In 1619 twenty African slaves were brought to the colony of Jamestown, creating a racial caste system that established white people as the dominant group and Black people as subordinate. Laws were codified, rules made, and customs established. Slave masters had the right to kill and torture their slaves should they defy their authority. The children of enslaved women kept their mother’s status even if their father was the white master. He could take the children and do with them as he chose, sending them to the fields as slaves or selling them on the auction block for profit. The colonists had internalized the wrong idea that some people are better than others. It again benefited those at the top of the human food chain because it granted power and privilege to those with white skin. Most white people came to believe that Black people were lazy, criminals, and mentally inferior. And that America belonged to white people. And those attitudes and perceptions remain with us into the 21st century.
From 1787-1860 the new country passed laws that codified Black people’s status and that of other People of Color in America. In 1787 Congress passed a law that said Black people were 3/5 of a human being and should be treated as chattel. In 1830 they passed the Indian Removal Act that started the Trail of Tears forcibly removing First Nation People from their land in the Southern United States to Oklahoma. In 1857 the Supreme Court ruled that A Black man has no rights that a white man is bound to honor. By 1860 13% of the American population was enslaved.
In 1865 two years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, the Southern United States passed Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws denying citizenship rights to Black people. The Northern states established strict racial covenants that prescribed where Black people could live. In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusionary Act denying Chinese immigration to the United States. In 1896 the Supreme Court decides Plessy vs. Ferguson establishing the doctrine of separate but equal which effectively mandated a system of Apartheid in America. And the narrative continues even today. We often hear Black women are welfare cheats living off the government. Black children are unmotivated and don’t want to learn. Black men are thugs and do not care for their children. Mexicans are drug users. First Nation people are savages incapable of becoming civilized.
A “Them vs. Us” attitude limits our ability to solve the problems facing us as a society. When we compare this “exceptional “nation to other countries, we find ourselves lagging behind in several key indicators of prosperity and well-being. We have the highest rate of incarceration…One of the highest rates in the world for infant mortality. We are among the highest in the world in illegal drug-related deaths. compared to other industrialized nations. Even when we pay more than almost any other country for health care our capacity to care for the health needs of sister citizens falls short. Americans lag behind in education outcomes, And the latest data suggest life expectancy among whites is declining. It seems to advantage those at the top of the human food chain when many of us are marginalized and deprived stifling our capacity to achieve.
But let’s not get this twisted. White women can be welfare cheats living off the hard-earned tax dollars of Black and brown people. White children can be unmotivated and not interested in learning. White men can be thugs who do not care for their children. White people can be drug users…witness the opioid crisis devastating white communities. And white people can act as savages needing to be civilized.
Jane Elliott, a well-known white educator, and anti-racism trainer often asks white people during her sessions if they would be willing to trade places with a Black person. She is met with confused stares and 100% no. She says it proves that white people understand the felt experience of Black people in America and want no part of it. If this is true it suggests a moral callousness among those in the dominant culture.
And it is also true that there have been white people who resisted and sacrificed to end white supremacy. John Brown led an insurrection at Harpers Ferry and was hanged. Viola Liuzzo a white Detroit housewife was shot and killed while registering Black people to vote in Mississippi during Freedom Summer. Rev. James Reeb, a white Unitarian minister was beaten to death during the Freedom Rides. Andrew Goodman, one of the three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi was a white college student from Connecticut. Although they were in the minority there has always been white resistance to racial oppression.
We cannot undo the cruelty, mistreatment, and horror of a tragic past visited upon so many sister and brother Americans. We are here now. How will we respond in this period of Trump, Maga Republicans, Q, anon, Proud Boys, KKK, Neo-Nazis, and white Christian Nationalists? How will we address other bigotries levied against whom we choose to love, our social status, and our gender? All are built on the idea that some people are better than others. This is our time. Will the wrong idea control our choices? I suggest we undertake an intensive and personal moral inventory. 1619 … 1776, which period do you think represents who you are …who we are as a people, and who we will choose to be?
Next Post: Wrong Idea 5
The Everybody as Our Own Movement is bold, audacious, courageous, elegant, compassionate and ethical. Let’s start the wave and create an Everybody as Our Own nation.
You Are Welcome Here.
Lutricia (Pat) Callair