Columbus Day: Is the Tide Turning?

Every year, we try to post about Columbus Day, a really troubling American holiday. This year will be short and sweet. First, there has been an increase in Indigenous People's Days across the country, and the demand might be rising. In the last year alone, at least 14 places have made the change from Columbus Day to Indigenous People's Day. This is encouraging. Second, recognition of American brutality to American Indians/Native Americans (I've gotten a mixed response from the community about what they prefer to be called) has absolutely risen. This can be seen in sports, hardly a place for American sensibilities (though that is also changing, thanks to #BlackLivesMatter, amongst other movements). Several teams have changed mascots, have changed chants, have changed logos, and there's a huge stink over one that hasn't (the D.C. football team, who, coincidentally, seem to be subject to a series of unfortunate events....just saying). Third, American Indian/Native American culture has gotten a lot more attention, evidenced by the very popular new-ish Smithsonian Museum. I'm not saying everything is grand, and that we can finally be rid of the inaccurate portrayal of Columbus and the minimization of the role of Native Americans/American Indians in American history (conservative Texas schools have a large influence on national textbooks, and they have definitely gotten some troubling inaccuracies into them), but this is a good start. Also, last year, God, influenced by Howard Zinn's writing, weighed in on the debate (this is a hilarious video). For more thoughts, click here.

Erasing the Past - Redux

A few years back, I wrote about the phenomenon of politically-driven historical amnesia, on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Well, we're at that date again, and I'm currently in Pakistan, in the middle of some tense political times for this country (and have witnessed plenty of amnesia in this country about its previous sins). While not quite as engineered as the situation in China re: Tiananmen (I mean...what is?), its interesting to see how this idea travels. In the U.S., it definitely occurs as well. Everybody does it. Via the powers of blog flashback, here are some more detailed thoughts on the matter.

Haiti in Context: History

Note: This is a Partner Post to Haiti in Context: Voices. Please check out both. They represent some of the best information I've seen on Haiti that's emerged over the past few days.

It has been a tough 4 days for Haiti and its Diaspora but from struggle emerges strength. I first want to say I am every renewed by the way I've seen folks in my own personal network and internationally begin to pull together for Haiti. I am clear that what we are doing now is small and late, but there is nothing like watching community form before your eyes and working together. Political differences become supplanted in the midst of crisis and when heavy lifting is occurring. A number of people have reached out to me regarding Haiti and the context surrounding the country that would allow an earthquake to do so much damage. In reality, like most "natural disasters" there are very human causes that lead to such catastrophic consequences. I have assembled some of the best writing I've seen on the context and figured I'd let you read the experts words moreso than mine.

Alternet covers the emergence of Haiti and the deep connections between the United States, Haiti and the globe:

However, more than two centuries ago, Haiti represented one of the most important neighbors of the new American Republic and played a central role in enabling the United States to expand westward. If not for Haiti, the course of U.S. history could have been very different, with the United States possibly never expanding much beyond the Appalachian Mountains.
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The Socialist Worker has a good article on the policies that helped produces deep issues of political and economic infrastructure.

"The media coverage of the earthquake is marked by an almost complete divorce of the disaster from the social and political history of Haiti," Canadian Haiti solidarity activist Yves Engler said in an interview. "They repeatedly state that the government was completely unprepared to deal with the crisis. This is true. But they left out why."

To understand these facts, we have to look at a second fault line--U.S. imperial policy toward Haiti. The U.S. government, the UN, and other powers have aided the Haitian elite in subjecting the country to neoliberal economic plans that have impoverished the masses, deforested the land, wrecked the infrastructure and incapacitated the government.
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On Swimming Pools, Harvard Arrests and Flash Point Racism

For the past few weeks, my inbox has been inundated with references to Whites Only swimming pools in Philadelphia, the arrest of Henry Louis Gates and things of the like. With each subsequent email, I've been reminded "this is post-racial America" 1, 2. The type of tongue-in-cheek commentary, I imagine, is meant to elucidate the continued significance of race in America. Unfortunately, I see three issues with this: 1) these emails and posts tend to go to the choir (this is not a new point so I won't go into it), 2) these cases are extreme examples of racism and exclusion in contemporary United States, which makes them easy to dismiss for everyday people and 3) they don't demonstrate the ways that race operates perniciously beneath the surface to include some and exclude many. I do think these cases need to be highlighted so pool owners, police, and everyday people can be aware certain behaviors will not be tolerated, but they're also all to easy to disassociate from for the majority of Americans who identify with the idea of "postraciality." They're rationalized away as the actions of "a few bad apples" rather than be seen as symptoms of the national disease of racism. These incidents become flash points in the media and even talking points in our commentary on race and reality, but the issue with a flash point is that it is the lowest level at which our sensibilities around race will flare brightly, but then they quickly dim. Unfortunately, inequalities of race have not dimmed, nor should our fire to expose and fight them.




Now this is not going to be a "complain and blame" post, instead, I'd like to offer some humble suggestions (or as humble as one can be if they're writing on a blog which is kinda an egotistical thing to start with, but ya'll know what I'm saying). It is critical that we begin to talk about race in ways that expose the subtle fabric of inequality. While it's easy to explain why Skip Gates' harassment and subsequent arrest were wrong and wrongheaded, it's more difficult to explain how policies leave many innocent men and women sitting in jail or on death row due to false accusations and procedural bureaucracy. It's easy to point on the wrongness of exclusion from the Valley Swim club but it's more difficult to explain why suburban schools are almost as and sometimes more unequal than urban schools, in part due to their exclusion of Blacks from equal educational resources. It's easy to suggest that race matters when Sotomayor is berated in her confirmation hearings, but it is more difficult to explain the significance of critical race theory to understanding and interpreting the law. As scholars, as activists, and as citizens we've give up the project of relaying the complex conditions to the masses who need to be reminded not that race still matters, but the various ways that it still matters and what role all can play in racial justice.

I think it is wholly possible to take the flash point moments and deepen dialogue, but its rare that it happens. Instead, we recycle old dialogues on race and its significance when more complex racism(s) exist. The reality is that we've got to get equally complex in our discussions of the intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality (to name a few). If we are serious about "justice for all" we must update our discourse and activism. Because as Brother Malcolm said, "The White power structure is just as much interested in maintaining slavery as it was 100 years ago. Only now they use modern methods of doing so." Let's expose the modern methods as well as the old!

*footnote if you've never seen the dialogue between Malcolm X, Wyatt Tee Walker James Farmer, and Alan Morrison do yourself a favor and watch it!

**Shout out to Native Notes for being on the same page with that quote!

Erasing the Past

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the tragic events in Tiananmen Square in China. I remember watching the chaos on TV. I will never forget the image of "Tank Man" defying all rationality and standing his ground in an act of bravery and defiance I'm not sure we'll ever witness so publicly again. To this day, nobody knows what happened to him. Some suggest he was executed by the Chinese government. Others say he is still alive, hiding somewhere in China. He acted on the 5th, a day after the government cracked down violently against a massive non-violent protest, composed of many students, that had been going on since mid-April 1989. I won't rehash the whole story, but the short version is, people were mourning the death of a somewhat progressive leader and desired both economic and political reforms by the Chinese government. Over a million gathered in Tiananmen. On June 4th, 1989, the Chinese government instructed a violent military response, including firing into the crowds at the unarmed, young, idealistic masses. Nobody knows the final toll, given the control of such info in China (there is also suspicion that the Chinese government burned many of the bodies to destroy evidence), but the estimates range from several hundred dead, all the way up to several thousand.

It was a horrible event that many of us will never forget. However, that is not quite the subject of my post, nor is China, per se. What I find most alarming about Tiananmen is the massive level of amnesia about the event in China. China is not the first country to attempt this kind of whitewashing of the past. Others have attempted it as well - and succeeded quite brilliantly. While I refer to Tiananmen the most here, know that you can substitute a number of other cases in its place. For instance, there is the false belief in a historically non-interventionist US foreign policy, back from the early days (see Kagan's Dangerous Nation as a good counter - yes, really, Kagan). Americans also frequently forget "idealist" Woodrow Wilson was a staunch racist, and his efforts to keep Japan out of Versailles probably helped encourage their militarism later. We forget the Gulf of Tonkin incident, used to escalate the Vietnam War, was always a manipulation of the facts. We forget the whole 1953 US-backed coup in Iran that deposed a popular democratic leader for a brutal dictator whose harshness helped lead to the 1979 Revolution. We frequently forget about our role in strengthening militant Islam (whatever you want to call it...I'm tired of coming up with/reading different terms!) with our outright backing of the most extremist elements in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Completely forgotten facts, all withheld from the public discourse, all conveniently allowed to be forgotten. This happens elsewhere, too. Let's see...Turkey and the Armenian genocide during World War I. Pakistanis forget the cult of personality set up by national hero Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, along with his role in launching the horrific civil war that led to Bangladesh. Indians forget the completely arbitrary and undemocratic nature of Kashmir "choosing" to be part of India. Israelis forget the many acts of terrorism practiced by the Stern Gang, Irgun, and others, including the bombing of the King David Hotel and the Deir Yassin massacre. Russia today tends to forget the many horrifc acts of violence it perpetrated on Chechnya in the mid-1990s. Point being, this happens a lot, and governments are actually quite successful.

Tiananmen comes to mind because today is the 20th anniversary, of course. I was chatting with a friend in China who gave me some of the run-down on what has been happening (lot of internet sites have been blocked [this blog has apparently been blocked, too - how about that], Tiananmen Square has been shut down). Besides remembering vividly those images from my childhood, I also have walked through the space. I will say it was an incredibly eerie feeling...mostly because I was there during a relatively festive time, Chinese New Year/Spring Festival. People were out, flying kites, smiling and laughing. There were few security guards out. It seemed like a joyful place. Of course, I couldn't help but recall what happened at each spot. When we passed the Monument to the People's Heroes, I recalled that the protests had started there. As we neared the front of the square, I looked back at the massive area and visualized it being full with a million people, wanting reforms. As we crossed towards the Forbidden City/Imperial Palace, I thought to myself, Tank Man stood his ground right here. So much blood had been spilled in the area we had walked around...but nobody seemed to care. Maybe there was a peace about the whole incident?

No, not exactly. Nobody wanted to remember. Few children born after 1989 had any idea about the scale of the event. History books in China mention the the massacre with maybe a line or two, and generally as student unrest stabilized by the government. Current university students have difficulty identifying the iconic Tank Man photo. The state has effectively censored what happened. Google in China does not list results if you do a search for the event. The media is largely forbidden from reporting about what happened in those days in 1989.

Thus, not only do many not even know about the event, the efforts to clamp down have created a climate of fear amongst those who do remember what happened. There is no doubt they are afraid of speaking out. This type of climate almost certainly has played a role in a more apolitical generation of young Chinese. Can we doubt that their parents, remembering June 4th and the aftermath, steered them away from politics in order to protect them?

The Chinese government's violent response against the protesters on June 4th was, of course, a sign of cowardice and weakness. Their efforts to expunge the event from Chinese history makes that point even more clear. They are doing what others have. This is why the Bolsheviks shot Czar Nicholas and his whole family - eliminate evidence of the past. This is why the US government classifies incriminating documents, and why the press sometimes partakes in self-censorship - avoid discussing uncomfortable facts that illustrate your fallibility. And while we're at it, let's not spend too much time discussing either the genocide of the Native Americans or slavery and post-slavery Jim Crow. This is why Stalin was literally taken out of everything in the Soviet Union for many years after his death (films, artwork, you name it - pretty incredible). This is why Japanese textbooks don't give much space to the atrocities they committed from their invasion of China in 1937, up to the end of World War II.

Why should we care? Because this matters. Orwell rings so true today - who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past. If governments are able to largely erase ugly moments in their history, at least domestically, that is a frightening aspect. Part of a country's strength is its ability to see its flaws and (ideally) learn and progress from them. If countries simply censor out their missteps, they could easily repeat these mistakes, or even regress from them towards worse actions in the future. It is truly a sign of weakness to not only hide from your sins, but to actively attempt to create a climate where those sins are largely not up for discussion at home. This is definitely the case with China and the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, but is true of so many other countries as well. These actions don't increase stability, they merely stunt evolution and forward progress.

So what can we do? Remember...remember and discuss and write and talk and challenge others to not hide from these sore spots. Always keep in mind that its not about just one country (here, China), its about most countries. While some seem to forget June 4th, I sure as hell won't. I hope you won't, either. And while we're at it, I won't forget September 11, 1973; August 19, 1953; April 9, 1948; and a whole lot of other dates and events. History is political...if we don't fight to preserve it, we could lose it. The consequences would be frightening.