Pheurton Skeurto
More tea, Wesley?
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“He is ignoble—base and treacherous, and hateful in every way. Not even imminent death can startle him into a spasm of virtue. The ruling trait of all savages is a greedy and consuming selfishness, and in our Noble Red Man it is found in its amplest development. His heart is a cesspool of falsehood, of treachery, and of low and devilish instincts … The scum of the earth!”
—Mark Twain, 1870, The Noble Red Man (a satire on James Fenimore Cooper’s portrayals)It seems in the past we transmuted all of our self-hate, all of our mistakes and flaws onto those which we slaughtered because we thought we deserved their land. I guess I shouldn’t say ‘we’ because all of those who committed such violence are dead, but this war isn’t over. American Indians face a unique problem from other minorities: most people don’t even recognize their existence. We think about American Indians only in terms of the past, of what happened back then and not what is happening right now. These people are not “lazy, dirty, and all alcoholics” nor do are they all nature-loving tree huggers. They are people just like you and me, who cannot escape the stereotypes perpetuated by years worth of movies and media portraying them as inferior savages. They suffer from some of the worst forms of poverty and discrimination on and off reservations, and both political parties in the 2000’s have supported termination of tribal sovereignty of tribes in the west to feed the US’s need for natural resources such as coal. In a 2006 qualitative study by non-profit Public Agenda, one Albequerque Indian said, “Even in modern-day society, we’re still faced with annihilation. I’m still living in the Holocaust. As a native people, [we] are still having one.”
American Indians deserve our respect and recognition as equals, and awareness is so pivotal. How can anyone help if we all ignore the problem?
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“The true story of Thanksgiving reminds us that the U.S. was born in genocide and slavery — and that the empire today rests on the constant expansion of that.”
Native Blood: The Myth of Thanksgiving
Everything we know is a result of centuries of oppression and genocide.
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Nine-year-old Brisenia Flores was murdered in her home in Arivaca, Arizona in May 2009. She pleaded, “Please don’t shoot me,” right before she was shot — point blank, in the face — by a member of the Minutemen American Defense Corps (MAD)1
The alleged mastermind behind Brisenia’s murder, Shawna Forde, has publicly represented anti-Latino hate groups including the Minutemen and the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform (FAIR). Forde is currently on trial in Arizona for the murder of Brisenia and her father, Raul. As we speak, the jury is deliberating and will return a verdict within days, or hours.
Our community is waiting on justice for Brisenia.
Her murder represents the violence that follows when hateful and dehumanizing rhetoric and the groups that promote it goes unchecked.
Brisenia’s story has been largely ignored in the mainstream media, but her life has galvanized people around the country to speak out against hate violence towards Latinos. We at Presente designed a poster to honor Brisenia’s memory, and to send a statement that we want justice.
(Source: guavaberry)
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I mean I know faux-history makes for great cinema and great news stories and great elementary school dioramas, but sometimes I honestly can’t handle these gross PG bastardizations of history in order to make it safe and pleasant for all audiences I mean
Anastasia lived y’all she survived the revolution and fell in love and sang songs
but really she was executed with the rest of her familyWhen the pilgrims came to American they met little Squanto and he helped them and they were all happy and had Thanksgiving
and more than half of them died and they also gave the Native Americans horrible diseases and also brutally drove them out of their land and wiped out millionsThe Reformation in the 1500’s was awesome people split from the Pope and his indulgence-selling ways and established a just form of worship
also resulting in horrible, bloody massacres and religious wars etc etc etcThe Civil War was caused by nice northerners who hated slavery
but the war was really just about states’ rights and ideological divides and once the freed slaves migrated to the north many northerners just fled to their sheltered white areasThe 50’s were great economic productivity was awesome and America was number one
but women and minorities had no rights and McCarthyism was running rampant and people were living under the constant threat of nuclear holocaustYeah! Go uprising in Egypt!
Now that it’s overthe US has your backeven when it spent decades propping up the very regime against which you were protesting!
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How To Tell People They Sound Racist
“When somebody picks my pocket, I’m not gonna be chasing him down so I can figure out whether he feels like he’s a thief deep down in his heart, I’m gonna chase him down to get my wallet back. I don’t care what he is, but I need to hold him accountable for what he did. And that’s how we need to approach these conversations about race: treat them like they took your wallet and focus on the part that matters: holding each person accountable for the impact of their words and actions. I don’t care about what you are, I care about what you did.”
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It’s this anti-immigration legislation that they’re trying to push, where they would allow police officers to racially profile undocumented immigrants, especially people in the Mexican community. I think that’s horrendous. But what amazes me is that people support this law. I was watching the news, this woman in Arizona, looking at a camera, straight faced, she says, ‘Hey, we’re just trying to bring the country back to the way it used to be.’ The way it used to be? Lady, you’re in Arizona. It used to be Mexico.Hari Kondabolu (via nezua)
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We’ve lost an understanding of what racism means in this country. We’ve forgotten that it’s race hate combined with power. A white person being harassed in a black neighborhood is not experiencing racism—that person can call the police and get a response. My students refer to anything other than whatever they think of as Martin Luther King’s dream as racism. Like with so many other words, conservatives have won the rhetorical war. We need to define racism as what it actually is and reclaim the rhetorical ground on moving toward real equality.
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You know how vampires have no reflections in the mirror? If you want to make a human being a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.Junot Diaz
(Source: oddballsdontbounce)
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I’d like to address the MacPhail family. Let you know, despite the situation you are in, I’m not the one who personally killed your son, your father, your brother. I am innocent.
The incident that happened that night is not my fault. I did not have a gun. All I can ask … is that you look deeper into this case so that you really can finally see the truth.
I ask my family and friends to continue to fight this fight.
For those about to take my life, God have mercy on your souls. And may God bless your souls.
Last words of Troy Davis, murdered last night by the state of Georgia (via thegermansmakegoodstuff)(Source: The Huffington Post)
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Not being racist is not some default starting position. You don’t simply get to say you’re not a racist; not being racist — or a sexist or a homophobe — is a constant, arduous process of unlearning, of being uncomfortable, of eating crow and being humbled and re-evaluating. It’s probably hard to start that process if you’ve been told that every thought you have is golden and should be given voice, and that people who are offended by what you say are hypersensitive simpletons.
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such a needed campaign. i wish they’d have included native americans as well, though, as cultural appropriation of them in costumes is just as awfully common.
I agree, Native Americans are probably the group that’s appropriated the most. Still, a step in the right direction.
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and it’s no accident that this segment is conveniently left out of our education
The white-washing of MLK jr. and the civil rights movement on a whole to make history look kindly upon white folk and convince POC of the disempowering lie that is “Be polite, nice, & don’t challenge us & you’ll get your rights” is one that disgusts me to no end.
Yes, Yes and Yes.
(Source: samljackson)
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This is what my world history textbook has to say about Columbus
“Naked, friendly natives met Columbus and his crew. They were Taino Indians, who spoke a variant of the Arawak language. Believing he had landed in the East Indies, Columbus called these people Indians. The natives’ generosity amazed Columbus, as they freely gave his men corn, yams - and many sexual favors. “They never say no,” Columbus marveled, observing how easily they could be enslaved.”
Let’s take a minute to analyze what this paragraph does:
-Reinforces the idea of Native Americans as inferior people, devoid of any type of culture or society outside of language.
-Places the negativity of ‘sexual favors’ on the Indians, instead of on those who were presumably asking for them in the first place. (this is such a weird point, I dont understand why it is included here)
-By saying Columbus ‘observed’ the enslavement absolves him of responsibility.Effectively, this paragraph relies on and reinforces the assumptions that colonialism was justified due to the ‘savage’ nature of the dominated cultures. To be fair, the topic is discussed in another chapter focusing on the effects of colonialism in Latin America, South America, and Africa.
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In a development typical of Arizona, the students who walked out on Thursday, protesting the elimination of the district’s Mexican American studies program, have – without a hearing – been directed to perform janitorial duties this Saturday: an amazing message, right out of Newt Gingrich’s playbook (he has been campaigning in the GOP presidential nomination race, proposing the idea that students should be hired as janitors to teach them a work ethic). Apparently, TUSD administrators are paying attention.
The further message of this punishment, then, appears to be that the state and the district do not want students to study Mexican American studies, but they do want them to clean toilets. Perhaps, Gingrich should consider relocating to Arizona, where his message is being fully embraced.Roberto Cintli Rodriguez, Arizona’s ‘banned’ Mexican American books
This is what racism looks like.
(via mohandasgandhi)
