I used to believe racism in the United States was overstated.
Sure, it existed. But it's not something widespread. Common. The claim americans are racists is ridiculous.
Well...I was wrong.
"Zohran Mamdani is a terrorist"
"Mamdani supports ISIS and HAMAS"
"New York City faces sharia law"
"Mamdani wants to MURDER jews"
The amount of shit published about this guy is absolutely insane.
He recently attended the 9/11 memorial ceremony.
At some point, he greeted congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and smiled for 5 seconds.
Immediatly, politicians went wild
Senator Ted Cruz:
Congresswoman Mary Miller :
Speaker Mike Johnson:
Here is the video. You can clearly see that he was stoic. He hugged her. Then he immediatly went back to being stoic.
Dude smiled 5 SECONDS in a 5 hour ceremony and they accuse him of celebrating 9/11
At the same ceremony, JD Vance and Howard Lutnick laughed and joked.
No one cares. They are white.
The US is more racist than I ever imagined.
At the risk of being inadvertently racist myself, I'd like to share some thoughts about Native Americans. Please forgive me if I cross the line or come off as offensive. I'm just trying to understand. I'll probably fuck this up.
There's still a hell of a lot of dysfunction among native peoples, most of which stems from historic oppression, genocide, etc. However it seems to me that tribal leadership has not helped your people out nearly as much as it could and often seems predatory itself. Humans being what we are it seems to me that cashing in on casinos has helped a few at the top rather than everyone else. I am I off base here?
Another thought, and this doesn't apply to Native Americans only, is that there is a great focus on "traditional" knowledge, rituals, stories etc... Now I'm an atheist and tend to be pretty skeptical about all religion(and to a lesser degree culture) so from my vantage point(and coming from a place of ignorance about Native American life) a lot of this focus seems to work to hold your people back. I get the sense that if instead of focusing on the past, which could very well be a flawed and inaccurate understanding of the past, you focused on education and made that the pride of your people, you'd be able to stand taller and take less shit from the dominant culture. I'm thinking of something like, "Oh yeah most Natives are doctors", or "Native Americans are very serious about science".
One culture I am familiar with is black culture in America and I feel similarly about the assumption that all black people go to church and are religious. I understand that embracing Jesus was necessary during slavery but at some point don't people realize they had adopted a slave religion designed to keep them from agitating about their circumstance?
I suppose most people don't really think about these things much and just live their lives unexamined, which is sad because it just helps those who prey on us without us realizing it.
This is actually common across post colonial societies. The book Why Nations Fail by Nobel Laureate Daron Acemoglu explains it well. Colonial powers left behind extractive institutions in non white polities whereas inclusive institutions were built wherever they stayed. It is very difficult to counter institutional momentum so the new elites often perpetuate the cycle of extraction started by settler-colonialism. Such extractive institutions promote corruption. That's not even taking into account neocolonial activities by prior beneficiaries of colonialism.
An example of an extractive insitutional practice on indigineous reserves is federal land trusteeship and the lack of full property rights. This means that residents cannot use their real estate as collateral to secure commercial bank loans or mortgages. Economists refer to this landlocked wealth as "dead capital" because it cannot be leveraged to start businesses, build credit, or generate local economic growth.
I question a causal relationship between religion and prosperity or that religion is a hindrance to agitation. MLK Jr and Gandhi were deeply religious and are amongst some of the most notable agitators of the 20th century. Ultimately what it comes down to is oppurtunity and we continue to live in a world where being born brown or black means you almost certainly, on average, have less.
Religion can be used in many ways, you point out another use for it. In fact, it is often because of the safe spaces afforded to religion that allow such agitation to occur.
I should point out that MLK jr. strongly felt that non violent protest alone wasn't going to cut it. He valued Malcom X's rejection of non violence as a necessary counterpoint to his movement. From what I understand he felt it was necessary for white America to see that things could go horribly, violently wrong, but he wanted to lead with peaceful protest and didn't want to be associated with the violent alternative that could dominate if things didn't change in a positive way. Basically he was giving white America a choice, "We can make change in a civilized, respectful manner, or we can have chaos and violence".
One major lesson from both of these men and movements that I wish the protestors of today would recognize is that often protest itself is not going to cut it. You have to get a televised beat down from the cops in order to sway the masses. Public unnecessary suffering changes minds pretty quickly. When you see well dressed people marching in a non threatening manner insisting on reasonable change get attacked violently by the authorities, most people will recognize that injustice and react. This happened with the beginning of the Arab spring when that man set himself on fire in protest. Oppressors always want to sanitize and hide their most extreme violence against the oppressed.
As far as Native American politics go, I feel like applying Western ideology to Native Americans is very much the literal definition of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
All of the other things I've said about race aside, there very much is a strong cultural portion of each individual person's makeup, and Western society has never understood the Native American.
As a whole, taken over the full course of time, Western society has always either infantilized, bastardized, or romanticized the Native American existence, the psyche, the soul.
And so when you see Native American societies failing to thrive in Western society, it is almost always a consequence of that failure rather than some sort of flaw with Native society.
Capitalism is not a cure-all. It does not fit everyone.
And when it encounters a people it does not fit with, it forces itself to either destroy them or conform them.
Oh yeah, I'm with you on the critique of capitalism.
But I often wonder how much native culture is new, pretending(or wrongly believing) to be old. I have found that some cultures believe they have very old traditional practices and foods, which turn out to have modern origins. I think a lot of cultures pigeonhole themselves into this mindset of "we've always done it this way, therefor it's sacred and inviolable".
An example is fry bread. Fry bread is often treated as a wonderful part of native heritage, not only in the US but across the world. But in almost every case, it is a food brought about by colonialism.
I am reminded of an experience I had as a small child watching a Native American dance with all the feathers and such and at first I was fascinated but as I started thinking about it I felt sad because it looked to me that these people were dancing for the whites. And it all could have been bullshit made up 300 years ago to sooth the invaders. A common theme I see among colonized people is using religious belief as a way to shield oneself from further incursions. Because that's one thing most people will respect and back off from. "Oh you have deeply held religious rituals about X, well we should probably relax a little bit".
All cultures change and grow, I strongly believe that insisting a given culture has been unchanged for millennia is a foolish proposition, especially if there is no written record. But even with one. It's like saying species don't evolve over time because you haven't seen any changes in your lifetime or your grandparents lifetime. It is a common human mistake to make.
Thank you for being so generous with your time and thoughts.
we had a native american Professor at a university i used to go to, he is still extremely bitter towards US-people, especially the govt that did not keep the promised made to his people.