When I was born I was a baby straight from central casting and had the same bodily control as any others of my age. I was a 5 letter man in high school, received a football scholarship to college where I won 6 letters. I was a First Lieutenant in the Army (ours), married with 2 children, a manager in a Fortune500 company, retired early and started my own business, a professional speaker, and author of 4 books and 2 Blogs. I ran a Labrador Retriever rescue, and am now fully retired.
If someone were to describe me, would they say I'm the kind of person who poops in his pants? Would I be a jock, a military officer, a husband and father, corporate manager, entrepreneur, speaker, author, animal rescuer, or just some old guy who spends too much time on the Internet?
At some point in time, all of those were true. Who I am just depends where in my life you wanted to start my history.
The same is true with the United States. There is a certain element of our society who keeps trying to "fundamentally transform " our country because they believe, or they are at least trying to get the folks to believe, America was founded on the strategy of theft. We stole independence from the Blacks, and we stole land and life from the Indians therefore we were founded on the two legged stool of racism and genocide. So, we should feel guilty, spend our lives in a payback mode. (I guess some of that "stealing" may still be going on--redistribution of wealth?)
Let's think that "country founded by stealing" thing through.
Look at slavery. One of the most consistent activities in human history is slavery back to Egypt, Greece, Rome, West Africa and still exists around the world today. We must also remember that slaves were captured in Africa by Africans. Slavery was never personal; it was economics on both ends.
Columbus "discovered " America in 1492. the first boatload of slaves arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 so we were 127 years slave-free. If we start our history in 1500, we were slave-free. If we start in 1620, we were a slave nation. So, the US was a slave-owning country from 1619 until generally 1808 when the US Congress outlawed the African slave trade. But between 1774 and 1804 all of the northern states abolished slavery. So if we started history in what was to become Wisconsin in 1780, we were slave free; in Alabama, we were a slave nation.
How about history telling us who, Republicans or Democrats, were/are the African-American friendly party? In 1863 Lincoln (the first Republican) signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The 13th amendment passed in 1865, backed by Republicans, officially ended slavery in the US. About 1865, the end of the Civil War, the KKK sprung up around the South acting as a "strong arm" for many local Democratic politicians during Reconstruction who weren't too happy with Abe's decision. In 1880 the Jim Crow laws were enacted by Democrat legislators of the "Solid South" that legalized segregation of blacks and whites
Since slavery was a major sticking point in the Civil War which costs the lives of 620,00 young, mostly white men (40,000 black) one can imagine there were some lingering racism and discrimination issues. Those generation to generation feelings will eventually lead to the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s which with the 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act, 1965 Voting Rights Act and followed by the Equal Rights Amendment signed by a Democrat President (a higher percentage of Republican in Congress voted for these bills than did Democrats). These bills would achieve the greatest political and social gains for blacks since Reconstruction(1865-1877).
The civil rights bills were on the books but they did not sit well with the Democrat leadership in the south. In 1965 Democrat Governor George Wallace ordered his white supremacist, democrat commissioner of Public Safety, "Bull" Connor, while he was not busy covering for the KKK, to use fire hoses, police dogs and tear gas against peaceful civil rights demonstrators. These images were broadcast throughout the nation and are still shown today to demonstrate how racist our country was and why the blacks are victims and why they should be accorded special treatment today.
Getting back to my point. Where do you want to start our racist history? Back when there were no slaves? At the height of our slavery period? When Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation? When President Johnson signed the Civil Rights bills? When Governor George and his Bull beat the snot out of peaceful demonstrators or when we elected an African - American President? You can also use the same "starting-history when it's convenient," theory to argue which party is most race-friendly.
Some random thoughts on race.
-- Back in the heyday of slavery, slaves were not considered "human," or at least fully human, by the real believers. Slaves were considered closer to "equipment" needed to work the plantations. A racist is described as "a person who believes that a particular race is superior to another". If the slave owners saw their slaves as equipment, I doubt they would have considered their cotton gin a "race," therefore since the slave was equipment and not a race, the slave owner could not, by definition, be racist. A slave holder may then be ignorant, uncaring and coldhearted, but not a racist. So, I guess during those times we, as a county, were not racist.
--Our government seems to feel this obligation to the African-Americans and will allow behaviors we might not allow from other groups of people because we took them away from their families, brought them a long way from home and treated them dreadfully. Maybe we could consider the fact that over 390,000 white Northerners died in the Civil War that obtained their freedom. Might possibly the African-American community at least consider us even?
--A few of the more radical Blacks have demanded reparations. While none of those requesting blackmail were ever a slave, and unless they have a randy old Grandpa, their grandparents were also not slaves. I wonder if they understand that if their ancestors were not scooped up and brought here, they could today be inhabitants of Sudan? I personally believe any African-American feeling the need for reparation should, at the expense of the US tax payer, be given a first-class, one-way ticket (I believe it would be worth it) to West Africa and revoke his/her passport.
( As an aside, I read that the slave owners did all they could to make their slaves completely dependent on them. I'll let the readers do with that as they will.)
For a very detailed CHRONOLOGY OF SLAVERY AND FREEDOM IN AMERICA check out http://www.trans-video.net/~rwillisa/SlavtoFree.htm
Now, how about us being a damaged country because we stole the Indians' rightful land.
I'm trying to think of a country that wasn't founded at some point by force and conquest. The Indians roaming the plains of the soon to be the US were not born here. Research shows that most American Indians DNA places their origins in Asia, so they must have come here across the Bering Strait before the continents drifted apart and surprised whoever or whatever was here.
The Indians in the west then evolved into two groups; the "dominant" tribes (Sioux, Comanche, and Apache). and the not so dominant tribes ((Hopi and Pueblo). The dominant tribes got their land and possessions by defeating the smaller and weaker tribes. Theses tribes were either sedentary or hunting. Sedentary were mostly farmers. Hunters roamed, hunted and often "roamed" over the farmers' land and took it over for as long as they chose to stay. Apparently in Indian culture, possession was 9/10 of the law. So, when the white settlers came over, the same thing happened. We settled on seemly open land. Did we steal Indian land?
The Sioux claim the Black Hills was stolen from them by the US government reneging on a treaty, which I guess is legally true, but since the Sioux took the Black Hills from the Cheyenne, who did we really steal it from the Sioux or the Cheyenne? Where do we start history, with the Sioux or the Cheyenne? Also, could we really "steal" land from the Indians who always claimed that no one really owns the land, that land is common property? Can't you only steal something from somebody who legally owns whatever it is you have supposedly stolen? I don't think property rights were a big thing with the Indians at that time. Possession was their law.
So, America started out by doing what every other country and subgroup did, we used force, we had slaves and we occupied the land. So what? The question is what are we now?At what point in our history do we "jump in" to define us?
We have a government today that does not believe we deserve the status we currently enjoy in the world, a government that wants to fundamentally transform us, a government who collectively choke over the term, "American Exceptionalism." I would ask those who tend to feel that way to kindly stick the probe of history in another place.
No comments:
Post a Comment