seasonal villages temporarily empty of people, or villages that had been depopulated due to outbreaks of smallpox and other European illnesses, and would declare that land to have been forfeited by abandonment. This rationale comes up over and over again in the narratives of the early New England colonists.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 05:00:21 gro jo

” on Sun 18 Dec 2016 at 17:08:31
jefe

@grojo,

You are by far, the champion of sophistry on this blog, especially with your factoids but you will at least to have to check your factoids on this one.

Are you trying to argue that Asians suffered the same wastage during “the trans-pacific passage”?

No, I am arguing that Asians suffered a much higher degree and scale of “wastage” in the Trans-pacific and Trans-Indian passage than Africans in the Middle Passage.
If you take the figures from Abagond’s post “Coolies” (and I have found figures in the same ballpark from many other sources), we have:

(https://abagond.wordpress.com/2014/06/02/coolies/)

12m Africans were involved in the middle passage and human trafficking from Africa over a period of over 400 years. Mortality was high and about 15-20% died on the trip, approximately 2 million (this is the Wikipedia figure, but I would certainly consider sources that place the rate higher – it would have no effect on the argument). 40-50m Asians were involved in the coolie trade over a period of less than 100 years. Mortality was high, but it was not a majority. I cannot find any definitive exact figures but the estimates are between 15 to 40%.”
Jefe, I quoted you in extensio in order to show the full extent of your intellectual depravity. Abagond, your source, is quite specific that the rates you quote only applied to Peru and Cuba only for a short time period.
“In Cuba and Peru it was slavery in all but name from the 1840s to the 1870s. Of the Chinese sent:

80% were sent against their will (1875)
15% to 40% died during the Pacific Passage (1850s),
Over 67% died before the end of their contract (Peru, 1849-1874).”
What you omitted is even more telling of your low moral character!
“In the US, meanwhile, most came voluntarily. Those who worked on the Transcontinental Railroad were whipped, given the most dangerous work and were underpaid compared to whites, but still made good money for the times and were in better health than white workers.

On the other hand, in the 1850s Chinese women were openly sold on the docks of San Francisco. The police saw and did nothing. Chinese gangs attacked those who tried to save them from sex work. Hospitals turned the women away.

After 1853 in California, Chinese were not allowed to give testimony in court for or against a white man, which allowed whites to get away with crimes against them. In the South, however, Chinese workers were able to take employers to court and even win.

Chinese middlemen (labour contractors) in California turned Chinese labour into a cheap, reliable commodity.”
Your claim that I’m by, far, the champion of sophistry on this blog, is high praise from a connoisseur of your caliber, but false. When I changed what you actually wrote above, I had the decency of putting my words in parentheses and clearly point to that fact. I have a long way to go to dethrone you as resident sophist.
No wonder you find that Kiwi isn’t anti-Black, your contempt for Blacks is on display since you think us such fools that you can’t be bothered to write cogent facts when addressing us. You are a knave.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 13:53:37 abagond

@ Kiwi

True, but it was not one-sided and unquestioning either. Blacks have fought both for and against Natives. And Natives are not innocents either, some of them having enslaved Blacks.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 14:11:45 abagond

@resw

I think relative privilege and questions of racial hierarchy and so on are on-topic here. It does not seem that Kiwi is just trying to troll the thread or deflect from serious issues. The danger is more that it will melt down into an unedifying Oppression Olympics.

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 14:27:39 michaeljonbarker

@Kiwi

Resw is a Black sock puppet. Don’t feed the troll.

Even if what you and Jeffe claim as historically accurate is true that doesn’t take into account the changes over the last 50 years in regards to Asain American economic growth in the U.S.

The rates of incarceration between Black and Asains show racial institutional bias against Blacks and that has stalled economic gains within Black families and communities. It’s macro aggressions coming from the state that make the difference between who gets ahead and who does not.

Jeffe said,

“By the 1980s, “Brain Drain” had become the more dominant type of Asian American, especially the kind encountered by whites – that is, well educated, especially in certain fields, but of foreign origin, ”

and

“For you, the kind encountered mostly by you is the wealthy foreign investor, but this group still has not yet replaced the “Brain Drain” narrative,”

As I pointed out farther up the thread you seem to be stuck on two Asain stereotypes that you want to define the entire Asain community by.

The majority of Asians are neither “brain drain” or “wealthy investors”. They have communities whose residents persue the same things as any other U.S. community would have. Both public sector and private, from dog catchers to brain surgeons and everything inbetween. All you have to do is open up a phone book and you will see Asians represented in every business imaginable.

There is a direct link between the tax base of a community and the amount spent.per child on education. Asians live in communities whose school systems have improved over the years resulting in their students scoring higher then state averages.

That funding is lacking in many Black areas resulting in lower test scores.

All theses things deal with structure, form and scale.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 15:15:36 sharinalr

Solitaire

Thank your for the information. I had never ran across that narrative in school or online, so it is very much new to me. Most whites I run into online have the “get over it” mindset with natives. Others I know refuse to celebrate thanksgiving because they know the truth.

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 15:23:06 sharinalr

@kiwi

If the information was in a museum, then it is certainly information you can find online.

Slaves didn’t have a choice so how did blacks choose to fight against natives then? Why did other natives also fight against natives, who have a greater responsibility to know better? Because regiments such as the Buffalo soldiers did not just consist of black soldiers.

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 15:27:25 sharinalr

@MJB

Not to mention that all accounts that Jefe presents are not happening today.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 15:32:39 jefe

I have the books that Abagond quoted in my collection (eg, the book by Iris Chang) plus more and took asian American studies courses.
I also have been many times to the original home locations in Southern and talked to people and observe and learned about the extensive narrative about it discussed in HK also. There is a rich narrative here too about it.

Abagond’s quote did not apply only to Peru and Cuba (although those two places were horrendous, especially Peru).

I am glad that Grojo quoted me. It is not inconsistent with what Abagond wrote.

However, Grojo inserting terms like (labour contractors) changes the meaning of the original. Sorry, but no.

They call those “middlemen” people who source labour from the Nepalese and Myanmar countryside “labour contractors” too.

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 15:50:23 jefe

@abagond

True, but it was not one-sided and unquestioning either. Blacks have fought both for and against Natives. And Natives are not innocents either, some of them having enslaved Blacks.

Thanks for pointing this out.

Everyone has been doing these to each other to a certain extent for centuries, up to and including today. They have been both common victims and allies and also complicit oppressors (or even direct oppressors). We have to recognize this, but should not let this be a barrier to find solutions. I would love to find a way to work towards those solutions without devolving into Oppression Olympics or thief-thief tactics.

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 15:55:59 jefe

@Sharina

Slaves didn’t have a choice so how did blacks choose to fight against natives then?

If you are referring to Bacon’s rebellion, then slavery was not quite yet an established institution. Prior to then, there were many African Indentured servants whose status was similar to white indentured servants. Since their social status was similar, it would make sense that they would collaborate to fight against natives. The other sources I read about Bacon’s Rebellion seems to be consistent with that.

Since Bacon was defeated, it spelled disaster for both blacks and natives.

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 16:01:52 jefe

@Solitaire,

In addition to colonists finding villages seemingly abandoned (which may have been seasonal, or because there was a tendency to relocate a village after the fields started to become less fertile), I have also read accounts of the many tactics that colonists used to force or encourage natives to abandon their villages.

Colonists reasoned that they could simply move in and settle if they found a settlement depopulated (regardless of the cause).

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 16:06:20 resw

@Kiwi

Michaeljonbarker is a self-admitted white racist bigot. Do not feed his racism and hate.

“It does because the stats show that Blacks with the same test scores and grades as Asians are more likely to be accepted at top schools.”

There you go moving goal posts again.

We were specifically talking about what “disproportionately benefits immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa”, which do not represent all blacks. And you were unable to prove your claim.

Neither were we talking about “top schools”. And all of this is of course irrelevant to Ghost Dance.

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 16:09:11 jefe

@MJB,

As I pointed out farther up the thread you seem to be stuck on two Asain stereotypes that you want to define the entire Asain community by.

As I pointed out upthread, I was trying to debunk these stereotypes of being unrepresentative of Asian American communities as their ancestral cultures, and class and origin as well as the history and experience in the USA are so disparate that it is impossible to reduce any of it to a single narrative.

My point is that “Brain Drain” has become the more dominant stereotype to replace the ones that existed before the 1980s. It is not necessarily representative of the experience.

that doesn’t take into account the changes over the last 50 years in regards to Asain American economic growth in the U.S.

And what in your opinion has caused those changes?

The mistake is to take the social and economic origin of the post-1965 cohort to represent a change in the communities who came before that.

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 16:13:54 resw

@abagond

“@resw

I think relative privilege and questions of racial hierarchy and so on are on-topic here. It does not seem that Kiwi is just trying to troll the thread or deflect from serious issues. ”

LOL. Kiwi constantly deflects from the subject of the thread with his anti-black rhetoric and phony anti-Asian claims. This is hardly the first time–it’s every single thread on which he comments these days.

Had anyone who spoke out against your girl/boss done the same, you would have labeled them a “troll” and the phony anti-Asian claims as “off topic”.

While your hypocrisy is no surprise, I am a little shocked you still think we’re dumb enough to buy your B.S.

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 16:26:25 sharinalr

@jefe

The issue with your idea of indentured servitude is your are still at the leisure of your master during your time of service. So using this “they had choices” logic is a bit false in nature. Not to mention sources indicate slavery in the states started about 1619. Bacon’s rebellion was 1676.

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 16:37:31 sharinalr

not to mention the source I found says most blacks of the time were enslaved or dead.

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 17:38:31 gro jo

“Had anyone who spoke out against your girl/boss done the same, you would have labeled them a “troll” and the phony anti-Asian claims as “off topic”.

While your hypocrisy is no surprise, I am a little shocked you still think we’re dumb enough to buy your B.S.”
This is a harsh but fair assessment of our genial host’s attitude toward Kiwi an Jefe. He allows them to lie with impunity and flies to their defense when they are attacked. Note his peculiar silence over Jefe’s shameless attempt to twist what he wrote on the Coolie thread. No wonder Kiwi considers him the only ‘good Black (Mulatto maybe?) here’.
“Abagond’s quote did not apply only to Peru and Cuba (although those two places were horrendous, especially Peru).” Prove it.
“I am glad that Grojo quoted me. It is not inconsistent with what Abagond wrote.

However, Grojo inserting terms like (labour contractors) changes the meaning of the original. Sorry, but no.

They call those “middlemen” people who source labour from the Nepalese and Myanmar countryside “labour contractors” too.”
My god, man, you are a pathological liar. Grojo inserted no term like “(labour contractors)” because gro jo adheres to U.S. spelling rules and would have written “labour” as “labor”. Nice try you flimflam artist! I’ll quote Abagond again and ask him to state if I emended his words: “In the US, meanwhile, most came voluntarily. Those who worked on the Transcontinental Railroad were whipped, given the most dangerous work and were underpaid compared to whites, but still made good money for the times and were in better health than white workers.

On the other hand, in the 1850s Chinese women were openly sold on the docks of San Francisco. The police saw and did nothing. Chinese gangs attacked those who tried to save them from sex work. Hospitals turned the women away.

After 1853 in California, Chinese were not allowed to give testimony in court for or against a white man, which allowed whites to get away with crimes against them. In the South, however, Chinese workers were able to take employers to court and even win.

Chinese middlemen (labour contractors) in California turned Chinese labour into a cheap, reliable commodity.”
The descendants of the Chinese who ended up in Haiti, tell the tale that their Chinese ancestors left China of their own freewill to make their lives better. I’ve been friends with such people from early childhood. http://kreyolicious.com/chinwa-story-haitian-chinese/6924

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 18:30:47 abagond

@ resw

Get real. I have let you and others speak out against Hillary Clinton AT LENGTH.

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 18:44:54 resw

@abagond

“I have let you and others speak out against Hillary Clinton AT LENGTH”

And? It’s not off topic to “speak out against” your boss on a thread about your boss or her failed election?

And you’re not fooling anyone. You have already made your boss a prohibited topic elsewhere.

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 19:09:31 Herneith

Why are people interested in Billary? Move on, there will be other jackasses to take up their slack!

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 20:06:33 Solitaire

@ Sharina

That narrative was still being taught (hand-in-hand with the warlike sav*ges narrative) when I went through public school. Estimates of the Native population in North America in 1492 were very low.

I remember clearly when I first learned that this wasn’t true. It was in a college classroom in 1987. The revised population numbers were still somewhat controversial at that time and hadn’t made it down into most K-12 textbooks yet. This was an anthropology class; some of the history classes even at college level were still teaching the old “howling wilderness” narrative.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 21:59:19 Afrofem

@Kiwi

“You mean that discussing “Asian privilege” on a thread about atrocities against Natives is your sad attempt at deflecting from the very real role Blacks played in their genocide.”

Is this more “Bad Cop” raving or do you have concrete points you can back up with supporting numbers or articles? Better yet, can you produce a timeline, complete with numbers of Black people engaged in genocide against anyone in this country—–past or present?

“Certainly not Joel Lee’s ethnic group. Your ethnic group certainly did a great job of terrorizing and driving out his group”

Really? When did Korean Americans pack up and leave the US?

Sources? Links? Rants (especially repeated rants) don’t count.

LikeLike
on Mon Dec 19th 2016 at 22:05:20 Afrofem

@resw

“While your hypocrisy is no surprise, I am a little shocked you still think we’re dumb enough to buy your B.S.”

So, what’s holding you here?

Are you an indentured commenter?

When does your contract end?

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Tue Dec 20th 2016 at 00:25:24 Solitaire

@ Jefe

Good points. The colonists also used to come across winter food caches and just eat it all, like it didn’t belong to anyone or had been abandoned, like no one had done the hard work of preserving and storing the food for their own purposes.

Also, Native susceptibility to Eurasian diseases was seen from the earliest colonial days as a sign that God was clearing the land of a weak race to make room for “His chosen people.” Even when the religious element got dropped, this attitude still made it into the history books as “the vanishing Indian” who was doomed to extinction.

LikeLike
on Sat Dec 24th 2016 at 01:54:45 michaeljonbarker

@Kiwi

When the police profile Blacks its with specific racist assumptions like they may be armed and dangerous.

The police don’t have those same assumptions when dealing with Asians. So it’s both race and history.

Blacks from Africa who immigrate or go to school here have a class privilage from their own country to qualify to come here.

Asains who immigrate or got to school here are from all classes.

The stero type “brain drain” isn’t accurate. It’s a class drain across the board in regards to Asians who come to the U.S.

Affirmative action originally had Asains on par with Blacks and Hispanics. Over time scores for enterance were raised for Asains because of their over representation within the quotation system.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Sat Dec 24th 2016 at 01:56:29 michaeljonbarker

*quota system

LikeLike
on Sat Dec 24th 2016 at 02:49:46 Afrofem

@Kiwi

“…I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Black attitudes towards Asians couldn’t be all that different than that towards Natives given the participation in genocide against Natives by both Whites and Blacks”

The vast majority of your current commentary is a stretch. Lots of unfounded and unsubstantiated statements. Lots of Bad Cop bluster——-very few facts or coherent arguments. Really, Kiwi. You can do better than this.

“…after Freddie Gray was murdered by Black officers, Blacks violently attacked Chinese and Arabs in Baltimore.”

These allegations should be well documented. Links? Sources?

LikeLike
on Sat Dec 31st 2016 at 05:33:13 Afrofem

@jefe

In addition to the differences in scale, frequency and intensity between Black oppression and Asian oppression in the US, there is also the factor of permanency or longevity. After Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, slavery was codified as an exclusively African project. Africans were held as personal property with “no rights a White man was bound to respect”. Slavery also became a hereditary condition leading to a color based hierarchy of oppression. According to critical race theorist, Professor Andrea Smith:

”One pillar of white supremacy is the logic of slavery… this logic renders Black people as inherently slaveable-as nothing more than property… in this logic of white supremacy, Blackness becomes equated with slaveability. The forms of slavery may change-whether through the formal system of slavery, sharecropping, or systems that image Black peoples as permanent property of the state, such as the current prison industrial complex (whether or not they are formally working within prisons). But the logic itself has remained consistent. It is the anchor of capitalism. […] the logic of slavery applies a racial hierarchy to this system.

This racial hierarchy tells people that as long as you are not Black, you have the opportunity to escape the commodification [being reduced to a thing] of capitalism. Anti-Blackness enables people who are not Black to accept their lot in life because they can feel that at least they are not at the very bottom of the racial hierarchy: at least they are not property; at least they are not slaveable. […]

Second, the call to move beyond the Black-white binary obscures the centrality of the slavery logic in the system of white supremacy, which is based on a Black-white binary. This the Black-white is not the only binary that characterizes white supremacy, but it is still a central one that we cannot go “beyond” in our racial justice organizing efforts or critical analysis. It also imposes a color hierarchy that impacts all peoples of color. However, I am suggesting that in addition to the Black-white binary, there are other binaries that intersect with this one, such as an indigenous-settler binary, that are distinct but mutually reinforcing. These logics position peoples in multiple and sometimes contradictory positions within the larger settler colonial/racial state.”

Click to access smith-racial-formations-article1.pdf

For Asian labor migrants of East or South Asian (Indian) origin, slavery was neither permanent nor intergenerational. For Asian migrants as a whole, slave like conditions were a chapter of oppression as opposed to the multi-volume book version experienced by Africans and their modern day descendants.

LikeLike
on Sat Dec 31st 2016 at 05:35:04 Afrofem

@jefe

The Chinese population made up 30% of the population of Idaho in 1870 and less than 0.2% (1920-1940). Other states faced analogous cleansing of their populations.

The example of Chinese depopulation in the Idaho Territory is misleading. The Chinese population shrank due to these two factors:

* Without sufficient numbers of Chinese women or access to women of other ethnic groups, there were few family groups to provide natural increase. The European settler population of Idaho arrived in family groups that increased through migration and births in the last decades of the 1800s, eventually dwarfing all other population groups.

* In situations where Chinese migrants faced mob violence, they could return to the cities and towns where they suffered previous expulsion. The aftermath of the 1886 Seattle anti-Chinese pogrom is typical:

”Martial law ended in Seattle on February 22, but federal troops remained in the city until the summer. By the end of the year Seattle was eager to forget what had happened, and an economic boom in the late 1880s let its Caucasian community do just that. As Seattle historian Clarence Bagley sunnily wrote nearly 30 years later, “[by] early in 1887 our dark days and troublous times had disappeared as if by magic”….

The dark days may have magically disappeared for Seattle’s white population, but its remaining Chinese residents weren’t as fortunate. Their recovery was far more slow and painful, and it took 20 years for Seattle’s Chinese population to return to its 1885 levels. At the same time, the city’s Caucasian population increased more than tenfold, to well over 100,000.

But the Chinese in Seattle did recover. By the early 1900s, Chinatown was once again beginning to thrive. Today it lives on in Seattle’s vibrant Chinatown-International District, a culturally diverse neighborhood that is home to Americans of Chinese descent as well as Japanese Americans, Filipino Americans, and others.”

http://www.historylink.org/File/2745

LikeLike
on Sat Dec 31st 2016 at 05:39:07 Afrofem

@jefe

”How is this any less ethnic cleansing than, say, a race-based sterilization program? To rename it ethnic exclusion and deny that it was ethnic cleansing, is tantamount rewriting the historical narrative to fit one’s preferred version of history.”

Excluding a group of people before they establish family groups and thus preventing natural increase is not quite the same as violently expelling families or murdering them en masse. The end results may be similar, but the pain of exclusion versus the deep trauma caused by expulsion, forced sterilization or genocide on a population differs a great deal. A difference of intensity and permanency.

Even in long term effects of expulsion, Chinese vs. Black banishment events differ drastically. Many of the urban areas in the Western US that expelled Chinese immigrants in the 1800s, such as Seattle and Tacoma, now have thriving Chinese American populations. For descendants of Black people expelled from specific US counties in the 1800s, the effects have been permanent or near permanent.

Elliot Jaspin, an editor in the Washington bureau of Cox Newspapers, which owns the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman, investigated expulsions of Black citizens in the South and Midwest during the mid- to late 1800s. This is what Jaspin had to say about the long-term effects of Black expulsions in his 2006 article:

”It is America’s family secret.

Beginning in 1864 and continuing for approximately 60 years, whites across the United States conducted a series of racial expulsions. They drove thousands of blacks from their homes to make communities lily-white.

In at least a dozen of the most extreme cases, blacks were purged from entire counties that remain almost exclusively white, according to the most recent census.

The expulsions were violent and swift, and they stretched beyond the South. But they remain largely unacknowledged in standard histories of America.

While it is impossible to say exactly how many expulsions took place, computer analysis and years of research conducted by the Washington Bureau of Cox Newspapers, which owns the American-Statesman, reveal that they occurred on a scale that has never been fully documented or understood. […]

Today, one of the physical legacies of these attacks is an archipelago of white or virtually all-white counties along the Mason-Dixon Line and into the Midwest. Although most purges took place nearly a century ago, the 2000 census showed that blacks remain all but absent from these counties, even when neighboring counties have sizable black populations.

The social legacy of the upheaval and horrific violence is less clear.

Descendants of those driven out describe a sense of shame about what befell their families. Whites frequently decline to talk about what happened, typically saying, “It will only cause trouble.”

http://www.statesman.com/news/leave-die-america-hidden-history-racial-expulsions/cHnuiGZxMgYLU5AEbNav3H/

LikeLiked by 2 people
on Sat Dec 31st 2016 at 05:40:25 Afrofem

@jefe

One overlooked factor is the fact that the Western States and Territories were not the only place Chinese migrants labored in the US. They also labored in the South and the urban North. The Southern Chinese married any available Chinese women and intermarried with Mexican and Black women. Chinese migrants in the urban North intermarried with Irish women who were also near the bottom of the social hierarchy.

John Jung of Chinese American Historian wrote about why Chinese women were scarce in 19th century Chinese immigrant communities:

”Early Chinese immigrant laborers were either unmarried or if married, separated from their wives and children who were still in China. One reason why wives did not accompany their husbands was that the laborers initially planned to return to China after a few years. Other reasons were cultural, i.e., families had wives remain in the villages for diverse reasons. Wives in China would ensure the men would return, care for elderly parents-in-law, and have their children grow up in China. Economic factors also played a role as many immigrants could not afford to bring wives over.

In addition, after the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, Chinese laborers were prohibited from bringing their wives from China, a situation that lasted for decades even though the exclusion law was officially repealed in 1943. Consequently, Chinese immigrant men in the U. S. and Canada wanting to marry had few choices but to find non-Chinese wives.

Regional differences existed. In New York City, some Chinese married Irish women, as they lived in nearby neighborhoods and both groups were at the bottom of the social ladder. In the South, some Chinese married black women who were in larger number than Irish women. For example, the census agent responsible for counting the Chinese in Augusta, Georgia reported in 1905 that several of the 34 Chinese men there were married and had families, all with “negro or mulatto wives.”

http://chineseamericanhistorian.blogspot.com/2013/08/interracial-marriages-of-chinese.html

LikeLiked by 2 people
on Sat Dec 31st 2016 at 05:46:11 Afrofem

@jefe
“…you are still thinking about single-dimension privilege. It suggests that you think of white supremacy along a single dimension (the first pillar). On other spectrums or pillars of white supremacy, blacks may end up having higher privilege. For example, we will have (in fact already have) black presidents, secretary of state, supreme court justices, etc. before any Native American or Asian”

Where you see “privilege”, I see servitude. Those Black Faces In High Places were/are serving the American Empire. They were/are convenient window dressing for the Empire; servile to power and unaccountable to the Black communities from which they sprang.

I also see the illogic of White Supremacy. During the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, local newspapers focused intensely on racial matters. They printed the results of various studies, experiments and first person accounts of how Black and White Americans view racial matters.

One study printed at that time remains stuck in my memory because I found it strange at the time. In the study, Black people, White people, Asian people and Latino people were asked two questions: What group do you identify most with and what group do you identify least with?

☞Asian people claimed to identify most with White people and least with Black people.

☞Latino people claimed to identify most with White people and least with Black people.

☛Black people claimed to identify most with Latinos and least with White people.

☛White people claimed to identify most with Black people and least with Latino people.

Reading that study left me with two major questions: how would Native Americans respond to those questions and White people identify most with the people they most despise—what the heck?!? I did not see that coming. I was not at the point of clipping articles for future reference so I cannot cite a source for that.

I still shake my head at the total disconnect of White Americans in that study. When Black Faces In High Places are mentioned, I often think of that study and the irrationality of White Supremacy. I also think of how non-Europeans waste energy jockeying for position to please those irrational people.

❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂

I view many of the arguments denying Asian privilege akin to comparing apples to oranges. The history and current life prospects of Asian Americans vis a vis Black Americans are very different. Relative to Black people, Asian Americans hold a privileged position in this country. They are neither indigenous and therefore have no history of settler colonialism nor were their origins in this country configured as permanent labor captives—slaves. Even the so-called “coolies” were indentured for finite periods. Their low status was neither permanent nor hereditary.

Was there pain and suffering in the history of various Asian groups in the US? Yes. Was it permanent and intergenerational? No.

Those Asian migrants who survived dangerous work and harsh treatment were eventually free to create self-determined futures. Some of that self-determination was possible by the fact that they were not Black and at the bottom of society of the US or any country in the Americas. They were able to start businesses, marry someone if they were located outside of the hostile Western states and build cohesive communities. Asian Americans today are free from the constant threat of White mob or state violence. Their lives were not the stuff of storybooks, but Asian migrants and their descendants had and still have significantly more opportunity for group advancement and individual achievement than any person of visible African descent.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Wed Jan 4th 2017 at 19:22:14 Afrofem

@Kiwi

Bravo! For once you have done a minimal amount of work to buttress your anti-Black claims. You deserve a “participation certificate” for your effort.

The article claims “They pointed them toward Chinese and Arab-owned stores.” My question is did the “rioters” follow through? Do you have any comments from the Chinese and Arab store owners about their experiences during that disturbance? Further are the actions of avowed criminal gang members to be a sweeping indictment of the entire community? To me, there is more to be studied, read and written about that disturbance and others like it over the mid-20th century to the present.

“You, on the other hand, deny and downplay the experiences of other races in order to buttress your delusion that Blacks occupy the center stage of racial oppression.”

Not center stage, Kiwi, the bottom terrace of a racist superstructure. I have made that point many times on other threads and have quoted Professor Andrea Smith’s observations that support my own lived experience.

As you, jefe and Professor Smith have pointed out, other groups suffer forms of oppression by White, heterosexual, Christian males. Your “go-to-group”, the Native Americans suffer different forms of oppression with different intentions by the oppressors and different outcomes. The oppressors are quite accomplished at multitasking——-in other words they do a good job of oppressing various groups under them in different ways—-simultaneously.

Yet, when we focus on levels of oppression between any Asian American group and African Americans, there are marked differences.

➨ Asian Americans of all ethnicities are able to grow businesses free from aggressive low cost competition from outside groups in their own neighborhoods.

➨ Asian American children (generally) don’t attend underfunded schools or face the threat of closure of their neighborhood schools.

➨ Asian Americans at this point in American history are free from the constant threat of White mob or state violence.

In short, Asian Americans are free to build cohesive communities without undue interference from outside groups. Those are privileges Black people do not enjoy.

LikeLiked by 2 people
on Wed Jan 4th 2017 at 19:37:31 Afrofem

@Kiwi

Can you name instances where:

➢a predominantly Black jury acquitted an Black person who murdered an Asian American person in a hate crime?

➢name an instance where Black residents engaged in mob violence against Asian American residents in order to drive them out of their neighborhoods?

➢name a single Black politician or civil rights leader who openly mocks or insults Asian Americans?

➢name legislation passed by Black American constituents intended to drive Asian American residents from predominantly Black neighborhoods?

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Wed Jan 4th 2017 at 22:01:38 gro jo

Afrofem, you are a glutton for punishment. Do you really take anything Kiwi writes seriously!?

LikeLike
on Wed Jan 4th 2017 at 23:12:29 Afrofem

@gro jo

I don’t consider it life or death serious. However, even non-serious propaganda has to be countered with facts and other viewpoints. Non-serious propaganda can also have silencing and withering effects.

I hear you, though.

LikeLike
on Thu Jan 5th 2017 at 03:05:24 gro jo

Nah, you’re just showing off. You got an expensive education and want the whole world to know it.

LikeLike
on Thu Jan 5th 2017 at 05:20:59 Afrofem

@gro jo

Hah, the majority of my education was and is auto-didactical. I think your education is much more expensive than mine.

I do get your point that at some juncture, you just have to let ranters rant and move on.

LikeLike
on Thu Jan 5th 2017 at 18:06:30 sharinalr

@Afrofem

I have been lurking but thought you did an amazing job at addressing his keynpoints without allowing him to deflect to irrelevant subtopics. I notice he tries to lump Asians into Native causes as if their struggle is the same. It is something I think I will present in the group I’m in. We have many natives their and I wonder how they feel about a Chinese American using their struggles to puff up Asian struggles.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Thu Jan 5th 2017 at 18:07:09 sharinalr

There* excuse my typos.

LikeLike
on Thu Jan 5th 2017 at 18:50:54 Afrofem

@ sharinalr

I have read variations of the Asian American tactic of adding Native American concerns into discussions about relative privilege between Black folk and Asian Americans for years now.

The first time I saw the tactic used was in an Asian American magazine in the late 1980’s. The article’s author talked about discrimination against Asian Americans in the US. I found the article informative until the writer claimed that only Native Americans suffered more than Asian Americans. I remember shaking my head and thinking how Black people were absent from his calculations of discrimination in the US? Black people were not mentioned once in the article.

I think some Asian American writers use this tactic to:

A. Cloak themselves in the gloss of Native Americans who are oppressed but greatly respected in many communities. Their oppression is seen as not their fault. In short, they are deserving victims of racism.

B. Avoid making common cause with Black people who are greatly despised in this country. Black people, on the other hand are seen as undeserving. Our oppression is seen as the result of our own actions, not our tortured history and racist systems. Some people go so far as to charge Black people as perpetrators of racism in the US.

Sharina, I would love to know how the Native Americans in your group view this tactic?

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Fri Jan 13th 2017 at 07:04:00 Fan ...

kiwi says:

“Asians at this point in history are at the mercy of Black mob or state violence. Blacks have always been free of Asians mob or state violence. Your conclusion: Asian privilege.”

//////////////////////////////////////////////

If it isn’t Asian privilege for an Asian Palm Beach sheriff’s sergeant to follow and shoot an unarmed Black man FOUR times for nothing but the Asian cop’s suspicious nature and delusional racist thinking, then what do you call it???

http://www.thedailysheeple.com/cops-assets-seized-to-help-pay-for-his-paralyzed-victims-multi-million-dollar-settlement_012017

excerpt:
“Lin followed Stephens, and later said that he’d planned to give the man a ticket for not bicycling properly. He also acknowledged that he had not seen Stephens around the neighborhood before, and admitted he found him suspicious. [Imagine my shock!]

From PalmBeachPost:

He intended to stop him, ask for identification and find out where he had come from and where he was going. He considered frisking him. But Lin, who is of Asian descent, denied racially profiling Stephens, who is black, and wore his hair in long dreadlocks.

When Stephens turned down a side road, Lin followed, stepping on the gas, turning on the siren and then the lights. He thought the way Stephens rode his bike was suspicious. He thought the way Stephens got off his bike was suspicious.

And four seconds after Lin got out of his patrol car, he shot Stephens four times, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.

Lin said he opened fire because Stephens was reaching in his back waistband, possibly for a gun. [Lemme guess, because reaching in his back waistband was SUSPICIOUS!]

There was no gun.”

LikeLiked by 2 people
on Fri Jan 13th 2017 at 16:55:40 resw

“Blacks attack Asian businesses. Asians don’t attack Black businesses. ”

LOL! Individuals are not representative of blacks as a group.

The truth is blacks, as a group, patronize Asian businesses. A lot. Asians as a group do not patronize black businesses. That’s a fact.

And if blacks as a group boycotted all the Asian-American businesses in their neighbourhoods and elsewhere, it would put a significant amount of Asian-Americans in the poor house. Probably a good idea.

“Marion Barry’s comments on Asians and their shops as being dirty is a nasty one”

No, it was the truth. Sorry you can’t accept it, but you can easily contrast the “dirty shops” that Asian-American-owned businesses in DC’s black neighbourhoods with the ones in Chinatown and in white neighbourhoods. There’s a huge difference.

LikeLiked by 1 person