I didn’t really spell it out in the first
post, but I hinted at how these months we have are about our own history; they
are not random. Reading about the history of France would be interesting, and
would probably reveal some things about human nature, because history is great
like that. Reading about Native Americans or African Americans or Asian
Americans, and reading about female Americans, gives us the extra parts to the
backstory of how we got here, and often they are not pretty.
The purpose of that is not to say white
people are bad, or men are bad, or that America is bad. The purpose of learning
more should be that we can have more sophisticated views, not that we get more
simplistic.
The benefits of these readings that I posted
about Monday are still kind of specific to issues along racial lines, but there
are two big general points that have been coming to me during this reading.
One is that the same people can do both good
and bad things. That seems kind of obvious, but it is something we have a hard
time with.
This has been coming to me a lot in relation
to rape. Yes, the logical place to go is Steubenville, but there was another
piece I had read recently about rape culture in India, and a woman refers to
her long-time abuser as a good father and husband and member of the community.
The temptation is to think how could he possibly really be that good, and
that’s a complex question.
Some people are good at compartmentalization.
Some people are good at deciding it’s okay to victimize some people and not
others. Some people have lines that they won’t cross, but perhaps more due to
social convention than strong conviction, and so if the temptation level goes
up, or the possibility of getting caught goes low enough, maybe it pushes them
over. Russell Means worked with a man who treated him pretty well, and was good
about a lot of things, but they started getting some donations for a project
and the guy took off with the funds. Does it undo everything that came before?
So if we look at the conflict between Indians
and settlers, the people who are looking to make a better life for themselves
are not inherently evil, and the people trying to preserve their own way of
life are not inherently evil, but they both do some pretty bad things. To be
able to look at that, and move beyond simplistic thinking about good and bad
isn’t just helpful for our understanding of history – it is vital for
understanding of right now. We need to know that people we like and love can do
bad things, and we don’t have to stop liking them, and it doesn’t mean letting
them get away with it. We need to accept our own capacity to do evil, and know
that not everything we want is automatically right. There is some
sophistication there.
Going back to the book on the Siletz, one
point that struck me was that many of the early farming settlers coexisted
pretty well with the Indians. When the prospectors came in, whose goal was to
pull a lot of money out of the area and leave, then things got worse.
On one level you would think the temporary
residents should be less of an issue than the permanent residents if it’s all
about land, but that’s not how it played out. The people who were trying to
build a life and homes actually did better than the people who were just there
for money. Having previously noticed the degrading effects of greed, this is
not too surprising, and it leads to another way in which this information is
important for everyone.
Things I see through this reading is that the
laws aren’t helpful if they are not enforced equally. I see that there are
peole who were racist, but still practical and respectful of the law, so that
helped. I see other people who meant well, but could not be effective because
there were too many others who meant badly, and you see how many things can go
wrong, but also that sometimes persistence pays off, and there are stories of
triumph and hope throughout.
Let’s go back to that point I keep going back
to in The New Jim Crow, that the wealthy used racial issues to divide
the poor, who should have been able to unite over common economic interests.
We’re still doing this one.
Yes, people of color are disproportionately
prosecuted for crimes, but the justice system is still skewed towards wealth.
Racism is a problem, but not the only problem.
People in power are still trying to gain
support by setting up divisions among the lower class, which is growing. Now
they tell you it’s makers and takers, which is still technically colorblind,
though they manage to get a lot of race-baiting in. It’s a lie though. Illegal
immigrants aren’t sitting around collecting welfare; they are picking crops in
100-degree heat, and people collecting food stamps are working at Wal-mart with
unpaid overtime and no health benefits. Sure, there are people who use credit
cards incorrectly, but more than 60% of US bankruptcies are caused by medical
debt, and student debt is crushing more and more people now.
People find it just as easy now to decide
that other people are the problem as they did to decide that slavery was right,
or that forcing Native Americans onto reservations was right, because the other
side was somehow less. And there were people who benefitted, and they got their
homesteads, sure. However, one thing I know from other reading is that usually
to succeed as a homesteader you need to already have some funds, and so you
could probably already afford to buy land.
So then, and now, there is always this trend
towards greater aggregation of wealth, and now seems like a particularly bad
time for it. Greed does bad things to societies and individuals. Racism, and
ignoring of history, allows those skilled at manipulation to cover their greed.
The thing I hate most of all is how often the
manipulated feel so righteous about it, and I feel great inadequacy in having
made this point at all – that this needs to be clearer or more elegant, and I
can’t seem to manage it. But of course, my point is for people to read more,
and if they do that, maybe they’ll get those points on their own. However,
there is one thing that keeps coming to mind, so I’m going to end on these
words from Pastor Niemoller:
“First they came for the Jews and I did not
speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists and I did
not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I
did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
So true. I completely got the part about the manipulated being self-rightoues about it.
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