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(Part 3)
Axis of Logic - Truthdig - Monday, Nov 5, 2018 (fair use)
American History for Truthdiggers:
"Whose Empire?"
By Maj. Danny Sjursen:
Truthdig editor’s note: The past is prologue. The stories we tell about ourselves and our forebears inform the sort of country we think we are and help determine public policy. As our current president promises to “Make America great again,” this moment is an appropriate time to reconsider our past, look back at various eras of United States history and re-evaluate America’s origins. When, exactly, were we “great”?
Below is the third installment of the “American History for Truthdiggers” series, a pull-no-punches appraisal of our shared, if flawed, past.
If Americans have heard of the Seven Years’ War—a truly global struggle—it is most certainly under the title “The French and Indian War” (1754-1763). Popular images of the conflict are likely to stem from the 1992 movie “The Last of the Mohicans,” starring Daniel Day-Lewis. When Americans think of this war at all, or discuss it in school, they generally situate the central theater of the conflict in the northeast of North America. Yes, the savage Indians and their deceitful French allies were beaten back along the wooded frontier, allowing pacific English—soon to be American—farmers to live in peace. Ending in 1763, and saddling Britain with debt, the French and Indian War is often remembered as but a prelude to a coming colonial revolt over excessive taxation. Perhaps it was, but not in a direct, linear sense. Nothing historical is preordained. Chance and contingency ensure as much.
In reality, though the fighting began in North America—western Pennsylvania to be exact—the American theater (just like the simultaneous campaigns in India) was often a sideshow to the main event unfolding in Europe. That was a global war, fought on several continents between Britain and Prussia on one side and France, Russia and Austria on the other. It’s important to remember that events in America—then and now—did not unfold in a vacuum but rather shaped and were shaped by global affairs. And, while it is true the American Revolution kicked off just a dozen years after the Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years’ War, nothing about the revolt was inevitable. In fact, in 1763, at the close of the French and Indian War, the vast majority of colonists saw themselves as Englishmen and Englishwomen, invested in and proud of their British Empire.
How to Kick Off a Global War
It started over land and money. The “Ohio Country,” just west of the Appalachian Mountains, covered much of what is today the state of Ohio, western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Rich in lumber, with fertile farmland and plentiful game, the Ohio Country presented a tempting find. Though mainly inhabited by native tribes, the region also just happened to sit on the contested border between France and Britain’s empires in North America.
Both sides (and, no doubt, the native inhabitants) coveted this land. The French saw the Ohio Country as a strategic buffer against the encroaching Brits, and to the Indians, well, it was home. The English settler population of the 13 Colonies was, however, rapidly expanding westward. The stage was set for conflict. All it took was the right spark. Count on the profit motive as a reliable catalyst.
A few decades earlier, some prominent Virginia families, including those of both the royal governor and a young militia officer named George Washington, established the Ohio Company of Virginia. This being a land speculation outfit at heart, the company’s investors hoped to claim land in the Ohio Country, buy it cheaply from the Crown and sell at a profit to westward-bound settlers. Buy low, sell high—enrich the already wealthy plantation families of Virginia—same old game!
So, when the time came to seize and hold the land in western Pennsylvania once and for all, guess who Robert Dinwiddie, lieutenant governor of Virginia—himself an Ohio Company investor—sent in? A young lieutenant colonel of the militia, George Washington. Washington took a militia company and some allied Mingo Indians and headed toward Fort Duquesne, a French installation near present-day Pittsburgh. The French command sent out from the fort a smaller party under Joseph de Jumonville, with strict orders to avoid a fight unless provoked.
What happened next is contested in the few existing accounts. The most credible sources agree that Washington’s force surrounded the French party and opened fire, killing several. Most surrendered, however, at which point Washington’s native counterpart, known as the “Half King” wielded a tomahawk to Jumonville’s head, killing the Frenchman. This was supposed to have been as much a diplomatic as a military mission, and no state of war had been declared. Washington’s choice to open fire was strategically and ethically questionable; however, his inability to control his native allies and the assassination of a prisoner must certainly constitute a war crime.
Early Setbacks, Stillborn Unity
Things didn’t go so well for the British early on. Despite exponentially outnumbering the military and settler population of New France, the Brits and their colonists suffered some disconcerting early defeats. Soon after the “Jumonville Affair,” the French dispatched hundreds of troops and allied natives to dislodge Washington’s force, which had built a ramshackle defense known as “Fort Necessity.” A military novice in his 20s, Washington placed his fort in an indefensible location and was forced to humiliatingly surrender.
Soon after, a large British column commanded by Gen. Edward Braddock was ambushed and nearly destroyed, and Braddock was killed. Washington, barely escaping several near misses, would experience his second consecutive defeat in battle. For the next few years, the British knew mostly defeat and the colonists suffered under brutal French and Indian raids up and down the western frontier.
As the settlers’ confidence deteriorated under the weight of defeats and frontier insecurity, some leaders began to argue for increased colonial unity as a desperate, defensive panacea. Representatives from the various colonies met in Albany, New York, to discuss the prospect of confederation. The result was disappointing. Although it is true that the first colloquial usage of the term “American” seems to have begun in this period, the diverse and fiercely independent colonies were—despite the vicious frontier attacks—not yet ready for unification. Little was settled, less was agreed to. Contrary to the deterministic interpretations of the French and Indian War as a prelude to the American Revolution, the fact is that individual colonial identities were far too strong and the threat from France and the Indians far too uneven to prompt any meaningful confederation.
Celebrating Empire
By 1759, the tide began to turn. The British, under the governmental leadership of William Pitt, changed strategy and responded to French onslaughts in clever ways. The British already had massive advantages in colonial manpower and naval power. Now, they began to follow the French lead and recruit their own Native American allies. The British bankrolled the Prussians under Frederick the Great to do the heavy lifting of ground battle on the European continent and shifted resources to the colonial theaters in India, the Caribbean and North America. The Brits also imposed an effective naval blockade on New France (roughly analogous to modern Canada) to cut off French reinforcements.
After Gen. James Wolfe (depicted in the painting at the top of this article) famously defeated the French on the Plains of Abraham outside Quebec, momentum clearly shifted to the British. Though this is indeed remembered as the seminal battle of the French and Indian War, one could just as plausibly argue the French actually lost Canada—and the Seven Years’ War—in a battle fought in modern Poland on the European continent. Such was the global, interconnected nature of warfare, even in the 18th century.
How, then, did the English colonists view themselves and define their identity in the wake of British victory? Were they indeed the unified Americans on the cusp of independence, as is so often remembered? Hardly.
Sometimes a painting, a period work of art, has much to impart to the observant historian. The artist who created “The Death of General Wolfe,” Benjamin West, was a colonist, an “American,” from Pennsylvania, in fact. West’s painting was a hit, paraded around the London Royal Academy after its completion. So what, exactly, did West hope to communicate with his famous painting? Pride. In victory and in empire. In the sky he depicts the light of British conquest overcoming the dark clouds of French rule in Canada. A Native American, clearly of a British-allied tribe, crouches in stereotypical dress and in the reflective pose of a truly “noble savage.” And, at center, there is the martyred Gen. Wolfe, held by his comrades in the ubiquitous Christ-like “lamentation” pose (see below) of so many famous Western religious depictions. Here was the new Christ, a general, a British general who sacrificed so America could be free (of the French and their native allies, that is).
West, the Pennsylvania colonist, memorialized the French and Indian War not as a prelude to independence but as a celebration of empire, British empire. At the close of this brutal, costly war (2.5 percent of the men of Boston had been killed), West and most other American colonists did indeed share a common identity of sorts: as proud Britons.
An Unhappy Peace: Conflicting Lessons, Divergent Expectations
Both the colonists and metropolitan Britons emerged from the long, vicious conflagration with contrasting expectations. As is so often the case, many of these desires ran at cross-purposes. The British imperial officials wanted, most of all, to consolidate their gains (France had ceded all of Canada and the Ohio Valley) and ensure stability.
“Peace will be as hard to make as war.”—William Pitt (1759)
Above all, this meant protecting the newly gained territory and separating English settlers from the native tribes west of the Appalachian Mountains. Toward the end of the war, a confederation of Ohio Country Indian tribes realized the French were losing and they would probably soon find themselves alone to check the expansionist Brits. The crisis of extended war and impending French defeat begot a spiritual awakening among the natives led by a holy man named Neolin.
Neolin’s call for native unity influenced an Ottawa war chief known as Pontiac to attack British forts up and down the frontier in a conflict that took his name, Pontiac’s Rebellion. Though the British eventually prevailed, they incurred heavy casualties, and the demonstration of native unity had spooked imperial officials. To avoid a repeat rebellion and preserve the status quo, the British announced the Proclamation Line of 1763, which ceded land west of the Appalachians to the Ohio Country tribes and forbade further settler expansion. They also hoped to raise funds from the (presumably grateful) colonists to help pay down Britain’s crippling war debts. That meant taxes—and taxes, eventually, meant discord.
None of that jibed with colonists’ expectations. They had started the war—for land, for expansion, for profit! How, then, could their British protectors deny them their destiny: ample farmland and security from native savages across the Appalachians. They, too, had fought in the key battles of the conflict, as militiamen alongside the British redcoats. Nor did most colonists expect to bear the burden of debt relief for the crown: Hadn’t they already borne the brunt of a war fought adjacent to their land and endured Indian raids on their homesteads? The stage, so to speak, was set for future confrontation.
The Real Losers: Dwindling Hope for Native Empowerment
If colonial and metropolitan Britons emerged from the war with divergent lessons and expectations, so too did the local native tribes. The Ohio Country, which the French had ceded without native permission, was the tribes’ home. Pontiac’s Rebellion demonstrated just how serious the Indian claims were. Nonetheless, unsurprisingly, the natives proved to be the war’s great victims.
For years, decades even, native tribes had counted on the imperial rivalries between British, French and Spanish claimants to North America as a way to divide, conquer and survive. Though the Indians were generally weaker than the great European empires, they had become adept at balancing between the differing poles of imperial power and played the part of spoiler in countless colonial wars. Now, with New France vanquished and the Spanish empire increasingly anemic, the native tribes could no longer rely on tried and true past strategies. They stood alone in the face of a powerful, populous and insatiably expansionist British Empire. Pontiac’s Rebellion was a desperate response to the new reality, but the more prescient chiefs could see the tragic writing on the wall.
Some Indians must no doubt have felt expendable as the French abandoned them to their fate. Could natives ever truly trust any Europeans? In the end, were these white men not all cut from the same cloth, as they arrogantly traded Indian land as spoils in a deadly imperial game?
Consider the above painting—also by colonist Benjamin West—in which a “civilized” British officer restrains his “savage” ally from killing their ostensibly common enemy. The message is instructive: Yes, the French were their foes, but both (European) sides at least adhered to common rules of gentlemanly warfare. View this painting out of context and it is far from obvious that the red- and white-clad Caucasians are actually enemies. Viewed through the lens of Benjamin West, it seems the real enemy of civilization is the “savage”—that anachronistic native who most certainly has no place in the North American future. Though many Native Americans surely couldn’t yet foresee it, they were already doomed. It was they, not the French, who had truly lost the Seven Years’ War!
* * *
In 1763, American colonists felt little sense of—the term was yet to be coined—common nationalism. Despite contemporary memories to the contrary, in the coming revolution against Britain the colonists hardly rebelled against the concept of empire itself. Rather, they desired a new, expansive American Empire, unhindered by London and stretching west over the Appalachians and deep into native lands. If the Seven Years’ or “French and Indian” War was the first conflict for North American empire, well, then, perhaps it helped set the stage for the second: the American War for Independence.
Of course, all attempts by historians—this author included—to periodize and categorize the past run the risk of determinism and distort the inherent contingency of events. Still, a fresh look at the French and Indian War raises profound questions about the course of early American history. It is, perhaps, appropriate to exchange the standard narrative of these events for something at once more accurate and, for many, more disturbing. Instead of a simple prelude to the coming revolution, couldn’t it be that the Seven Years’ War was itself a pivotal turning point in American history—the moment when the balance shifted and native power irreversibly waned? If so, it is long past time to replace the comforting American narrative of a transition from (British) empire to liberal republic with a more accurate and complex progression: from empire to revolution to a new, American empire. We live in it still.
Source URL
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_81846.shtml
Parts 1 & 2)
10/22/18 from Truthdig / Axis of Logic (under Fair Use; Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107)
"American History for Truthdiggers: Original Sin"
By Maj. Danny Sjursen:
(Truthdig editor’s note: The past is prologue. The stories we tell about ourselves and our forebears inform the sort of country we think we are and help determine public policy. As our current president promises to “Make America great again,” this moment is an appropriate time to reconsider our past, look back at various eras of United States history and re-evaluate America’s origins. When, exactly, were we “great”?
The “American History for Truthdiggers” series, which begins with the installment below, is a pull-no-punches appraisal of our shared, if flawed, past. The author of the series, Danny Sjursen, an active-duty major in the U.S. Army, served military tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and taught the nation’s checkered, often inspiring past when he was an assistant professor of history at West Point. His wartime experiences, his scholarship, his skill as a writer and his patriotism illuminate these Truthdig posts.)
PART ONE
American Slavery, American Freedom (Colonial Virginia 1607-1676)
Origins matter. Every nation-state has an origin myth, a comforting tale of trials, tribulations and triumphs that form the foundation of “imagined communities.” The United States of America—a self-proclaimed “indispensable nation”—is as prone to exaggerated origin myths as any society in human history. Most of us are familiar with the popular American origin story: Our forefathers, a collection of hardy, pious pioneers, escaped religious persecution in England and founded a “new world”—a shining beacon in a virgin land. Of course, that story, however flawed, refers to the Pilgrims, and Massachusetts, circa 1620. But that’s not the true starting point for English-speaking society in North America.
The first permanent colony was in Virginia, at Jamestown, beginning in 1607. Why, then, do our young students dress in black buckle-top hats and re-create Thanksgiving each year? Where is the commemoration of Jamestown and our earliest American forebears? The omission itself tells a story, that of a chosen, comforting narrative (the legend of the Pilgrims), and the whitewashing of a murkier past along the James River.
The truth is, the United States descends from both origins—Massachusetts and Virginia—and carries the legacy of each into the 21st century. So why do we focus on the Pilgrims and sideline Virginia? A fresh look may help explain.
The Age of ‘Discovery’
When it comes to history—like any story—the starting point is itself informative. I taught freshman history at West Point, a far more progressive and thoughtful school than many readers probably imagine. Nonetheless, with cadets required to take only one semester of U.S. history, we had just 40 lessons to illuminate the American past. So where to start? The official answer—as in so many standard history courses—was Jamestown, Virginia, 1607.
That, of course, is a fascinating, perhaps absurd, choice. Such a starting point omits several thousand years of Native American history, of varied, complex civilizations from modern Canada to Chile. Time being short and all, 1607 remains a common pedagogical starting point. As a result, from the beginning, our understanding of U.S. history is Eurocentric and narrow (covering only the last 400 or so years). Consider that Problem No. 1.
Next, contemplate the language we use to describe the “founding” of new European colonies. This is, say it with me, the “Age of Discovery.” In 1492, Columbus discovered (even though he wasn't first) America. Now, that’s a loaded term. Isn't it just as accurate to say that Native Americans discovered Columbus—a lost and confused soul—when he landed upon their shores?
When we say Europeans discovered the “New World,” we’re—not inadvertently—implying that there was nothing substantial going on in the Americas until the Caucasians showed up. Europe has a dated, chronological history, reaching back at least to the Greeks, which most students learn in elementary school and later on in Western Civilization classes. Not so for the Native Americans. Their public history starts in 1492, or, for Americans, in 1607. What came before, then, hardly matters.
Inauspicious Beginnings
Englishmen came neither to escape religious persecution nor to found a New Jerusalem. Not to Virginia, at least. No, the corporate-backed expedition—by the Virginia Joint Stock Company—sought treasure (think gold), to find a northwest passage to India, and balance the rival Catholic Spaniards. But, first and foremost, they pursued profit.
The expedition barely survived. That should come as little surprise. They chose a malarial swamp for a home. The first ships carried mostly aristocrats—“gentlemen,” as they were then labeled—with a few laborers and carpenters for good measure. Gentlemen didn't work or deal with the dirty business of farming and settling. But they did like to argue—and there were too many “chiefs” on this voyage. The first party did not include any farmers or women. Only 30 percent survived the first winter. Two years later, only 60 out of 500 colonists survived the “Starving Time.” Over the first 17 years, 6,000 people arrived, but only 1,200 were alive in 1624. One guy ate his wife.
So why the disaster? Why the poor site selection and early starvation? First off, the colonists chose a site inland on the James River because they feared detection by the more powerful Spanish. But mainly the disaster came down to colonial motivations. Jamestown was initially about profit, not settlement. Corporate dividends, not community. This was the private sector, not a permanent national venture. In that sense, matters in early Virginia were not unlike modern American economics.
Saved by Tobacco, the First Drug Economy
They never did find much gold, or, for that matter, a northwest passage. Then again, they didn't all starve to death. Rather, the venture was saved by a different sort of “gold”—the cash crop of tobacco. Tobacco changed the entire dynamic of colonization and control in North America. Finally, there was money to be made. The Englishmen shipped the newest vice eastward and pulled a handsome profit in return. Our beloved forefathers were early drug dealers. More migrants now crossed the Atlantic to get in on the tobacco windfall.
The plentiful “gentlemen” of Virginia sought to re-create their landed estates in England. Despite significant early conflict with the native Powhatan Confederacy, large tobacco plantations eventually developed along the coast. Who, though, would work these fields? Certainly not the landowners. The burgeoning aristocracy had two choices: lower-class English or Scots-Irish indentured servants (who worked for a fixed period in the promise of future acres) and African slaves. Whom to choose? Unsurprisingly, ethics played little role, and cost was the defining factor.
When mortality was high in the colony’s early years, plantation owners favored the cheaper indentured (mainly white) servants. But as more families planted corn, kept cattle and improved nutrition, death rates fell and slaves became more appealing. After all, though expensive in upfront costs, slaves worked for life, and the slave owners got to keep their offspring. Nevertheless, for the first several decades, an interracial mix of slaves and servants worked the land in Virginia.
Bacon’s Rebellion and the American Future
The problem with the tobacco economy was one of space. To be profitable, cash crops require expansive acreage, and in Virginia this meant movement inland. This expansion set the Englishmen on a collision course with local Native Americans. Furthermore, what was plantation society to do about those indentured servants who survived and matriculated? Land would have to be found somewhere. (Though not near the coasts and early settlements. The “gentlemen” weren't about to divide up their own large estates.) In order to maintain their chosen societal model—landed aristocracy—in which the wealthiest 10 percent possessed half the wealth and the bottom 60 percent held less than 10 percent of accumulated wealth, new land would have to be found further west—in “Indian territory.”
Thing is, after some bloody, early wars with the Powhatan, most “gentlemen” preferred a stable, secure status quo. (Not another war. That’d be bad for business.) However, falling tobacco prices, increased competition from nearby colonies and the relentless search by the former indentured class for more land brought frontier Virginians into conflict with an easy scapegoat: nearby Native Americans. Frustrated lower-class men—both white and black—rallied behind a young, discontented aristocrat, a firebrand named Nathaniel Bacon. Bacon led his interracial poor-people’s army in attacks on local Natives and, eventually, on Gov. William Berkeley and the establishment “gentlemen.” In 1675 and 1676, Bacon’s throng destroyed plantations and even burned Jamestown before Bacon died of disease (the “bloody fluxe”) and the rebellion petered out.
Bacon’s Rebellion was one of the foundational—and most misunderstood—events in American history. Here, a populist army savagely assaulted hated Native Americans and aristocrats alike. A mix of black and white former indentured servants demonstrated the fragility of Virginian society. The planter class was terrified. In order to avoid a repeat at all costs, the landed gentry made a devil’s bargain. To ensure stability, they realized they must co-opt some of the poor without ceding their own privileged status.
Enter America’s original sins: racism and white privilege. Plantation owners simply hired fewer indentured servants and became more reliant on (black) African chattel slaves for their labor force. The planters also threw a bone to the middling whites, lowering some taxes and allowing more political representation for white male Virginians.
The implications were as disturbing as they were enduring. White unity became the organizing principle of life in colonial Virginia. To be fair, poor whites lived difficult lives and always outnumbered their aristocratic betters. Nonetheless, these lower-class Caucasians benefited from the new, racialized social system. Pale skin became a badge of honor—life may not be optimal, but “at least we are white.” Black freemen became a thing of the past, and soon “blackness” became inseparably associated with slavery and the lowest of social classes. Black skin became a brand of slavery, and runaways could no longer blend into colonial society. Slaves were easily spotted by virtue of their color.
Bacon’s Rebellion linked land, labor and race together in nefarious ways. Land (ownership) remained the path to freedom. Labor remained essential to profiting from the land, and race came to define the relationship between land and labor. After 1676, a class-based system morphed into a race-based system of labor and social structure. The demand for African slaves rose and a triangular trade developed among North America, Africa and Europe. It seemed everyone benefited from slave labor—it became an Atlantic system. The American South had transformed from a society with slaves to a slave society. It would remain so for nearly two centuries. Race became a prevalent fact of life in the Americas—and still is, 342 years later.
There’s nothing simple about America’s origins, and it is well that this is so. In that way, the United States is like most other modern nation-states. Leaving behind exceptionalist rhetoric and exploring uncomfortable truths signify intellectual maturity. Should this country wish to move forward, be its best self and fulfill the dream of its finest rhetoric, then the citizenry must dispense with reassuring myths and grapple with inconvenient truths.
What, then, do Jamestown and early Virginia have to tell us in 2018? Perhaps this: American slavery arose alongside and intertwined with American freedom. Our society descends from a sinister original sin: the development of a race-based caste system along the banks of the James River. Race, class, labor and slavery were inextricably linked in our colonial past. They remain so today.
PART TWO
It is the image Americans are comfortable with. The first Thanksgiving. Struggling Pilgrims—our blessed forebears—saved by the generosity of kindly Native Americans. Two societies coexisting in harmony. If Colonial Virginia was a mess, well, certainly matters were better in Massachusetts. Here are origins all can be proud of.
Our children re-create the scene every November, and we watch them with pride through the lenses of our smartphones. But is this representation of life in Colonial New England an accurate portrait of Anglo-Native relations at Plymouth, or, for that matter, in the larger Massachusetts Bay Colony? Of course it isn't, but nonetheless the impression—the myth—persists. That’s a story unto itself.
Consider this: How many Americans even know there was a difference between Pilgrims and Puritans? The distinctions matter. The Pilgrims, of course, arrived first. Calvinists of humble origins, the Pilgrims were Protestant separatists who believed the mainstream Church of England was beyond saving. They fled England for the Netherlands in the early 17th century, and then, in 1620, about a hundred boarded the Mayflower to go to North America. It was they who landed on Plymouth Rock.
The far more numerous Puritans were also pious, dissenting Protestants, but they initially believed the Church of England could be reformed from within. They were generally wealthier, more prominent citizens. In about 1630, about 1,000 Puritans formed the first wave to settle the area claimed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They were, indeed, fleeing the persecution of King Charles I, but—unlike the Pilgrims—they received a royal charter for their colony. They hoped to found a “New Jerusalem” in the New World.
Stark Contrasts: Virginia vs. New England
These weren't the gold-hungry aristocrats of Colonial Virginia. The Puritans (and Pilgrims) came as families—they included women. The Massachusetts climate and natural population growth made for far lower mortality than that experienced at early Jamestown in Virginia. Everyone was willing to work, and the productive family units made, eventually, for bountiful harvests. This was not a land of “gentlemen” and cash crops, as in Virginia, but of dutiful families tilling the land.
The motivations and origins of the two English colonies affected the social structure of each. Differing goals set the tone from the first. Virginians sought to exploit the land, mine its resources, compete with the Spanish and turn a quick profit. Not so the Puritans. They strove to settle, to put down roots and thrive in an idealized community. Their middling origins combined with communal goals and resulted in familial plots with widespread land ownership—another contrast with the tobacco plantations of Jamestown. All this translated into a rough economic equality, at least in the early years. There was also a near total absence of chattel slavery: The climate didn't support the most common cash crops, and so there was little incentive to import Africans to New England.
God Wills It: The Motivations of the Puritans
It all sounds harmonious, idyllic even. Yet something lurked below the surface, something dark and unpleasant to modern eyes. These were fundamentalist zealots! These insufferable, millenarian Calvinists held themselves in shockingly high esteem. They were chosen, they would transform the world by their example. If the Pilgrims sought separation from a world of sin, the Puritans meant to create a New World, an example for all to emulate. It briefs well, and makes for an agreeable origin narrative, but isn't there something disturbing about such a people, about such overbearing confidence?
Ponder the words of John Winthrop, an early governor of the Bay Colony:
"… wee shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when he shall make us a praise and glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantations: the Lord make it like that of New England: for we must Consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us. …"
These were people on a mission, the Lord’s mission, come what may. Such people would seem to be on a collision course with the region’s natives and Anglo nonconformists. And this would soon come to pass.
The Puritans’ motivations and goals raise some salient questions. What does it say about, and what are the implications for, a society founded on such colossal self-regard? Is it, ultimately, a good thing? That’s certainly a matter of opinion, but the questions themselves are instructive. Americans must make such queries to get an honest sense of themselves and their origins. This much is hard to argue with: Here, in Massachusetts, we find the geneses of American exceptionalism—the blessing and curse that has shadowed the United States for more than three centuries, driving domestic and especially foreign policy. Divergent modern political figures, from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, stuck carefully to an American exceptionalist script, in rhetoric if not in deed. One wonders whether this “City on a Hill” milieu, on the whole, has been a positive attribute. This author, at least, tends to doubt it. Perhaps we should mistrust such pride, and conceit, in even its most American forms.
Stifling Dissent: Life in Colonial New England
Could you imagine living with these people, comporting with their way of life? It sounds like a nightmare. Yet we Americans hold these antecedents in high esteem. Perhaps it’s natural, but this much is certain: Such veneration requires a certain degree of willful forgetting, a whitewashing of inconvenient truths about Puritan society.
Sure, Massachusetts avoided the worst famines of Jamestown’s early years, but life in Colonial New England was far from serene. It rarely is in repressive religious societies. Remember, the Puritans constructed exactly what they said they would, a theocracy on the bay. The Massachusetts Bay Colony may indeed have more in common with modern Saudi Arabia—executing “witches” and “sorcerers”—than it does with contemporary Boston. Our ancestors were far more religious than most Americans can fathom. But there’s also a problem of framing; we’ve omitted the uncomfortable bits to fashion an uplifting origin narrative.
There were many subgroups that certainly didn’t enjoy life in early Colonial Massachusetts: religious dissidents, agnostics, free thinkers and, well, assertive women. We’ve all heard of the infamous Salem Witch Trials, but nearly four decades earlier the widow Ann Higgins was executed, hung for witchcraft, after having the audacity to complain that hired carpenters had overcharged her for a remodeling job on her house.
All told, 344 citizens were accused of witchcraft in 17th-century Massachusetts. Twenty were executed. The accused had commonalities that are indicative of the nature of gender relations in the Bay Colony. Seventy-five percent were women. Most of those women were middle-aged or older and demonstrated some degree of independence. Many were suspected of some sort of sexual impropriety. The point is that Colonial New England was inhabited by zealots—conformist and oppressive fundamentalists who strictly policed the boundaries of their exalted theocracy. Forget the Thanksgiving feast: This was Islamic State on the Atlantic!
If life was as idyllic as the settlers intended in hail-the-Protestant-work-ethic Massachusetts Bay, then why were so many colonial “heroes” kicked out? Roger Williams, for example, founder of Rhode Island, promoted religious toleration and some separation of church and state, and asserted (gasp) that settlers ought to buy land from the native inhabitants. His thanks? A ticket straight out of Massachusetts. Slightly less well known was Anne Hutchinson. She had the gall to organize weekly women’s meetings to discuss theology and even contemplated the concept of individual intuition as a path to salvation. She too was banished. There was simply no room for dissent in Puritan society.
‘We Must Burn Them’: Puritan and Native Relations
This, naturally, brings us to the native peoples of New England. If nonconformist Englishmen fared so poorly in Massachusetts, then what of the Indians? You can probably guess.
Once again, as in Virginia, the Native Americans did not, or could not, wipe out the nascent colonial community, even though, initially at least, there were fewer soldiers among the settlers in Massachusetts. The explanation for the settlers surviving among the native Americans is far more complex than the simple myth of the noble, benevolent savage. The Puritans were the “beneficiaries of catastrophe,” for New England native communities had recently been ravaged by infectious European diseases that spread up and down the coastline. The thinned-out native populations thus posed less of a demographic threat to Massachusetts.
Far from the serene images of Thanksgiving amity, Anglo-Indian relations quickly turned from bad to worse. Land was a factor, but not the only one. A permanent settler community such as the Puritans’ would require inevitable expansion and rapidly grow, to be sure. As in Virginia, land ownership cohered with “freedom”—Anglo land and Anglo freedom, that is. Still, in New England, ideology was as much of a stimulus for war as land, wealth or further economic motives. The native tribes, swarthy and “unbelieving” Pequot, Wampanoag, Naggaransetts and others, simply did not fit into the Puritan’s messianic worldview. Conquered or converted were the only acceptable states for local Indians.
Early colonial wars in Massachusetts were as brutal and bloody as wars anywhere else on the North American continent. Here there was a direct connection between the Puritan religion and the cruelty seen in the Pequot War and King Philip’s War. In the Pequot War, Massachusetts militiamen attacked a native fort at Mystic, Connecticut, and through fire and fury burned alive 400 to 700 Indians, mostly women and children. The survivors were sold as slaves.
The militia relied on allied native scouts. Observing the ruthlessness of the Puritan fighting men, one native auxiliary asked Capt. John Underhill, “Why should you be so furious? Should not Christians have more mercy and compassion?” Underhill’s reply was as instructive as it is disturbing:
"I would refer you to David where, when a people is grown to such a height of blood, and sin against God and man … sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents; some-time the case alters: but we will not dispute it now. We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceeding."
Should, from time to time, a tinge of doubt betray the Puritans’ devout certainty, faithful zeal quickly assuaged the guilty conscience. Consider the words of another participant in the “Mystic Massacre,” William Bradford: “It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire … and horrible was the stink … but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God.”
Nearly simultaneous to the Virginian Bacon’s Rebellion, the Puritans fought King Philip’s—or Metacom’s—War in Massachusetts. Mercilessly executed on both sides, this was a war of survival that forever broke native power and independence in New England. Nearly one in 50 colonists were killed in what was by far the bloodiest war in American history, with 11 times the death rate of World War II. The native leader Metacom, known to the settlers as King Philip, was betrayed by an informer and killed, and his head was displayed on a pole in Plymouth, Mass., for decades. Such was the savagery of colonial war that the tactics and symbolism bring to mind Islamic State in today’s Syrian civil war.
When it came to Native American affairs, the Puritans hardly set the “City on a Hill” example. Or did they? After all, John Winthrop believed the “God of Israel”—a jealous, smiting deity if ever there was one—was among the Puritans, guiding their every move. As noted here earlier, Winthrop claimed this God provided the colonists such strength that 10 of their number could “resist a thousand enemies.” Viciousness and intolerance toward racially distinct, heathen natives were actually at the heart of “City on a Hill” teleology from the start. What Americans now decry in the Greater Middle East is but an echo of their colonial past. That much is worth remembering.
Not So Different: What Virginians and New Englanders Shared
When considering the two origin-societies of Virginia and Massachusetts, the differences are stark and effortlessly leap forth. More difficult, but just as relevant, are their significant commonalities. For it is in the overlap that we find our shared heritage, that which is universal in the American past, and, perhaps, the past of all settler-colonial societies.
Anglo dominance—and arrogance—acutely pervaded both colonial civilizations. In Massachusetts, as in Virginia, conflict and brutality toward the native peoples were regular features of settler life. In each setting, though to differing extents, a fever for land combined with exceptionalist ideology to conquer slave and native alike. For Englishmen, property ownership corresponded with liberty, but all along the Eastern Seaboard, Anglo liberty portended native death and displacement.
If Colonial Virginian society was fundamentally based on white unity at the expense of African slaves, then perhaps Puritan Massachusetts was founded upon Anglo zealotry at the expense of a “savage” Indian “other.” As proud descendants—some of us literally, most figuratively—of these twin settler-colonial enterprises, Americans must grapple with their inconvenient past. Here there’s much work left to be done.
The exceptionalism and chauvinistic Protestantism of the Massachusetts Puritans long influenced the American experiment. From the “City on a Hill” it is but a short journey to Manifest Destiny and the conquest of a continent—native inhabitants be damned!
Again, origins, and origin stories, matter. They inform who we were, and who we are, in stark contrast to who we’d like to think we were and are. America is its best self when it searches its soul and reforms from within. When, that is, it confronts its demons and seeks a better, more inclusive and empathetic future.
ttp://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_81676.shtml
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/jacobin-fueling-lies-syria/
Teaching Tolerance Issue 56, Summer 2017 - Feature (fair use)
"Walking Undocumented
Wildin Acosta will walk across the graduation stage in June—but he almost didn't make it. Read about his incredible journey and the team of student journalists and teachers who helped make it happen."
By Bryan Christopher:
In January 2016, 19-year-old Wildin Acosta hurried out of his family's apartment on his way to what he thought would be a typical day at Riverside High School in Durham, North Carolina. Backpack in hand, the senior drew up short when he encountered a sight he prayed he'd never see: six plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers waiting for him with a deportation order.
Wildin's father, Hector, watched helplessly as his son was cuffed and taken away.
It was an easy catch for ICE. Wildin is an undocumented immigrant who lives out of the shadows so that he can pursue his education. But the process of deporting Wildin wouldn't be so easy. A personable, athletic young man, he was well regarded by friends, classmates and teachers at Riverside. Even as the wheels were set in motion to send him back to a life-threatening situation in Honduras, allies Wildin didn't even know had started joining forces to fight for his freedom.
The Journey
Wildin's journey began in 2014 in the town of Silca in Olancho, Honduras. He was preaching the gospel in a park when members of Barrio 18, a violent gang, threatened to kill him unless he joined their crew.
Wildin knew better than to wait for the gang's second warning. By his own account, he set out on foot through Guatemala and, within days, had bribed his way into Mexico. He then rode buses to the Texas border, where Mexican border officials took what money he had left and allowed him to cross. On the U.S. side, he turned himself in to immigration officials, a refugee seeking asylum. He spent eight days in custody at an ICE facility before being released to join his family in North Carolina, where his parents had been living—also undocumented—since he was a small boy.
Wildin spoke little English but soon settled in and began to thrive at Riverside High School. He made friends quickly, joined clubs and played on community soccer teams. He was on track to graduate in June 2016. "What stood out to me the most was his drive," says Spanish teacher Ellen Holmes, whose club Destino Success included students who tutored Wildin. "He was a good student, balanced a part-time job, soccer and clubs, and was really involved at home in addition to the everyday issues that undocumented students face."
The ultimate issue came calling that chilly January morning. Instead of showing up for another day at school, Wildin found himself at Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia. His deportation back to Honduras seemed like a done deal. "I asked myself one question," Wildin recalls about his time at Stewart. "We all asked ourselves the same question: 'Why me? Why me and not someone else?'" He was alone, lacking legal representation and facing a potential death sentence once he stepped off the plane in Olancho.
Except that Wildin wasn't alone.
The Wildin Team
When news of Wildin's arrest reached school, it fell heavily on his friends and teachers alike. It also deeply disturbed four journalism students: Juliana Rodriguez, Olga Bonifacio, Aldair Corrales and Maggie Johnson*. As they followed the threads of the story, they learned that Wildin was a second-semester senior, a dedicated student and a good guy with a clean record. They saw their own fears reflected as well; three of the four are also undocumented immigrants. These three are recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and know the anxiety of living in households with mixed-immigration status.
"I had so many friends who are immigrants," says Maggie, who is a native-born citizen, now a first- year student at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina. "I saw how they were already having struggles in the communities. I realized that it wasn't only Wildin being detained. It could be my friends, too."
Galvanized by the injustice of Wildin's situation, the four students decided to take action. They reached out to attorneys, community organizations and local officials—anyone who could shine a light on Wildin's predicament. They started raising local awareness via social media using hashtags like #FreeWildin and #educationnotdeportation.
Many Riverside teachers took up the cause, too. They had witnessed the chilling effects of ICE raids on their students: increased anxiety and lower attendance rates as undocumented students grew more fearful that they would be deported or come home from school to find their families gone. Some educators reported their observations to Durham's Human Relations Commission. With the support of the city council and mayor, the committee asked federal officials to stop detaining and deporting the city's young people.
Citing the right of all students for equal access to public education regardless of immigration status, Durham's school board passed a resolution one week later asking ICE to suspend its actions in the community and release detained youths to their families. Wildin's arrest had become a rallying point for an alliance ready to fight for all of Durham's undocumented young people.
"It opened up a dialogue about students who are here but can't work or have received final orders of deportation and how scary that is," says science teacher Mika Twietmeyer. "I was worried for Wildin specifically, but the more I learned about the issue, the more concerning it became."
Keeping Up the Pressure
The voices for Wildin Acosta's release were growing louder, but not everyone supported the cause. Despite the school board's actions, Riverside High School itself did not make formal statements about Wildin or his case, and media were not allowed on campus. Teachers describe a sense that not all administrators had much sympathy for Wildin's circumstances.
"Many people were like, 'This isn't worth it...there's no point,'" says Juliana, one of the student members of the Wildin team. "They had this view of Wildin as a criminal and they didn't understand why we were fighting for him."
Undeterred by skepticism within the school community, Juliana, Aldair, Olga and Maggie kept the pressure on, continually asking, "Why can't Wildin graduate?" to anyone who would listen. They collected petition signatures throughout the district, organized public rallies and shared photos and videos through the social media campaigns they created. They even designed and handed out white wristbands as symbols of commitment to Wildin's cause.
"The kids did a great job reiterating that this was an education issue because his right to an education was being restricted."
Eventually, U.S. Representative G.K. Butterfield took notice. "Wildin's story is very powerful," says Butterfield. "It takes a story like Wildin's where a child—I want to emphasize the fact that he was a child—travels thousands of miles through several countries risking his life because the violence in his home country has become too great."
The Road to Washington
With 12 weeks to go in their high school careers, Olga, Aldair and Maggie—as well as Juliana, a junior—were consumed by Wildin's case, even as some of their classmates were losing focus. The week before Wildin's March 20 deportation date, Maggie asked for an extension on her schoolwork so she could submit a guest column to local papers calling for Wildin's release. Olga even missed class when the group traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with members of the U.S. Department of Education to discuss the academic consequences of federal immigration raids.
As March wore on, the students were generating more media coverage than ever, but time was running out. Thirty-six hours before Wildin was scheduled to be deported, activists made one last plea to Washington late on a Friday night.
"We rallied downtown, in front of Butterfield's office," says Maggie. "We had his representatives on the phone, but no decision had been made yet about Wildin's scheduled deportation."
Finally, with Butterfield's urging, then-ICE director Sarah Saldaña delayed Wildin's deportation. One day later the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) agreed to reopen the case.
Their deadline extended, the four students met Butterfield in person when he visited Riverside in early April. Then, in May, Ellen Holmes took them to D.C. to speak to Secretary of Education John King Jr., to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to brief Congress and to meet the press.
Secretary King was familiar with Wildin's case and wanted to hear the students' perspective, but the meeting was tense. Representatives from the National Education Association and the National Immigration Project accompanied the Riverside contingent, but none of them had been told that DHS officials would also be in attendance. And, despite their best efforts to make a case for why Wildin should graduate, the students were not able to persuade King.
"The kids did a great job reiterating that this was an education issue because his right to an education was being restricted," Holmes says. "Secretary King disagreed and said we need immigration reform, but the kids kept defending the fact that Wildin deserved the right to an education."
The students walked away disappointed, but the adults were so impressed that they let them lead when speaking to the media and elected officials the next day.
"No one told us what to say or gave us guidelines when we briefed Congress," says Juliana. "For us to get to that point, we needed to have that moment with Secretary King to push us."
The Home Stretch
Juliana, Olga, Aldair and Maggie returned to Durham, and the three seniors took their final exams and prepared for graduation. It was June 2016, and Wildin was entering his fifth month at Stewart. It became clear that he would not earn his final three credits or walk with his class.
“When we realized he wouldn’t graduate, it was really hard to look back at all the work we’d done,” says Maggie. “I feared everything had been done for nothing and we hadn’t made an impact.”
Wildin’s mother, Dilsia Acosta, was a guest of honor at the ceremony. Aldair, the class president, gave a speech about Wildin’s journey, his current circumstances and the work still to be done. Hundreds of students wore the white wristbands, took photos and posted their support for Wildin on social media.
But the end of school didn’t mean the end of the road for Team Wildin. In July, two of his teachers visited him at Stewart Detention Center. By then, Wildin had been in custody for six months. He knew there were friends and advocates working on his behalf, but his time at Stewart was taking a physical and emotional toll.
“He looked at me and said things were not good,” Twietmeyer says. Sleep was difficult in the overcrowded facility, and there were worms in the food. Wildin disclosed that he had been placed in solitary confinement for translating letters for a fellow prisoner. One of his darkest moments, Wildin later said, was when he asked a guard when he might be free. “I don’t know why you’re here,” replied the guard. “I’ve seen your record.”
Finally, on July 19, the BIA reopened Wildin’s case. Three weeks later he was released on $10,000 bond, raised in just two days by the people of Durham in an effort led by the local organization Alerta Migratoria NC.
Wildin returned home on August 12 and, after two weeks of recovery, held a press conference. He recounted his experiences since leaving Honduras and vowed to help other undocumented students and families, especially his fellow detainees at Stewart. “If I can be a voice for my community, I will,” he said.
The Journey Continues
Wildin returned to Riverside the day after his press conference, stayed out of the spotlight and worked hard to pass his three remaining classes. He kept in touch with his former teachers and got to know some of the students who had advocated for him. Although his credits are now complete, he will walk at commencement in June 2017, and plans to enroll in community college and study engineering.
“Every time I saw him, he’d give me a hug and say, ‘Thanks for all you do and all you did,’” says Juliana. “Every single time.”
Wildin has also made good on his promise to help others. After the November election he spoke to a group of parents and teachers at a Durham elementary school about ways to support undocumented students, and he participated in rallies protesting the Trump administration’s immigration policies. In February he shared his story at a Riverside community forum. He again thanked the people who advocated for his release and urged the audience to make schools safer for all families.“I am a refugee. I am an immigrant,” he said. “It is because of your work that I’ve graduated.”
Riverside’s teachers and students have also become leaders. As new reports of security checkpoints and ICE raids emerge, teachers throughout the state are turning to them for advice.
“We’re focusing on rapid response,” says Holmes, who helped revise school board policies to strengthen students’ due process rights. “Knowing your rights, power of attorney, signing over guardianship and making sure families have emergency plans in place.”
As the fight continues for students caught at the crossroads of immigration and education, everyone looks forward to graduation. But Wildin’s own journey isn’t over; he still faces the threat of deportation while he awaits his August appeal trial. And immigrant families remain anxious about the uptick in ICE raids and the security of their families.
But on June 13, everyone will celebrate.
“Wildin is a success story that came out of our school and district,” says Holmes. “He represents what we would do for all of our students.”
“I picture Wildin sitting among us,” said Juliana, who will attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the fall. “Someone talking about his experience. Everyone standing up and clapping for him. It’s something he deserves.”
* Names have been changed to protect the identities of the students.
Strategies for Successful Advocacy
Build credibility.
Know the facts, answer questions concisely and articulate how and why the issue affects your school and community. Share information through several communication channels. “Accurate information was really important,” says Maggie Johnson. “Kids were saying many different things and needed to know if our campaign was trustworthy. We didn’t want to portray a false image of what was going on.”
Find a rallying cry.
Pushing for policy changes, especially immigration reform, can be complicated. Find an angle that encourages others to advocate for a specific cause and outcome. Riverside students and teachers used “Why can’t Wildin graduate?” because it localized the issue and made their own perspectives more valuable.
Extend your reach.
Make your work visible through social media campaigns, customized clothing and posters. Foster relationships with other schools and community organizations. Riverside’s campaign took flight when advocates joined forces with other schools, education groups and community organizations like Alerta Migratoria NC.
Keep pushing.
There is nothing “slow and steady” about advocacy work. Progress will come very quickly at times, then not at all for days or weeks. Keep in touch with elected officials. Seek media coverage when necessary and always plan for the next step.
https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/summer-2017/walking-undocumented
Teaching Tolerance Issue 53, Summer 2016 - Feature (fair use)
"Why Talk About Whiteness?
We can't talk about racism without it."
By Emily Chiariello:
Editor’s note: The author of “Why Talk About Whiteness?” is a white anti-bias educator. While the material in this story is relevant to all readers, many of the challenges the author poses are directed at white readers, hence the use of “we” and “us” in certain places.
“I don’t think I’ve ever come across anything that has made me aware of my race. I don’t believe there is any benefit of anybody’s particular race or color. I feel like I’ve accomplished what I’ve accomplished in life because of the person I am, not because of the color of my skin.”
These are the observations of a white female participant in The Whiteness Project, Part I, an interactive web-based collection of voices and reflections of Americans from diverse walks of life who identify as white. Her statement illustrates why educators, activists and allies doing racial justice work are increasingly focused on the importance of examining whiteness: It’s impossible to see the privilege and dominance associated with white racial identity without acknowledging that whiteness is a racial identity.
This fundamental disconnect between the racial self-perceptions of many white people and the realities of racism was part of what motivated documentary filmmaker, director and producer Whitney Dow to create The Whiteness Project. “Until you can recognize that you are living a racialized life and you’re having racialized experiences every moment of every day, you can’t actually engage people of other races around the idea of justice,” Dow explains. “Until you get to the thing that’s primary, you can’t really attack racism.”
Dow’s work, among other activism and scholarship focused on whiteness, has the potential to stimulate meaningful conversations about whiteness and move white folks past emotions like defensiveness, denial, guilt and shame (emotions that do nothing to improve conditions for people of color) and toward a place of self-empowerment and social responsibility.
Whiteness, History and Culture
Why does whiteness fly beneath the race radar? The normalization of whiteness and the impenetrable ways it protects itself are cornerstones of the way institutions function in the United States. In a 2015 interview, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Junot Díaz said of the United States, “We live in a society where default whiteness goes unremarked—no one ever asks it for its passport.”
This poses a challenge for educators committed to racial justice. We know it’s important to make space in our classrooms to explore students’ cultures and identities, but when it comes to white students, many are left with questions about how to talk about group membership and cultural belonging. These questions stem in part from the fact that, while it’s true whiteness is seen as a social default, it is not true that whiteness is the absence of race or culture. As one male participant in The Whiteness Project puts it, “As a white person, I wish I had that feeling of being a part of something for being white, but I don’t.”
One place to start is by acknowledging that generations of European immigration to the United States means that our country is home to the most diverse white population anywhere in the world. Differences between Jewish, Irish, Italian, Greek, Polish or German culture matter—a lot—to those who identify as ethnic whites. Part of “seeing” whiteness includes caring about these rich histories and complicating our discussions of race by asking questions about the intersection of ethnicity and race.
In her work on white racial identity development, diversity expert Rita Hardiman explains that, as white people become more conscious of whiteness and its meaning, we may simultaneously struggle with two aspects of identity: internalized dominance and the search for cultural belonging. The search for culture draws some white people to multiculturalism and appreciation of other cultures and heritages. Others find roots outside the container of race, woven into proud family histories. A small minority cling violently to their white cultural identity, sometimes with tragic consequences. (In any case, it is important to note that the ability to trace one’s genealogy is an inherited privilege not enjoyed by most African Americans, the majority of whom are descendants of enslaved people.)
Reconciling the meaning of white culture can be complicated by the fact that being white has not always meant what it means now. Whiteness—like all racial categories—is a social construct: Its meaning is culturally and historically contextual. The physical characteristics we now associate with whiteness have been artificially linked to power and privilege for the purpose of maintaining an unjust social hierarchy.
Attorney, scholar and anti-racist educator Jacqueline Battalora of Saint Xavier University studies the legal and historical construction of whiteness in the United States, what she calls the “invention of white people.” In her book Birth of a White Nation, she shows that white people didn’t exist—even as a label, much less as a race—until the end of the 17th century when the elite class enacted anti-miscegenation laws and other laws designed to keep black and white workers separate, both efforts to, in part, divide and control an increasingly ethnically diverse labor force. As students enter middle and high school, teaching about this history and about the concept of racial construction is another way educators can bring discussion about whiteness—and its relationship to racial justice—into the classroom.
Scholars Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow) and Jacqueline Battalora (Birth of a White Nation) both name Bacon’s Rebellion as a pivotal event in the historical construction of whiteness in the United States. During the rebellion, disgruntled white settlers, indentured servants and enslaved Africans joined forces to resist the ruling class and local Indian tribes. Their actions worried elites and led them to enact a more rigid racial class system. Read more about Bacon’s Rebellion here.
Got Privilege? Now What?
In 1988, anti-bias educator Peggy McIntosh published her now-classic essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” In it, she describes the phenomenon of white privilege as a collection of “unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was meant to remain oblivious.”
McIntosh’s essay launched the term white privilege into wider academic and activist circles (where the essay is still widely read), but recently the term has gained a mainstream audience. Examples include #OscarsSoWhite, Latina college student Thalia Anguiano asking Hillary Clinton for examples of her white privilege and Jon Stewart challenging Bill O’Reilly to defend why he believes white privilege doesn’t exist. White rapper Macklemore mused about Black Lives Matter in his nine-minute song “White Privilege II,” in which he asks, “Is it my place to give my two cents?
Or should I stand on the side and shut my mouth?”
While these examples are positive in that they make whiteness and white privilege more visible, popular discussions of white privilege can also prompt backlash.
“I think it’s very hard in a culture that’s built around this myth of the individual American who makes their own way, to say, ‘Well, you actually have a built-in inherited advantage,’” Dow points out. “We view ourselves as just people, but that this country was founded on racist white supremacist principles is undeniable. I think people feel implicated because there’s a cognitive dissonance built into how Americans view themselves.”
But even if white students are able to overcome this dissonance and acknowledge their privilege, is that enough? Recognizing white privilege is a necessary but insufficient means for confronting racism and increasing opportunities for people of color. In fact, acknowledging white privilege but taking no initiative to own it or address it can be harmful and counterproductive. Molly Tansey, a member of the Young Teachers Collective and co-author of “Teaching While White,” says, “Early on in doing this work, I was definitely driven by the self-satisfaction.” She talks about the need white people sometimes have to make their non-racism visible, giving the example of someone who takes a “selfie” at a protest to post on Facebook.
We haven’t acknowledged our white privilege if we’re only talking about it with people of color—who are already well aware of white privilege. White allies need to talk to other white people who may not see their privilege. Though it’s less comfortable, Tansey says, naming whiteness and its privileges among white friends, family and colleagues is where the real work needs to be done.
We’re also not adequately engaging the concept of white privilege if we leave intersectionality out of the conversation; doing so has the potential to render other identities invisible and obscures how multiple systems of oppression work. Blogger Gina Crosley-Corcoran made this point in her blog “Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person,” in which she describes the difficult process of identifying with her white privilege because of her low-income upbringing. The same could be true for any white person who has a disability, doesn’t speak English, is undocumented or LGBT—or any combination of the above. Intersectionality does not erase white privilege, but may affect a person’s experience of privilege.
Acknowledging white privilege must be followed with anti-racist action. As scholar Fredrik deBoer argued in a January 2016 article for The Washington Post, “Disclaiming white privilege doesn’t lower African Americans’ inordinately high unemployment rate or increase educational opportunities for children of first-generation immigrants. The alternative is simpler, but harder: to define racism in terms of actions, and to resolve to act in a way that is contrary to racism.”
Affirming a Positive White Identity
Making whiteness visible, understanding the diversity and history of whiteness, and going beyond white privilege can help educators and students alike find positive answers to the question: What does it mean to be white? For Melissa Katz, who authored “Teaching While White” with Tansey and is also part of the Young Teachers Collective, the answer is central to her self-realization as a white woman and as a teacher committed to social justice.
“The positive sense of whiteness is knowing that you’re working towards something bigger,” she says. “By examining your whiteness and by working to dismantle [racist] institutions, you’re working towards equity.”
For Dow, exploring whiteness—and inviting others to do the same—was transformative. “I could impact the paradigm because I actually was an active component. I didn’t have to do something outside,” he says. “I could do something inside and that would change things. It kind of eliminated guilt for me. It made me feel incredibly empowered and really enriched my world.”
Anti-racist Understandings for Educators
Get fired up about racial injustice! Recognizing that “a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” is the foundation of white allyship. Use these understandings to help you and your students face what can be highly emotional and, at times, uncomfortable work.
Colorblindness denies students’ full identities.
By saying “I don’t see race” to indicate we don’t hold racial biases about our students, we’re essentially saying to people of color, “I don’t see you.” Colorblindness upholds the dominant framework of whiteness and invalidates the racial identities and lived experiences of people of color.
Speak out, but also look in.
It’s critical that white allies respond to racial prejudice, bias and stereotypes in our everyday lives. It takes practice and sometimes comes with risk. But pointing to other people’s white privilege, without (or instead of) looking at our own, is a distraction from true anti-racist action.
Avoid white noise and white silence.
It’s important to listen when people of color talk about their experiences with oppression and not to dominate conversations about race. But opting out altogether can be just as harmful. “The racial status quo is not neutral; it is racist,” DiAngelo says. “Remaining silent when given the opportunity to discuss race supports the status quo.”
Take responsibility for educating yourself about racism.
It makes sense to assume that someone who has experienced racism will have a better understanding of it than someone who has not. But when white educators expect students or colleagues of color to teach them about racism, it raises a number of problems, not least of which is people of color doing white people’s work for them.
Be down, but stay white.
75 percent of white Americans say they come in contact with “a few” or “no” black people on a regular basis—a startling fact about race relations. Living an integrated life builds cross-cultural connection and fosters empathy. Over-familiarizing with people of color—“I hang out with people of color, so I’m not racist”—reduces race to a lifestyle choice and can offer an easy way out of difficult anti-racism work. Appreciating a diverse group of friends or colleagues does not take the place of confronting white privilege, addressing internalized white guilt or responding to the biases of other white people.
Don’t take it personally—it’s not about you!
White people have come to expect a level of racial comfort. When that expectation is met with racial stress, DiAngelo explains the result can be White Fragility: “White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium.”
These understandings were drawn from the work of Robin DiAngelo (What Does It Mean to Be White? Developing White Racial Literacy), Heather Hackman (Everyday White People Confront Racial and Social Injustice: 15 Stories) and Jennifer Seibel Trainor (“My Ancestors Didn’t Own Slaves: Understanding White Talk about Race”).
Bring The Whiteness Project to your classroom with this activity.
Toolkit
https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/summer-2016/why-talk-about-whiteness
Teaching Tolerance Issue 60, Fall 2018 - Feature (fair use)
"What Is White Privilege, Really?
Recognizing white privilege begins with truly understanding the term itself."
By Cory Collins:
Today, white privilege is often described through the lens of Peggy McIntosh’s groundbreaking essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” Originally published in 1988, the essay helps readers recognize white privilege by making its effects personal and tangible. For many, white privilege was an invisible force that white people needed to recognize. It was being able to walk into a store and find that the main displays of shampoo and panty hose were catered toward your hair type and skin tone. It was being able to turn on the television and see people of your race widely represented. It was being able to move through life without being racially profiled or unfairly stereotyped. All true.
This idea of white privilege as unseen, unconscious advantages took hold. It became easy for people to interpret McIntosh’s version of white privilege—fairly or not—as mostly a matter of cosmetics and inconvenience.
Those interpretations overshadow the origins of white privilege, as well as its present-day ability to influence systemic decisions. They overshadow the fact that white privilege is both a legacy and a cause of racism. And they overshadow the words of many people of color, who for decades recognized white privilege as the result of conscious acts and refused to separate it from historic inequities.
In short, we’ve forgotten what white privilege really means—which is all of this, all at once. And if we stand behind the belief that recognizing white privilege is integral to the anti-bias work of white educators, we must offer a broader recognition.
A recognition that does not silence the voices of those most affected by white privilege; a recognition that does not ignore where it comes from and why it has staying power.
Racism vs. White Privilege
Having white privilege and recognizing it is not racist. But white privilege exists because of historic, enduring racism and biases. Therefore, defining white privilege also requires finding working definitions of racism and bias.
So, what is racism? One helpful definition comes from Matthew Clair and Jeffrey S. Denis’s “Sociology on Racism.” They define racism as “individual- and group-level processes and structures that are implicated in the reproduction of racial inequality.” Systemic racism happens when these structures or processes are carried out by groups with power, such as governments, businesses or schools. Racism differs from bias, which is a conscious or unconscious prejudice against an individual or group based on their identity.
Basically, racial bias is a belief. Racism is what happens when that belief translates into action. For example, a person might unconsciously or consciously believe that people of color are more likely to commit crime or be dangerous. That’s a bias. A person might become anxious if they perceive a black person is angry. That stems from a bias. These biases can become racism through a number of actions ranging in severity, and ranging from individual- to group-level responses:
Both racism and bias rely on what sociologists call racialization. This is the grouping of people based on perceived physical differences, such as skin tone. This arbitrary grouping of people, historically, fueled biases and became a tool for justifying the cruel treatment and discrimination of non-white people. Colonialism, slavery and Jim Crow laws were all sold with junk science and propaganda that claimed people of a certain “race” were fundamentally different from those of another—and they should be treated accordingly. And while not all white people participated directly in this mistreatment, their learned biases and their safety from such treatment led many to commit one of those most powerful actions: silence.
And just like that, the trauma, displacement, cruel treatment and discrimination of people of color, inevitably, gave birth to white privilege.
So, What Is White Privilege?
White privilege is—perhaps most notably in this era of uncivil discourse—a concept that has fallen victim to its own connotations. The two-word term packs a double whammy that inspires pushback. 1) The word white creates discomfort among those who are not used to being defined or described by their race. And 2) the word privilege, especially for poor and rural white people, sounds like a word that doesn’t belong to them—like a word that suggests they have never struggled.
This defensiveness derails the conversation, which means, unfortunately, that defining white privilege must often begin with defining what it’s not. Otherwise, only the choir listens; the people you actually want to reach check out. White privilege is not the suggestion that white people have never struggled. Many white people do not enjoy the privileges that come with relative affluence, such as food security. Many do not experience the privileges that come with access, such as nearby hospitals.
And white privilege is not the assumption that everything a white person has accomplished is unearned; most white people who have reached a high level of success worked extremely hard to get there. Instead, white privilege should be viewed as a built-in advantage, separate from one’s level of income or effort.
Francis E. Kendall, author of Diversity in the Classroom and Understanding White Privilege: Creating Pathways to Authentic Relationships Across Race, comes close to giving us an encompassing definition: “having greater access to power and resources than people of color [in the same situation] do.” But in order to grasp what this means, it’s also important to consider how the definition of white privilege has changed over time.
White Privilege Through the Years
In a thorough article, education researcher Jacob Bennett tracked the history of the term. Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, “white privilege” was less commonly used but generally referred to legal and systemic advantages given to white people by the United States, such as citizenship, the right to vote or the right to buy a house in the neighborhood of their choice.
It was only after discrimination persisted for years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that people like Peggy McIntosh began to view white privilege as being more psychological—a subconscious prejudice perpetuated by white people’s lack of awareness that they held this power. White privilege could be found in day-to-day transactions and in white people’s ability to move through the professional and personal worlds with relative ease.
But some people of color continued to insist that an element of white privilege included the aftereffects of conscious choices. For example, if white business leaders didn’t hire many people of color, white people had more economic opportunities. Having the ability to maintain that power dynamic, in itself, was a white privilege, and it endures. Legislative bodies, corporate leaders and educators are still disproportionately white and often make conscious choices (laws, hiring practices, discipline procedures) that keep this cycle on repeat.
The more complicated truth: White privilege is both unconsciously enjoyed and consciously perpetuated. It is both on the surface and deeply embedded into American life. It is a weightless knapsack—and a weapon.
It depends on who’s carrying it.
White Privilege as the “Power of Normal”
Sometimes the examples used to make white privilege visible to those who have it are also the examples least damaging to people who lack it. But that does not mean these examples do not matter or that they do no damage at all.
These subtle versions of white privilege are often used as a comfortable, easy entry point for people who might push back against the concept. That is why they remain so popular. These are simple, everyday things, conveniences white people aren’t forced to think about.
These often-used examples include:
But the root of these problems is often ignored. These types of examples can be dismissed by white people who might say, “My hair is curly and requires special product,” or “My family is from Poland, and it’s hard to find traditional Polish food at the grocery store.”
This may be true. But the reason even these simple white privileges need to be recognized is that the damage goes beyond the inconvenience of shopping for goods and services. These privileges are symbolic of what we might call “the power of normal.” If public spaces and goods seem catered to one race and segregate the needs of people of other races into special sections, that indicates something beneath the surface.
White people become more likely to move through the world with an expectation that their needs be readily met. People of color move through the world knowing their needs are on the margins. Recognizing this means recognizing where gaps exist.
White Privilege as the “Power of the Benefit of the Doubt”
The “power of normal” goes beyond the local CVS. White people are also more likely to see positive portrayals of people who look like them on the news, on TV shows and in movies. They are more likely to be treated as individuals, rather than as representatives of (or exceptions to) a stereotyped racial identity. In other words, they are more often humanized and granted the benefit of the doubt. They are more likely to receive compassion, to be granted individual potential, to survive mistakes.
This has negative effects for people of color, who, without this privilege, face the consequences of racial profiling, stereotypes and lack of compassion for their struggles.
In these scenarios, white privilege includes the facts that:
This privilege is invisible to many white people because it seems reasonable that a person should be extended compassion as they move through the world. It seems logical that a person should have the chance to prove themselves individually before they are judged. It’s supposedly an American ideal.
But it’s a privilege often not granted to people of color—with dire consequences.
For example, programs like New York City’s now-abandoned “Stop and Frisk” policy target a disproportionate number of black and Latinx people. People of color are more likely to be arrested for drug offenses despite using at a similar rate to white people. Some people do not survive these stereotypes. In 2017, people of color who were unarmed and not attacking anyone were more likely to be killed by police.
Those who survive instances of racial profiling—be they subtle or violent—do not escape unaffected. They often suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and this trauma in turn affects their friends, families and immediate communities, who are exposed to their own vulnerability as a result.
A study conducted in Australia (which has its own hard history of subjugating black and Indigenous people) perfectly illustrates how white privilege can manifest in day-to-day interactions—daily reminders that one is not worthy of the same benefit of the doubt given to another. In the experiment, people of different racial and ethnic identities tried to board public buses, telling the driver they didn’t have enough money to pay for the ride. Researchers documented more than 1,500 attempts. The results: 72 percent of white people were allowed to stay on the bus. Only 36 percent of black people were extended the same kindness.
Just as people of color did nothing to deserve this unequal treatment, white people did not “earn” disproportionate access to compassion and fairness. They receive it as the byproduct of systemic racism and bias.
And even if they are not aware of it in their daily lives as they walk along the streets, this privilege is the result of conscious choices made long ago and choices still being made today.
White Privilege as the “Power of Accumulated Power”
Perhaps the most important lesson about white privilege is the one that’s taught the least.
The “power of normal” and the “power of the benefit of the doubt” are not just subconscious byproducts of past discrimination. They are the purposeful results of racism—an ouroboros of sorts—that allow for the constant re-creation of inequality.
These powers would not exist if systemic racism hadn’t come first. And systemic racism cannot endure unless those powers still hold sway.
You can imagine it as something of a whiteness water cycle, wherein racism is the rain. That rain populates the earth, giving some areas more access to life and resources than others. The evaporation is white privilege—an invisible phenomenon that is both a result of the rain and the reason it keeps going.
McIntosh asked herself an important question that inspired her famous essay, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”: “On a daily basis, what do I have that I didn’t earn?” Our work should include asking the two looming follow-up questions: Who built that system? Who keeps it going?
The answers to those questions could fill several books. But they produce examples of white privilege that you won’t find in many broad explainer pieces.
For example, the ability to accumulate wealth has long been a white privilege—a privilege created by overt, systemic racism in both the public and private sectors. In 2014, the Pew Research Center released a report that revealed the average net worth of a white household was $141,900; for black and Hispanic households, that dropped to $11,000 and $13,700, respectively. The gap is huge, and the great “equalizers” don’t narrow it. Research from Brandeis University and Demos found that the racial wealth gap is not closed when people of color attend college (the median white person who went to college has 7.2 times more wealth than the median black person who went to college, and 3.9 times more than the median Latino person who went to college). Nor do they close the gap when they work full time, or when they spend less and save more.
The gap, instead, relies largely on inheritance—wealth passed from one generation to the next. And that wealth often comes in the form of inherited homes with value. When white families are able to accumulate wealth because of their earning power or home value, they are more likely to support their children into early adulthood, helping with expenses such as college education, first cars and first homes. The cycle continues.
This is a privilege denied to many families of color, a denial that started with the work of public leaders and property managers. After World War II, when the G.I. Bill provided white veterans with “a magic carpet to the middle class,” racist zoning laws segregated towns and cities with sizeable populations of people of color—from Baltimore to Birmingham, from New York to St. Louis, from Louisville to Oklahoma City, to Chicago, to Austin, and in cities beyond and in between.
These exclusionary zoning practices evolved from city ordinances to redlining by the Federal Housing Administration (which wouldn’t back loans to black people or those who lived close to black people), to more insidious techniques written into building codes. The result: People of color weren’t allowed to raise their children and invest their money in neighborhoods with “high home values.” The cycle continues today. Before the 2008 crash, people of color were disproportionately targeted for subprime mortgages. And neighborhood diversity continues to correlate with low property values across the United States. According to the Century Foundation, one-fourth of black Americans living in poverty live in high-poverty neighborhoods; only 1 in 13 impoverished white Americans lives in a high-poverty neighborhood.
The inequities compound. To this day, more than 80 percent of poor black students attend a high-poverty school, where suspension rates are often higher and resources often more limited. Once out of school, obstacles remain. Economic forgiveness and trust still has racial divides. In a University of Wisconsin study, 17 percent of white job applicants with a criminal history got a call back from an employer; only five percent of black applicants with a criminal history got call backs. And according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, black Americans are 105 percent more likely than white people to receive a high-cost mortgage, with Latino Americans 78 percent more likely. This is after controlling for variables such as credit score and debt-to-income ratios.
Why mention these issues in an article defining white privilege? Because the past and present context of wealth inequality serves as a perfect example of white privilege.
If privilege, from the Latin roots of the term, refers to laws that have an impact on individuals, then what is more effective than a history of laws that explicitly targeted racial minorities to keep them out of neighborhoods and deny them access to wealth and services?
If white privilege is “having greater access to power and resources than people of color [in the same situation] do,” then what is more exemplary than the access to wealth, the access to neighborhoods and the access to the power to segregate cities, deny loans and perpetuate these systems?
This example of white privilege also illustrates how systemic inequities trickle down to less harmful versions of white privilege. Wealth inequity contributes to the “power of the benefit of the doubt” every time a white person is given a lower mortgage rate than a person of color with the same credit credentials. Wealth inequity reinforces the “power of normal” every time businesses assume their most profitable consumer base is the white base and adjust their products accordingly.
And this example of white privilege serves an important purpose: It re-centers the power of conscious choices in the conversation about what white privilege is.
People can be ignorant about these inequities, of course. According to the Pew Research Center, only 46 percent of white people say that they benefit “a great deal” or “a fair amount” from advantages that society does not offer to black people. But conscious choices were and are made to uphold these privileges. And this goes beyond loan officers and lawmakers. Multiple surveys have shown that many white people support the idea of racial equality but are less supportive of policies that could make it more possible, such as reparations, affirmative action or law enforcement reform.
In that way, white privilege is not just the power to find what you need in a convenience store or to move through the world without your race defining your interactions. It’s not just the subconscious comfort of seeing a world that serves you as normal. It’s also the power to remain silent in the face of racial inequity. It’s the power to weigh the need for protest or confrontation against the discomfort or inconvenience of speaking up. It’s getting to choose when and where you want to take a stand. It’s knowing that you and your humanity are safe.
And what a privilege that is.
Collins is the senior writer for Teaching Tolerance.
https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/fall-2018/what-is-white-privilege-really
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The Thom Hartmann Program 11/9/18 - full show
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The Thom Hartmann Program 11/9/18 - first hour
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France’s Macron denounces nationalism as a "betrayal of patriotism."
Steve King says immigrants are "dirt."
Óinseach
DianeR,
Poor squirrel....:)
(1) Isn’t it weird that in America, our flag and our culture offend so many people, but our benefits don’t?
(2) How can the federal government ask U.S. citizens to pay back student loans when illegal aliens are receiving a free education?
(3) Only in America are legal citizens labeled “racists” and “Nazis,” but illegal aliens are called “Dreamers.”
(4) Liberals say, “If confiscating all guns saves just one life, it’s worth it.” Well, then, if deporting all illegals saves just one life, wouldn’t that be worth it?
(5) I can’t quite figure out how you can proudly wave the flag of another country, but consider it punishment to be sent back there.
(6) The Constitution: It doesn’t need to be rewritten, it needs to be reread.
(7) William F. Buckley said: “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other points of view, and are then shocked and offended when they discover there are other points of view.”
(8) Joseph Sobran said: “‘Need’ now means wanting someone else’s money. ‘Greed’ means wanting to keep your own. ‘Compassion’ is when a politician arranges the transfer.”
(9) Florida has had dozens upon dozens of hurricanes since 1850, but some people still insist the last one was due to ‘climate change’.
https://quinersdiner.com/2018/11/02/enigmatic-liberalism-leaves-us-scrat...
Moving along.....
Hopefully this whole voter fiasco will lead to voter ID laws. Just how does Boward Co. keep getting away with this bs?
and.....
Have you seen this?
https://100percentfedup.com/tucker-carlson-blasts-back-at-assault-accusation-by-cpl-avenatti-after-incident-with-carlsons-children-video/
Enjoy your Sunday morning ....
Great article! And in my humble opinion is that yes, men and woman have equal rights. But lets not go overboard with this :)
Pusimeik
Glad to hear you are OK. Keep hoses at the ready and your insurance up to date. Right now is a very good time to run a video of as many possessions as you can. E-mail them to yourself. Better be over prepared than not at all.
Side note, Here is my idea to protect the WALL.
DianeR,
The fire is not close to us but the smoke is very thick, I couldn't see the sun through it as I drove to town today, So sad for so many people caught up in these fires this year and last.
Just every one in the North Ca. forest is nervous. Had a fire 1/4 mi down the road from me a couple years ago with fire trucks on my property.
PG&E our electric co. has taken responsibility for this fire in Paradise and the ones in Santa Rosa,...now that they can pass the cost on to the ratepayers.
I've also had a power pole catch fire although I was lucky it was raining at the time.
Anyway on with the show...uh, circus.
Tomorrow
HotCoffee, that video was scary.
HoHotCoffee, I wish you well.
This is what escaping the fires is like.....
https://imgur.com/3CwV90i
We usually get rain for halloween....not this year....temps this morning were 21* but no one is using their woodstoves because of all the dry leaves on the ground. Everyone in town praying for rain!
I'll check in later...
DianeR,
I'm not familiar with her...but the corruption sure gets around!
This is interesting......
Could Papadopoulos Blow the Russia Hoax Wide Open?
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/11/could_papadopoulos_blow_the_russia_hoax_wide_open.html
HotCoffee; Do you know this bum?
Rep. Linda Sánchez’s Husband Indicted for Theft of Federal Funds
Coalage3, Riddle me this,
Why is it only democrats find "uncounted ballots" affter the election does not go in their favor.
I'll give the democrats credit for one thing. They learned their lessons well from the Daley school of elections. Check out what is going on in Florida and Arizona. Now they are "finding" uncounted ballots in both states. What? This is Friday...three days after the election.
Reminds me of when Franken got elected with the help of some "uncounted" ballots found in the trunk of a car.
DianeR,
At this point nothing is surprising, I'm glad Trump is determined to stop the influx.
I also read last night RGB will step down in January as her cancer came back. ???
I have errands to run today so be back tonight.
until then :)
Morning HotCoffee.
You may appreciate this,
A very conservative friend of mine took all the courses to become an election judge. Two conservatives, 16 liberals in his class. They declared because the balance was recorded.
His experience was interesting. No challenges BUT, people would come in and they were registered and they were found in the system. The judge then asks for their address so they could be checked off. He said full half of those people had to pull out a card and read off their address. Hummm.
Good day to you.
Good morning DianeR and coalage3,
Using a sex change to extort money from a single Mom....sick!
Seems the Dems just want to keep up the dissention. Hillary attys doing a new steal the vote in Browerd County....again. Also trying to take down the new acting AG.
There is a RUMOR going around Diane Feinstein will step down in 72 hours ...it comes from a tweet....no confirmation.
More CA fires.....The smoke is heavy here again from the Paradise fire.
Geez.....
more later.
Coalage3, The answer to your question is easy. They have tired of losing election after election since the invasion of the "progressives". Middle of the road on both sides seems to have become a thing of the past. Sane people understand there is no such thing as free healthcare, free college, no borders, and confiscating the money from the "rich". Yes you will get pockets of agreement but as soon as they figure out the government they created is coming after "their money" they high tail it out to states that have lower tax bases. Interestingly enough, these idiots bring their politics with them. Portland, Seattle, and Houston being prime examples. I have confidence in the millennials. Jobs are plentiful, once this younger generation starts drawing real money they will run form the leftie/socialist platform as fast as they can.
What has happened to the democratic party in this country? The party of science? Who are they trying to kid? The same people who argue that climate change is settled science will then argue that human gender cannot be decided or determined by a human's biology. These same "believers" will not accept GMO foods even though the scientific evidence is overwhelming that they are safe and just as nutritious as organic.
The true science deniers in this country are the democrats. The true facists in this country are the democrats. The true bigots and racists in this country are the democrats.
What is the agenda for the House of Representatives now that the dems will be in control? Has anyone heard anything from democrats about working on legislation meant to improve the lives of American citizens? Anyone...?
What has happened to the democratic party in this country?