Another Look at History

"Fifty nifty United States from thirteen original colonies...." That's a line from a song I learned in elementary school as part of my sanitized history education. We were taught about the "discovery of America" as if Columbus were the first to arrive here. As if there weren't diverse nations already thriving here for thousands of years before the first Europeans arrived.

Each year at this time we talked about the Pilgrims and Indians and the big feast they shared on that "first Thanksgiving." We did not learn about the eradication of Indigenous peoples, felled by new diseases brought by Europeans, and then by genocide at the hands of colonists and "settlers."  We were not told that Native Americans were enslaved by the English colonists, although one scholar reports that "between 1492 and 1880, between 2 and 5.5 million Native Americans were enslaved in the Americans in addition to 12.5 million African slaves."

Stealing land and enslaving Indigenous peoples and Africans brought here by force are two deeply entrenched pieces of my heritage as a White American. I was not taught that in school.

I was not taught about the Doctrine of Discovery.  

What can we say about the notion that a particular group of people -- European, Christian, and almost exclusively male -- is entitled to dominate all other people? What might be the natural consequences of such a belief? Conquest and colonization, forced assimilation, enslavement, oppression, exclusion, genocide, extermination, and eradication of societies, languages, and cultures come to mind. We have seen them all come to pass, from the 1400's to this day.

And what might it do to that privileged group over time, here in our country, as one generation follows another in believing itself entitled to dominance? At the very least, history would be written from the perspective of that privileged class, erasing -- or at least burying -- unwanted truths. Explicit and implicit bias would surely be passed down, together with tropes and stereotypes in popular culture and the discriminatory behaviors and disparate impacts we've seen in housing, education, law enforcement, and the health care and criminal justice systems, to give just a few examples. Fear of losing the power of White supremacy would undoubtedly explain such reactionary tactics as segregation, and the Jim Crow laws that enforced it; vigilantism, mob action, and lynchings; Indian boarding schools; immigration bans and exclusion laws; poll taxes, literacy tests, and other voter suppression efforts; redlining; and the rise of hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and, more recently, the Proud Boys.  

The historical and intergenerational trauma of colonization and violence affect both the oppressor and the oppressed.  Resmaa Menakem has thought deeply about this in the context of racism in America. In this interview he explores some of the history I've recounted here, and explains how "over time, [trauma] can look like culture."

We have seen how fear of losing White supremacy has played out more dangerously in the last two presidential elections, but it is not a new reality. It is the natural consequence of our past. And it is up to us, the Whites who have inherited this legacy, to dismantle it. The first step is to learn and acknowledge our history of dominance.

Here's a thought experiment that can get us started.

In her November 18 keynote address to Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon's 2020 Collins Summit, Lisa Sharon Harper posed this question: "When was the last time that people of European descent had to deal with the world in a way that did not assume that they were the ones created to lead it? When was the last era," she pressed, "the last time that when people of European descent went out into the world they did not go with the assumption that they were sent to rule it?" 

What's your answer?

Harper's thoughtful conclusion was that it had to be 3,000 years ago, prior to the Greek empire, before Plato and Aristotle proposed the concepts of race and hierarchy that laid the groundwork for the Doctrine of Discovery. You may or may not agree with her analysis. But that we even have the question before us is telling. How we respond to the discomfort it may arouse will help us gauge our current capacity to do the work. Whatever that is, we can and must keep at it.

In the meantime, we must also remember that history is still being written every day. And, as former President Obama has lately reminded us, "history does not just go forward. It goes sideways. It goes backwards sometimes. The path of progress is bumpy. And there are going to be setbacks... but you keep on trying."

So in that spirit, I was happy to learn that there is a concerted push under way to see that a Native person is nominated to be Secretary of the Interior in the new Biden administration.  With our first Black president already retired from office and the first female, Black, and South Asian vice president-elect about to assume her new position, we can see more cracks in the White supremacist narrative. That's cause to celebrate and fuel for us to keep going forward.

Friends, the work is daunting, and the road is long. But it starts with facing our past with honesty and humility, remembering that "our only path to healing is through lament and learning how to accept some very unsettling truths." Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah, in Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery.

May it be so. And soon.

Love,

Mom/Nancie/Mimi/Grandma