Racism-Foundational 1

Supreme Court History-The Dred Scott Decision

Taney, in his decision for the court, wrote, “for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.” The full court ruled for the enslaver in a 7-2 vote.

Ishi, a Yahi Indian of California who was the last of his tribe, died 102 years ago this Sunday

Native American Net Roots November 25, 2019

That “painful regret” didn’t stop future governors from supporting volunteer militias to hunt and kill Indians. Between 1851 and 1859, the state spent more than $1.3 million for this purpose. The federal government reimbursed California for some of this spending. The state offered scalp bounties of 25 cents each in 1856, raised to $5 in 1860. Some towns also offered their own bounties.

Groups like the Humboldt Home Guard, the Eel River Minutemen, and the Placer Blades terrorized and murdered local Indians. The 19th century historian Hubert Howe Bancroft wrote: “The California valley cannot grace her annals with a single Indian war bordering on respectability. It can, however, boast a hundred or two of them as brutal butchering on the part of our honest miners and brave pioneers, as any area of equal extent in our republic.”

Among them were Ishi, his mother and his sister, survivors of the Three Knolls Massacre of 1865. That is when an impromptu militia of white settlers had killed some 40 Yahi on Mill Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento River near Mt. Lassen in today’s Tehama County. The survivors, including 3-year-old Ishi, had fled.

Half of them were killed in 1867 or ’68 by another ad hoc militia. Its leader, Norman Kingsley, later said that during the slaughter, he had exchanged his .56 caliber Spencer rifle for a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver because the rifle “tore them up so bad,” particularly the babies. The few remaining Yahi fled into the wilderness where they effectively hid out for the next 40 years. In 1908, a survey team ran across Ishi’s camp. He fled with his sister and another man, but his mother was too frail to run. The surveyors looted the camp, taking everything of value. Soon afterward, the rest of Ishi’s tiny band died. For the next three years, he lived alone. But in 1911, starving, he stole into a slaughterhouse where he was caught by the butchers and briefly jailed.

The Austerity Politics of White Supremacy

Dissent magazine Vanessa Williamson ▪ Winter 2021

From the Southern strategy of the 1960s to Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the presidential election, it is easy to trace the Republican Party’s decades-long descent into racial authoritarianism. Despite the president’s unhinged response to the election results, the real locus of power is the Senate, where Republican legislators have been striking sober-sounding notes about the need for smaller government, an end to relief spending, and the danger of higher taxes. Those desperate to see a return to normalcy may hail this born-again fiscal conservatism as a departure from Trump’s racist, antidemocratic politics. Historically speaking, this is a false distinction.

There has been one successful coup in the United States. It foreshadowed the rise of Donald Trump

DailyKos Dartagnan November 24, 2020

Out of the many acts of terroristic violence perpetrated against African Americans since active hostilities concluded in the Civil War, what occurred in Wilmington over a few days in November 1898 was not unique in its lethal character. Some 60 (probably more) Black citizens were massacred at the hands of an angry mob of white supremacists. Similar incidents of racist violence had peppered the South for decades, fueling the inception of such domestic terrorist groups as the Ku Klux Klan. But the parallels with the modern goals of the Republican Party—specifically the political reasons for the massacre, coupled with what sparked the event itself—echo today in the strategy and motives underlying the Trump campaign’s efforts to delegitimize the 2020 election.

What motivated that 1898 Wilmington coup, known as the Wilmington Insurrection—or its longtime white-washed historical descriptor, the “Wilmington Race Riot”—were the same things that motivate Trump and the GOP today: white power, white insecurity and white fear. All of those put together led to a sustained campaign of voter intimidation that directly prefigures the GOP’s modern-day voter suppression script.

Indian Training Schools

John N Mare Washco Day 3 of American Indian Heritage Month. Today we're going to look back at the wonderful experience of "Residential Boarding Schools". Won't hear about this on TV. Between 1869 and the 1960s, (YES 1960s) hundreds of thousands of Native American children were removed from their homes and families and placed in boarding schools operated by the federal government and the churches. Though we don't know how many children were taken in total, by 1900 there were 20,000 children in Indian boarding schools, and by 1925 that number had more than tripled. The U.S. Native children that were voluntarily or forcibly removed from their homes, families, and communities during this time were taken to schools far away where they were punished for speaking their native language, banned from acting in any way that might be seen to represent traditional or cultural practices, stripped of traditional clothing, hair and personal belongings and behaviors reflective of their native culture. They suffered physical, sexual, cultural and spiritual abuse and neglect, and experienced treatment that in many cases constituted torture for speaking their Native languages. Many children never returned home and their fates have yet to be accounted for by the U.S. government.

The Other Madisons review: an astonishing story of a president's black family

<embed> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/19/the-other-madisons-review-president-black-family </embed> the Guardian Michael Henry Adams Sun 19 Jul 2020 02.00 EDT

Bettye Kearse’s powerful book acts to memorably illuminate the poet Caroline Randall Williams’ vivid idea of the “rape-colored skin”. By infinite degrees, African Americans’ skins are lighter than our unknown west African ancestors. This is due to our haunted legacy of imposition. Black women submitted to predatory masters. Their husbands accepted and loved white men’s children.

The Black Descendants of President Madison

<embed> https://lithub.com/the-black-descendants-of-president-madison </embed> The Literary Hub By Bettye Kearse March 25, 2020

Bettye Kearse on the Complicated Lineage of Her Ancestors

My earliest recollection of hearing this story was as a five-year-old attempting to stand still while my mother worked on the dress she was creating for me. Every time I had a piano recital, she sewed me a new dress, and every time she sewed for me, I became bored and fidgety. I dreaded the fittings more than the performance itself. The performance lasted little more than two minutes; the fittings took forever. Mom pinned a seam; I tried on the dress. Mom sewed a seam; I tried on the dress. Mom pinned a hem; I tried on the dress . . . It was torture. My mother designed my outfits, but I did not care about ruffles, lace, and satin trim, and I did not want to play the piano. I wanted to dance. The closer the dress came to its final shape, the closer I came to driving my mother to her wits’ end. At every opportunity, I’d slip away and dance to the music in my head. I loved the Nutcracker Suite. I was the Sugar Plum Fairy. I arabesqued, twirled, pliéed, then twirled again, careful not to let the pins stick me. But my reprieves were brief.

Confederate Statues Were Never Really About Preserving History

<embed> https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/confederate-statues/ </embed>

The biggest spike in Confederate memorials came during the early 1900s, soon after Southern states enacted a number of sweeping laws to disenfranchise Black Americans and segregate society. During this period, more than 400 monuments were built as part of an organized strategy to reshape Civil War history. And this effort was largely spearheaded by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who sponsored hundreds of statues, predominantly in the South in the early 20th century — and as recently as 2011.

The Frenzy at David Duke’s Campaign Rallies

<embed> https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/07/david-duke-1990-senate-race-rallies.html </embed>

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, I look around at this country. I love this country deeply. And I believe we’re losing it,” he told them. “And I know what we once were, and I want to make us great again, ladies and gentlemen. We gotta stand up for this country!” see Trump 2016
As a Senate candidate, he used the “welfare queen” myth to rile up his white supporters.See Reagan 1976

Civil Rights History Project

<embed> https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/about-this-collection/ </embed>

On May 12, 2009, the U. S. Congress authorized a national initiative by passing The Civil Rights History Project Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-19). The law directed the Library of Congress (LOC) and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) to conduct a national survey of existing oral history collections with relevance to the Civil Rights movement to obtain justice, freedom and equality for African Americans and to record and make widely accessible new interviews with people who participated in the struggle. The project was initiated in 2010 with the survey and with interviews beginning in 2011.

Junípero Serra's road to sainthood is controversial for Native Americans

<embed> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/25/pope-francis-junipero-serra-sainthood-native-american-controversy </embed>

As Pope Francis plans to canonize ‘the evangeliser of the west’, descendants of those who first encountered the missionary recall a culture lost to violence

Ulysses S. Grant Launched an Illegal War Against the Plains Indians, Then Lied About It

<embed> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ulysses-grant-launched-illegal-war-plains-indians-180960787/ </embed>

The president promised peace with Indians — and covertly hatched the plot that provoked one of the bloodiest conflicts in the West

The Politic use of Law and Order and its racist origins

https://youtu.be/o1XeY6DHHmA

Southern Strategy, Silent Majority, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan: "Monkeys from those African countries uncomfortable wearing shoes", Lee Atwater: "Nigger, nigger, nigger", Barry Goldwater You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

Ruby Bridges Daisy Gabriel integrating School 1960

Short Clip of Ruby Bridges integrated school in New Orleans 1960 <embed> https://www.criterionchannel.com/the-children-were-watching </embed>

The Aunt Jemima brand, acknowledging its racist past, will be retired

<embed> https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/17/business/aunt-jemima-logo-change/index.html </embed>

RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA: Racial Violence after the Civil War, 1865-1876 EJI 6/2020

<embed> https://eji.org/reports/reconstruction-in-america-overview/ </embed>