Getting married like it’s 1627, as historically re-enacted in 2012 at Plimoth Patuxet, a tourist attraction. Via boston.com.
The Pilgrim Fathers (fl. 1620s), or just Pilgrims, are the religious fanatics from England who came to North America in 1620 on board the Mayflower. According to legend, they landed at Plymouth Rock. They were settler colonialists who founded Plymouth Colony (1620-91), which later became part of Massachusetts, one of the Thirteen Colonies, now a state in the north-eastern US.
Thanksgiving: It was 400 years ago this autumn, in 1621, maybe in November, but probably October, that the Pilgrims held the First Thanksgiving: a feast with the Wampanoag Indians to mark a peace treaty that more or less held till Prince Philip’s War (1675-78). By the 1890s, the Thanksgiving holiday and the Pilgrims had become part of the origin myth of White Americans. Or, as the Wikipedia puts it:
“The Pilgrims’ story became a central theme in the history and culture of the United States.”
The name “Pilgrims” comes from Hebrews 11:13 in the Bible (bolding mine):
“These [early believers in God] all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”
Because heaven was their true homeland. William Bradford, a Pilgrim Father, did apply this imagery to them in his journal, “Of Plymouth Plantation” (1630-51), but the name did not catch on till the early 1800s.
Saints is what they called themselves.
Brownists is the name Shakespeare would have used: they were followers of Robert Browne. They refused to attend Anglican churches as required by English law. They were Calvinists who thought the Anglican Church was hopelessly corrupt, beyond reform. They wanted a separate, pure church of their own – which is why they are known as Puritan Separatists.
Netherlands: In about 1607 they fled to the Netherlands. But when they saw their children becoming Dutch they wanted a place where they were free to be both Puritan and English.
Meanwhile in America: By 1610, English fishermen were regularly fishing off the coast of New England every summer. That touched off a plague in 1616 that, in three years, killed nearly all the Indians within 65 km of the coast. Attempts to colonize New England did not succeed till after the plague, even though there were already English colonies in Virginia and Newfoundland. By 1619, Black people were already arriving in Virginia.
Plymouth Rock: On December 16th 1620 the Pilgrims land at the deserted Indian village of Patuxet, already renamed Plymouth on English maps. It is deserted because of the plague. The few survivors had fled inland. The idea of the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock (at 41.958083° N, 70.662139° W) does not appear till 1741. The Pilgrims come off the Mayflower coughing and suffering from scurvy.
That first winter half die of disease.
Squanto: In March 1621, as the winter was ending, an Indian arrived speaking English: Squanto. He was visiting what was left of his old town of Patuxet. He teaches the Pilgrims how to live on the land. It was already cleared, but the Pilgrims were townspeople – carpenters, tailors, printers and such. And he made peace between them and his people, the Wampanoag Indians.
– Abagond, 2021.
See also:
- Thanksgiving
- White Americans
- Wampanoag Indians
- bubonic plague – may have been the plague in question
- Calvin
- Anglo-Protestant culture
- settler colonialism
560
Abagond 
“the 102 religious fanatics”
Historians believe that only about half of the passengers were Separatists, although it’s difficult to establish an exact count. Some of the hired laborers and indentured servants may have already been connected to the congregation, but others are known not to have been.
The ship’s crew also remained in Plymouth during the first winter. John Alden, one of the most well-known “pilgrims” today due to his romance with Priscilla Mullins, was actually the ship’s cooper and probably had no connection to the Puritans until he decided to stay in Plymouth. It’s unclear whether the Mullins were Dissenters or Separatists; they weren’t part of the Netherlands group.
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@ Solitaire
I ditched the number. Thanks.
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They were very brave. Crossing the Atlantic was far from trivial in those days. “Settler colonialism” is just a scary-sounding name for something that is entirely normal and fine. Interesting how it only seems to be criticized when white people do it. Black people do it just as much. For example, the entirety of Southern Africa was Khoisan at the time of Christ, but over several centuries, Bantus (who originated in Cameroon) settler colonized their land. There are very few Khoisan left in South Africa today. That’s what makes the land expropriation thing so infuriating – Bantus are no more native to South Africa than whites are, yet they are trying to rob them of their land under the guise of decolonization.
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@ Paul Kruger
Food for thought.
Curious that during the colonization European settlers tended to group all natives of Africa basically under the same roof of uncivilized people, but during and after the decolonization process, all of a sudden, they are very interested in divide them under different designations (Bantus, Khoisan, etc).
Bantus have and had a different interaction with the Khoisan and other humans which were there before them, and if you look at a so called Bantu group like the Xhosa, it is obvious that they are a mix, biologically as well as culturally, of said interaction. They can be called Bantu but in fact are a mix. Just look at the late Mandela’s face (mongoloid eyes that are typical of Khoisan) or the many “clicks” in the Xhosa language (ah, I forget, you call it “dialect”; very “civilized” designation, by the way!).
Whites are the ones who tended to insist in a separation between themselves and the rest of the humans in the place, hence the enactment of Apartheid* at some point in time. African human groups had a more complex and nuanced interaction between themselves, which includes wars, mixing, etc**.
By the way, Khoisan and other older groups in the region are part of the Black race, for all meaningful purposes, as are Nilotics, Ethiopians, West Africans, Pygmies, etc. This is not different of recognizing different sub-groups inside the Europeans like the Nordics, the Mediterraneans, Slavs, etc. The race is the same despite the regional variations in the phenotype.
The idea of “divide et impera” is at the source of this way of looking at humans that insists in putting Bantus and other South African natives, in different boxes.
The same idea was used later to differentiate between the Zulus and other Black ethnicities, in the earlier 90’s,during the last days of the Apartheid. The Zulus became then kind of a “conservative ethnicity” which (supposedly) were opposing the political changes that were taking place rapidly.
<
blockquote>Bantus are no more native to South Africa than whites are, yet they are trying to rob them of their land under the guise of decolonization.
<
blockquote>
I disagree. Bantus have been there for much longer than the Whites (=descendants of Europeans)***. By the way, I’m not defending or opposing any specific policy here.
But I am not a South African citizen and I only hope that they can all reach a point where everybody feels treated fairly by the system in place there. This should be the goal.
*Apartheid is what the late Prof Ali Mazrui called, “humanity in fragments”.
**The magnificent ass of many Black women is more pronounced in Khoisan women but continuously widespread in all Africa south of the Congo river and beyond, probably a “genetic memory” of the old mixing process that took place for ages.
***Check the Wikipedia article about the Bantu expansion, for example.
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Abagond,
Please delete my previous comment. I’ll put it again with the “blockquote” reference, corrected.
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@ Paul Kruger
Food for thought
Curious that during the colonization European settlers tended to group all natives of Africa basically under the same roof of uncivilized people, but after the decolonization process, all of a sudden, they are very interested in divide them under different designations (Bantus, Khoisan, etc).
Bantus have and had a different interaction with the Khoisan and other humans which were there before them, and if you look at a so called Bantu group like the Xhosa, it is obvious that they are a mix, biologically as well as culturally, of said interaction. They can be called Bantu but in fact are a mix. Just look at the late Mandela’s face (mongoloid eyes that are typical of Khoisan) or the many “clicks” in the Xhosa language (ah, I forget, you call it “dialect”; very “civilized” designation, by the way!).
Whites are the ones who tended to insist in a separation between themselves and the rest of the humans in the place, hence the enactment of Apartheid* at some point in time. African human groups had a more complex and nuanced interaction between themselves, which includes wars, mixing, etc**.
By the way, Khoisan and other older groups in the region are part of the Black race, for all meaningful purposes, as are Nilotics, Ethiopians, West Africans, Pygmies, etc. This is not different of recognizing different sub-groups inside the Europeans like the Nordics, the Mediterraneans, Slavs, etc. The race is the same despite the regional variations in the phenotype.
The idea of “divide et impera” is at the source of this way of looking at humans that insists in putting Bantus and other South African natives, in different boxes.
The same idea was used later to differentiate between the Zulus and other Black ethnicities, in the earlier 90’s,during the last days of the Apartheid. The Zulus became then kind of a “conservative ethnicity” which (supposedly) were opposing the political changes that were taking place rapidly.
I disagree. Bantus have been there for much longer than the Whites (=descendants of Europeans)***. By the way, I’m not defending or opposing any specific policy here.
But I am not a South African citizen and I only hope that they can all reach a point where everybody feels treated fairly by the system in place there. This should be the goal.
*Apartheid is what the late Prof Ali Mazrui called, “humanity in fragments”.
**The magnificent ass of many Black women is more pronounced in Khoisan women but continuously widespread in all Africa south of the Congo river and beyond, probably a “genetic memory” of the old mixing process that took place for ages.
***Check the Wikipedia article about the Bantu expansion, for example.
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@ Paul Kruger
“Interesting how it only seems to be criticized when white people do it.”
Not on this blog. Abagond included Liberia as one of his examples in his post on settler colonialism — that was Black Americans taking over the land of Black Africans:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2014/12/11/settler-colonialism/
And he’s also written critically about China’s settler-colonialism. For example:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2019/06/04/uighur-internment-camps/
“’Settler colonialism’ is just a scary-sounding name for something that is entirely normal and fine.”
There’s nothing fine about it when you’re on the other side.
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@ Paul Kruger
“That’s what makes the land expropriation thing so infuriating – Bantus are no more native to South Africa than whites are, yet they are trying to rob them of their land under the guise of decolonization.”
If you think settler colonialism is normal and fine, then why isn’t decolonization also normal and fine? Decolonization has happened over and over again, too. For example, the Romans got kicked out of the eastern part of their empire, and their influence waned almost immediately thereafter. Latin died out in the East, while Greek, Coptic, and other native languages resurged. Overthrowing the colonists is nothing new.
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@munubantu – lots of so-called “settler colonists” are mixed with the natives of the places the colonized. Paul Kruger (not me, but the historical figure whose name I use as an alias here), Jan Smuts, and FW De Klerk were all descendants of the Khoisan woman Krotoa. Virtually all white Latin Americans have a significant amount of Amerindian (and sometimes black) admixture. Turks have only a minority of actual Turkic blood.
Acquiring some features from another language family does not change which family a language is part of. Despite huge amounts of influence from French, English is still a Germanic language.
As for dialect/language – a language is a dialect with an army and navy.
Khoisan are more genetically distinct from black Africans than either Persians or Asian Indians are from white Europeans. They are not part of the same race just because they look somewhat similar. The same is true of Aborigines from Australia – even though they are sometimes called “black”, they are not the same race as black Africans. Any genetically coherent division of humans into ancestrally-based groupings will place Bantus and Khoisan into different groups.
Bantus arrived in the eastern part of South Africa sometime in the first millennium AD. This is the area of the former Boer Republics. Bantus are not native to the Western Cape. Whites really did arrive there first. However, neither of them is the actual indigenous people of Southern Africa.
Whites have been in South Africa almost as long as blacks have been in America (only 23 years less 1652 vs 1619). If blacks are real Americans, then whites are real South Africans. There’s a reason most white South Africans stayed after losing political power. Most white Rhodesians and almost all white Algerians left.
Looking at people’s butts is not a good way to deduce a population’s genetic history and admixture.
@Solitaire – a people only has a right to land as long as they are willing and able to defend it. If they are unable (American Indians, Aborigines in Australia) or unwilling (some Western European and Gulf Arab states where migrant groups are becoming demographically dominant, the empires of European colonial powers) to fight to keep their land, they lose all right to it. If China tried to conquer America, I would take up arms initially, but if they beat us decisively, I’d accept it and try my best to adapt to Chinese culture.
And I’m relatively new to this blog, so I hadn’t seen those. That said, can anyone deny that African-Americans achieved more in Liberia in 100 years than the native tribes did in a thousand?
As for the Uyghurs, anything that reduces the influence of Islam in the world is a good thing. Chinese culture is both more ancient and more advanced than Islamic culture. If the Uyghurs were thinking rationally, they would realize that they are better off giving up Islam and becoming Chinese.
Being a Westerner, I’m not thrilled about decolonization, but it’s out of my hands. I want what is good for the West and my fellow Westerners. Part of what makes it so irritating is that the great Western empires were undermined from within. By and large the natives didn’t beat them with the sword (although there are several exceptions to this: Algeria being a big one). If Western countries had circled the wagons after WWII and said “an attack on one of our colonies is an attack on all of us, and we will band together to fight against any anti-colonial movement”, the West would still be mighty and colonial today.
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@ Paul Kruger
“As for dialect/language – a language is a dialect with an army and navy.”
What exactly are you trying to convey here? That a language is just the dialect of the specific group which rules the country? If that’s what you’re implying, it’s incorrect.
“Khoisan are more genetically distinct from black Africans than either Persians or Asian Indians are from white Europeans. They are not part of the same race just because they look somewhat similar. The same is true of Aborigines from Australia – even though they are sometimes called “black”, they are not the same race as black Africans.”
What race are you going to assign to Khoisans or Australians, then?
“Any genetically coherent division of humans into ancestrally-based groupings will place Bantus and Khoisan into different groups.”
Those groupings are not races. Race is a social construct which is not supported or upheld by modern genetic research.
“a people only has a right to land as long as they are willing and able to defend it.”
That’s your opinion, not some universal law. What you’re championing here is theft by violence. If someone overpowers you so that you aren’t able to defend your house, do they have the right to move in?
“If China tried to conquer America, I would take up arms initially, but if they beat us decisively, I’d accept it and try my best to adapt to Chinese culture.”
Doesn’t sound very patriotic. No resistance movement for you? No clandestine attempts to pass on your culture, language, and religion to your children or grandchildren?
Also, you’re assuming you would get the opportunity to adapt. Perhaps your new conquerors would round up you and the other survivors, stick you on a reservation in Death Valley, and tell you, “Good luck.”
“I’m relatively new to this blog, so I hadn’t seen those.”
Perhaps you should lurk more.
“That said, can anyone deny that African-Americans achieved more in Liberia in 100 years than the native tribes did in a thousand?”
Obviously you know nothing about the history of Liberia or West Africa.
“As for the Uyghurs, anything that reduces the influence of Islam in the world is a good thing. Chinese culture is both more ancient and more advanced than Islamic culture.”
You don’t realize that there is no universal Islamic culture? No more than there is a universal Christian culture. The Philippines and Great Britain are both Christian countries, but very different culturally.
Religion is not the only element in play here, especially considering that China allows the practice of Islam elsewhere in its borders:
https://time.com/3099950/china-muslim-hui-xinjiang-uighur-islam/
“Being a Westerner, I’m not thrilled about decolonization, but it’s out of my hands.”
What’s not to be thrilled about? Isn’t decolonization normal and fine?
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@ Paul Kruger
“If blacks are real Americans, then whites are real South Africans”
The crucial difference here is Black Americans use that reasoning with White Americans. To form an accurate parallel with South Africa, Black Americans would have to be making that argument to Native Americans.
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@solitaire – I’m trying to convey that the distinction between language and dialect is often more of a political distinction than an actual linguistic one.
Khoisan and Aboriginal are races. They are not members of the same genetic continuum that black Africans are. There are more races than the “Caucasoid”, “Mongoloid”, and “Negroid” of 19th-century pseudoscience.
Social “races” and genetic races don’t always line up. Latin Americans are not a race, but are often seen as one in America.
There is a difference between what is appropriate between private individuals and between tribes/nations/ethnic groups.
If Anglo-Americans were truly beaten by the Chinese, I would 100% give up being Anglo the best I could and do everything (including encouraging my children to marry Chinese people) I could to make my descendants be Chinese. I have no desire for defeated groups to maintain their way of life, that includes my own group, if/when we are defeated by the Chinese.
American Indians had plenty of opportunities to become assimilated and integrated. Many of them took it. Herbert Hoover’s Vice President, Charles Curtis, was 1/4 Native American. So was Will Rogers, the most highly-paid entertainer of the early 20th century. Both men were married to white women, and neither of them encountered any trouble traveling through the south. Indians also served in white units during WWII.
The reservations were only for the ones who resisted assimilation.
I know that African-Americans are a mostly Western people who created a mostly Western society in a hostile and dangerous territory. (Liberia). And you could make a very good argument that they had a moral right to the land, given that their ancestors had been removed from West Africa by force. So even if you don’t support African-American rule in Liberia on the basis of might makes right, there is a strong case that they should have been allowed to dominate the territory.
China isn’t perfect when it comes to freeing their territory of Islam, but they are a lot better than the Western countries that keep importing them here…
I would be fine with decolonization if the third worlders had truly defeated us. I don’t like the way our “leaders” surrendered without a real fight in most cases.
And the analogy works well. Black Americans saying to white Americans “we are American too” is equivalent to white South Africans saying to black South Africans “we are South African too”. White Americans and black South Africans are both numerical majorities in a territory that neither of them is native to. White South Africans and black Americans both arrived in their respective countries in the 17th century.
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Folks, we have our Kruger rant. Thanks Paul.
“I would be fine with decolonization if the third worlders had truly defeated us. I don’t like the way our “leaders” surrendered without a real fight in most cases.
And the analogy works well. Black Americans saying to white Americans “we are American too” is equivalent to white South Africans saying to black South Africans “we are South African too”. White Americans and black South Africans are both numerical majorities in a territory that neither of them is native to. White South Africans and black Americans both arrived in their respective countries in the 17th century.”
How are things in Orania? “Boer Lives Matter”, hmm now you guys have been so Negrified you feel no shame in stealing Black memes. “…truly defeated us…”
Oh dear, here comes the thanatotic tendency of all Whites of your ilk. Blacks don’t want to kill you, we feel you should do that job on your own. I wish you well in that endeavor.
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@ Paul Kruger
“I’m trying to convey that the distinction between language and dialect is often more of a political distinction than an actual linguistic one.”
Not according to linguists.
“Khoisan and Aboriginal are races.”
Are you saying that each is its own separate race?
“There are more races than the ‘Caucasoid’, ‘Mongoloid’, and ‘Negroid’ of 19th-century pseudoscience.”
Well, I agree with part of this statement. The 19th-century racial classifications were indeed pseudoscience.
“Social ‘races’ and genetic races don’t always line up.”
Can you provide a list of these genetic races?
“Latin Americans are not a race, but are often seen as one in America.”
That’s a mistake which is starting to be rectified. Most government forms (e.g., the census) now list “Hispanic of any race” as a separate question. And be honest — people here who see Latin Americans as a race don’t include in that category Latin Americans who are Black or Asian. They have a specific phenotype in mind.
“There is a difference between what is appropriate between private individuals and between tribes/nations/ethnic groups.”
How do you mean?
“I would 100% give up being Anglo the best I could and do everything (including encouraging my children to marry Chinese people) I could to make my descendants be Chinese.”
You would teach your children to see themselves and their race as inferior. You would forbid them to speak English. You would forbid them to marry another Anglo because that would keep them from getting ahead. You would give preference to your grandchildren who look more Chinese over those who look more European. You would encourage your descendants to dye and straighten their hair, use cosmetics to change their complexion, and do whatever else they could, including plastic surgery, to minimize their European features. If your grandchildren who look more Chinese deny any blood relation to you and tell their Chinese friends you are just a household servant and treat you as such in front of their Chinese friends, you would play that role to help your grandchildren hide their Anglo ancestry. Yes or no?
“I have no desire for defeated groups to maintain their way of life, that includes my own group, if/when we are defeated by the Chinese.”
What if the US was beaten by Saudi Arabia?
“American Indians had plenty of opportunities to become assimilated and integrated.”
At what cost?
“Both men were married to white women, and neither of them encountered any trouble traveling through the south.”
As you noted, both men were at least 3/4 White. During their lifetimes, Natives — especially those who were phenotypically European — faced much less discrimination in the South than Blacks did. And there was much worse discrimination against Natives in the West.
“The reservations were only for the ones who resisted assimilation.”
Do you know how “The Five Civilized Tribes” got that moniker? Because they were assimilating.
Do you know what happened to them?
I don’t see how it’s even possible to have an educated discussion with you on this question if you know nothing about tribal sovereignty and land treaty rights.
And none of your remarks about the First Nations really pertain to the theoretical question I asked you about China. What if China conquers the USA and gives you no opportunity to assimilate in the fashion you would prefer? What if China dumps all White Americans on a small parcel of undesirable land instead of letting you remain in your own home? What if they make it illegal for your White descendants to marry interracially? What would you do then?
“even if you don’t support African-American rule in Liberia on the basis of might makes right, there is a strong case that they should have been allowed to dominate the territory.”
So I guess you approve of the fact that the African American settlers enslaved the Native Africans.
“I would be fine with decolonization if the third worlders had truly defeated us. I don’t like the way our ‘leaders’ surrendered without a real fight in most cases.”
Empires have often fallen in that fashion. The empire overextends itself and must contract for the original core polity to survive.
Why do you think the European nations didn’t make that agreement to protect each other’s colonies after WWII? Because in less than 35 years, they’d bled themselves dry fighting two immense wars amongst themselves.
It’s also a very common tactic for colonized people to make things too hot and/or too expensive for the colonizers to remain. You seem to think there should be a rule that only the battlefield counts.
“And the analogy works well. Black Americans saying to white Americans ‘we are American too’ is equivalent to white South Africans saying to black South Africans ‘we are South African too’.”
No, it isn’t. White South Africans saying that to Black South Africans is analogous to White Americans saying that to Native Americans.
White Americans and Black Americans arrived roughly at the same time. On that basis, they should in fact be seen as equivalent. If White Americans have a right to be here, then so do Black Americans.
But do White Americans have a right to be here? Viewing the situation through a Native lens, the answer is No.
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“…a people only has a right to land as long as they are willing and able to defend it. If they are unable (American Indians, Aborigines in Australia) or unwilling (some Western European and Gulf Arab states where migrant groups are becoming demographically dominant, the empires of European colonial powers) to fight to keep their land, they lose all right to it.
China isn’t perfect when it comes to freeing their territory of Islam, but they are a lot better than the Western countries that keep importing them here…
I would be fine with decolonization if the third worlders had truly defeated us. I don’t like the way our “leaders” surrendered without a real fight in most cases.”
“Western Civilization” under threat from the “Muslim Peril”. What a hoot!
It’s fascinating that people who trot out those tired arguments fail to see what is right under their noses.
The US-EU cabal (with the Gulf States as junior partners) are constantly warring against the people of the Global South. They want control of the resources (minerals, petroleum, timber, arable land and water) of the Global South without paying the people of the Global South.
If they can mask their plunder with “Western Civilization” is under attack from the Brown “Muslim Peril” arguments then they can declare themselves victims whose “leaders surrendered without a fight”.
Oh please!
What did any thinking person expect when the US and the “Coalition of the Willing” attacked Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya? Did they think the people of those countries would stay put during the destruction of their homes and livelihoods or the chaos that followed?
Could they not foresee whole populations on the move, following their resources to the Global North (the EU and North America)?
The same goes for the Gulf States. When they unleashed proxy wars in Syria and Yemen with the aid of the Global North, did they expect people experiencing war to not migrate away from danger? Any Syrians and Yemenis who migrated to the Gulf States to escape danger deserved asylum.
That is what normal people do in war zones. They get the heck out.
Anyone who complains about migrants should be pushing for the rebuilding of those societies so people can safely return home. That rebuilding would also include reparations for the destruction caused by wars of agression against the people of the Global South.
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@gro jo
I commend your reference to the Krugerrand, although I dispute your characterization of my comments as a rant.
I don’t live in Orania, but I support it. Black people should support it too. It takes nothing away from them (it was intentionally built on unoccupied land in the middle of nowhere), and it could be a model for black Americans building their own self-sustaining communities and achieving the self-determination they deserve.
@Solitaire
The distinction between language and dialect is an irrelevant tangent.
Yes, Khoisan and Aboriginal are each a distinct race.
Genetic races are:
White European
Black African
Khoisan
Pygmy
MENA (Middle Easterners and North Africans)
South Asian
East Asian
Amerindian
Aboriginal
Pacific Islanders
And of course, many ethnic groups are a mix of one or more race. Mexicans are a mix of European and Amerindian, Ashkenazim are a mix of European and MENA, Turkic people are a mix of MENA and East Asian, etc…
Honestly, “mixed Latin American” should be its own category on censuses even though it’s not a genetic race, since they form a distinct group in society and have a very distant history than recently multiracial people (i.e. someone with a Japanese grandpa and a Polish grandma). Look at South Africa, where the Cape Coloured people, who are a mix of 5 races (white, black, Khoisan, South Asian, East Asian), are their own category on statistics because the admixture in their lineage happened centuries ago.
It’s okay for countries to invade each other. It’s not okay for me to invade my neighbor’s house, since we are part of the same society.
Yes to all of that (except possibly plastic surgery).
If we were beaten by Saudis, that would be much harder for me to accept, since I see the Chinese as being at least as good as Westerners, if not better. Saudis, to be blunt, I regard as barbarians with a vile culture who practice a false and wicked religion. But it’s not racist, since Middle Easterners are genetically closer to Europeans than East Asians are. (It’s more about culture and civilization than it is about race, for me at least)
The only “cost” to American Indians was adopting a more advanced culture and swearing total allegiance to that culture’s polity.
There were wars with Indians in the West, but an assimilated Native American with lots of European ancestry could travel through the West without encountering much trouble, if any.
The problem with the five civilized tribes is that they wanted to maintain their independence to some extent. Members of those tribes could easily renounce their tribal affiliation and become fully equal members of Southern society. Look up Greenwood Leflore. He was even friends with Jefferson Davis.
Tribal sovereignty should have been extinguished centuries ago.
If China defeated us so thoroughly that they could do that do us, they would have every moral right to do so. Would I be thrilled? No, but that doesn’t negate that it would be their right to do so.
I don’t think anyone can deny that the African-American people who settled Liberia were far more advanced, both culturally and technologically. Why should Stone Age tribesmen have the same rights as western settlers with a modern way of life? Keep in mind that some natives were able to integrate and assimilate into Americo-Liberian culture.
The European polities have survived, but the nations are dying. 1/4 of Germany’s population is people of foreign origin, and it’s only getting worse. It’s even worse in France and Sweden, and almost as bad in Britain and Ireland.
Just because European nations bled themselves dry fighting each other doesn’t mean they couldn’t have fought against third worlders. Look at the Boer War. The Boers were a Western people with weapons that were almost up to date. The Brits beat them in less than 3 years. How long do you think it would have taken European empires to beat illiterate tribesmen with primitive weaponry? I only bring up their illiteracy because illiteracy makes it much harder to plan complex military operations.
Neither white nor black Americans are native to this continent. Neither whites nor Bantus are native to South Africa. Whites are native to Europe and Bantus are native to Cameroon. Bantus are no more native to South Africa than Basques are native to Russia.
@Afrofem
Islam is a grave threat to European civilization. 1/4 of schoolchildren in France are Muslim, this bodes poorly for the French retaining their own homeland. No Muslim can ever be a real Westerner. (People of Islamic origin can if they completely renounce Islam)
The “global south” only has rights to any resources if they are able to defend said rights.
I don’t approve of American military adventures in the Middle East, precisely because it causes their people to flood into our nations.
No one deserves asylum unless they have some exceptional talent or great skill in a necessary field. It’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
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@ Paul Kruger
Thank you for your list of “genetic races.” What is your source for the list? Who are the geneticists who formulated this list?
“Mexicans are a mix of European and Amerindian”
Mexican is a nationality. Mexicans can be of any race or mixture of races, just like Americans.
“Honestly, ‘mixed Latin American’ should be its own category on censuses even though it’s not a genetic race, since they form a distinct group in society”
You may see them as one distinct group, but they come from many different countries and cultures, and some speak Portuguese rather than Spanish.
“and have a very distant history than recently multiracial people (i.e. someone with a Japanese grandpa and a Polish grandma).”
That’s a huge assumption on your part. There are “recently multiracial” people in Latin America just as there are “distantly multiracial” people in the USA.
Anyway, the federal census already has an option for people to identify as multiracial, and another option for them to identify as Hispanic. The data is already there.
“It’s okay for countries to invade each other. It’s not okay for me to invade my neighbor’s house, since we are part of the same society.”
Aren’t countries all part of the same world? Aren’t Mexico and Canada our neighbors?
Can you show me in modern international law where “right to conquest” is still recognized as a legitimate principle?
“If we were beaten by Saudis, that would be much harder for me to accept, since I see the Chinese as being at least as good as Westerners, if not better.”
Exactly the answer I expected. You picked the Chinese for your example because you can easily see yourself assimilating into Chinese culture and society.
But how often in history have the conquered been able to choose their invaders?
If you’re actually being honest in your previous statements about how you have no desire for defeated groups to maintain their way of life, including your own group, then it has to be true across the board. If defeated militarily by the Saudis, you would adapt to their way of life just as readily as if defeated by the Chinese.
“If China defeated us so thoroughly that they could do that do us, they would have every moral right to do so.”
And if Saudi Arabia defeated us so thoroughly, they would likewise have every moral right, by your own rationale.
I will say, though, that I’m not sure what system of morality you’re referring to when you say they would have “every moral right” to confine the vanquished White Americans to a reservation in the desert. Could you please identify it?
As far as the Native American discussion, I barely know where to begin. But let’s start by eliminating
“Native Americans with lots of European ancestry” from further consideration. Anyone who can pass for White is going to be treated as White. Their experiences tell us nothing about the amount of discrimination faced by an assimilated Native American of no European ancestry.
Here is one example:
(https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/06/us/chester-nez-dies-at-93-his-native-tongue-helped-to-win-a-war-of-words.html)
Please note in your reading that if Chester Nez and the other Indian children had fully assimilated, they would have grown up only knowing English. Which means there would have been no Navajo Code — the only code the Japanese did not manage to break, the code that was crucial to the success of the US military in the war.
Please note, too, what year it was when the state of New Mexico finally allowed Native Americans to vote.
“The problem with the five civilized tribes is that they wanted to maintain their independence to some extent.”
How were they any different from the Amish? The Five Civilized Tribes were not waging war against their White American neighbors. They had adapted many White American ways. They did want to hold onto their language, which was no different from many European American settlements during that era and is no different from the Amish now.
How was their forced removal anything but a land grab?
Greenwood Leflore was yet another mixed-race White-passing Native. He sold out the Choctaw just as Andrew Jackson wanted and was well rewarded for it. Leflore sent his tribe off onto the Trail of Tears, but he stayed behind in the South, where he bought himself a bunch of enslaved Blacks, profited immensely off his cotton plantation, and generally lived the rest of his life as a typical White slave owner.
I will give Leflore this much: he did negotiate a provision in the removal treaty that any Choctaw who declared their intention to become a US citizen to the federal Indian Agent could stay. Unfortunately for them, the agent assigned to the Choctaw refused to submit the paperwork, thereby effectively denying them the right to citizenship and ensuring their removal as the president desired.
“Tribal sovereignty should have been extinguished centuries ago.”
The Supreme Court has upheld it repeatedly. On what legal precepts do you base your disagreement with the Court’s rulings?
“I don’t think anyone can deny that the African-American people who settled Liberia were far more advanced, both culturally and technologically. Why should Stone Age tribesmen have the same rights as western settlers with a modern way of life?”
They were not Stone Age tribesmen. But even if they were, since when does someone’s right to liberty and autonomy rest on their level of cultural or technological development?
“Germany’s population is people of foreign origin”
True, the Germans originally came from out of Africa. That all used to be Neanderthal land.
“Just because European nations bled themselves dry fighting each other doesn’t mean they couldn’t have fought against third worlders.”
That wasn’t the only reason. To start with, the whole colonial enterprise pitted European nation against European nation in the Great Game. The entire point was to amass colonies that gave your own European country an edge over your European rivals. Why in the world would they help their rivals instead of trying to steal colonies away from them?
And then came the World Wars, and after that the Cold War, the partitioning of Germany, the Iron Curtain, etc. The Soviet Union wasn’t at all interested in helping Western Europe hold onto their overseas colonies, quite the opposite. Western Europe in fact had a good reason to fear being “colonized” themselves.
“How long do you think it would have taken European empires to beat illiterate tribesmen with primitive weaponry? I only bring up their illiteracy because illiteracy makes it much harder to plan complex military operations.”
The Vietnamese were illiterate? Who would have thunk it? They did a pretty good job of trouncing the USA with their spears and boomerangs.
But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the nations of Western Europe made that agreement at the end of WWII. And let’s say in 1949, when full-scale anti-colonial warfare broke out in French Indochina, France had called on the rest of the Western European nations to help put down the Viet Minh. And let’s say the combined might of Western Europe rained down fire on Hanoi.
The Soviet Union and China had already been supplying the Viet nationalists with weaponry and other military aid in their effort to overthrow French colonial rule. You think they would have just sat back and let the European imperial coalition rampage unimpeded? Especially China, in whose hemisphere this was happening?
You’re also forgetting that colonial subjects from all over the globe took part in both World Wars, especially the second. Quite a few “illiterate tribesmen” had spent years at the front, honing their skill with “primitive weaponry” like anti-aircraft guns.
“Neither white nor black Americans are native to this continent. Neither whites nor Bantus are native to South Africa.”
But the Bantus are native to the continent, and the Afrikaners aren’t.
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“Islam is a grave threat to European civilization.”
Still hilarious!
Anyone holding that opinion is either mentally tethered to the era of the Battle of Vienna in 1683 when the Ottoman Turks lost a decisive siege against Vienna, Austria…
OR
Is justifying the neocolonial plunder of Africa, Western Asia (ex: Iraq and Afghnistan) and Southeast Asia.
So-called “European Civilization” was not obliterated by Europeans swarming the globe and grabbing other people’s resources. Likewise, European countries and cultures will adapt and continue with the influences of African, Arab, and Asian migrants.
Personally, I call that just deserts or the punishment Europeans deserve for centuries of genocide, rape, ultra-grand larceny and major disruption of cultures that existed for millennia.
Europeans will have to adapt like the Inca of Peru, the Himba of Angola, the Karen of Myanmar and the Maori of New Zealand.
It’s called Karma.
Everyone deserves asylum. Asylum is not contingent on “talents or skill”, but simply on need alone. For Christians, asylum is part of the Golden Rule as in “do unto others…”
Rights of asylum are written into international and US federal law. Just because the USA is currently in rogue mode does not negate the rights of others to seek asylum.
“Might make right” arguments sound good to people with little knowledge of history. When you drill down into what happens to aggressive societies that live by might makes right, you find a pattern of aggression, expansion, inner neglect and corruption followed by collapse. The center does not hold.
That people repeat these patterns is a testament to human hubris and stupidity—“it won’t happen to us, we’re too great / smart/ strong.” And yet, the collapse inevitably occurs because of that old devil called ‘human nature’.
Fascinating and predictable.
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“Saudis, to be blunt, I regard as barbarians with a vile culture who practice a false and wicked religion”
You do know that Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all basically the same religion? They are all Abrahamic faiths based on the teachings of the patriarch Abraham in the Old Testament.
Christianity and Islam are regionalized versions of the same religion.
If Islam is “false and wicked”, then so is Judaism and Christianity.
Are they all “false and wicked”?
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@ Afrofem
And let’s not forget that modern European civilization as we know it would not exist without the STEM knowledge perserved and expanded upon during the Islamic Golden Age.
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@ Paul Kruger
Thinking more about this statement:
“It’s not okay for me to invade my neighbor’s house, since we are part of the same society.”
and this one:
“…black Americans building their own self-sustaining communities and achieving the self-determination they deserve”
Perhaps you can explain why repeatedly throughout US history, when Black Americans have been making strides in creating their own successful communities, White Americans have taken up arms against them?
Just two instances:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2021/05/31/in-memoriam-black-wall-street/
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2017/07/11/east-st-louis-riots/
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@ Solitaire
That’s a great point.
The Islamic Golden Age (750 to 1258 CE) was a time of preservation of ancient knowledge, exploration and invention. Agriculture, medicine, astronomy and mathematics all flourished during this period in the Islamic world.
And not just STEM knowledge. The Islamic world produced great strides in papermaking, literature, translation, book publishing and lending libraries.
I’ve read of the giant book market in Baghdad that lasted for hundreds of years, outlasting the Mongols and Ottomans and is now recovering from the American invasion in 2003.
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More on the Islamic Golden Age:
https://islamichistory.org/islamic-golden-age/
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“Two-thirds of the French troops who fought to free France from Nazi Germany in 1944 were in fact black, mainly from the Tirailleurs Senegalais.”
“Despite the name, most were not from Senegal. Many came from what is now Mali and Burkina Faso.”
“Many of the soldiers were Muslim.”
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/04/10/tirailleurs-senegalais/
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@Paul Kruger
I commend your commendation of my reference to the Krugerrand, although I dispute your characterization of your comments as not being a rant.
Your little joke about not being defeated by third worlders tells me all I need to know about you. This is the kind of nonsense that got the White population of St-Domingue decimated as Peter S. Chazotte’s memoir attest to.
The fact that the ANC tolerates Orania doesn’t speak well for them.
I have no sympathy for your kind of racial sentimentality. Orania is just a South African version of a sundown town in the USA.
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Paul, this is what awaited you if the third worlders had been totally set on defeating you: “From a distance, it looked like universal desolation. Our ruin was complete. One person hardly recognized the site of his own plantation, the other the plantation of a friend he sought in vain. What the fire had spared, hands even more destructive than the flames had reduced to dust. We felt as though we were marching on the ruins of the world. Sad playthings of fate, the plantation owners mixed in with the main body of the army dragged themselves along, lost in contemplation of their misery. . . no animal, no living creature interrupted the silence of these deserts, broken only by the rumbling of the cannon and the slow and measured pace of the troops. . . . Oh, what an abomination! Oh, inventive genius of cannibals! What did we see? White hands, from the wrist up, coming out of the ground, with the fingers pointing upward. We stood petrified. Did they belong to bodies buried here? Had parricidal hands torn them from living victims, these hands that I must have held in my own? Ah! No doubt they belonged to a father, a friend, a mother. They might just have signed the manumissions of some of these monsters. . . who had made killing a game. These whites had been torn apart! . . . Their suffering was over. . . Their shades hovered over our heads. . . . As I moved away from this theater of horror, the tempest howled through my very being, deeply, like a roaring torrent, something that shakes the fundament of things. At moments, full of rage, I formed only one vow: to measure myself against one of these man-eaters, and. . . to run the iron through his innards. At other moments, exhausted by the very violence of my sensations, I wished that a friendly bullet would pierce me, but that it would reach me slowly, so that. . . I could fully savor the end of such an existence. [25]”
Freud invented a name for this, it’s called a death wish.
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Authentic WW2 photo of illiterate East Indian pilots with their primitive bombers:
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From the above:
“While these colonial forces are often forgotten or overshadowed, they not only helped the Allied powers win their war, they also set in motion events that would eventually lead to some of the colonies’ independence.”
I don’t want to go over the fair use word count so I won’t quote more, but there are some very interesting details about India in particular.
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https://www.thenational.scot/news/18011064.uk-government-wrote-wwiis-british-african-soldiers-history/
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The role of people born in colonies was especially glaring in the case of the “Free French”. De Gaulle’s main support was French Equatorial Africa, led by a black man named Adolphe Sylvestre Félix Éboué the governor of that region. Frantz Fanon, from the colony of Martinique, enlisted to free France. Haiti, as a semi-colony of France contributed the services of Philippe Keiffer who founded the Fusiliers-Marins Commandos (“Marine Riflemen Commandos”), a/k/a the Bérets verts (“Green berets”). They were part of the invasion of France in 1944.
“Kieffer was portrayed by Christian Marquand in the film The Longest Day, in which the action against the fortified casino in Ouistreham is depicted.”
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