A Further Discussion of Race and Racism

Currently I am reading Ward Churchill's "Fantasies of the Master Race." It is an excellent book about racism against Indians in book and film. He offers up some rather excellent critiques complete with the much notation. Here are a couple of quotes along with his sources:

[T]he colonizer needs the poverty and degradation of the colonized to justify his own place in the society. After all, where would he be without the colonized? He would not be able to do as well economically since the colonial system exploits the colonized to the profit of the colonizer. He would also lose much of his self-importance if he were simply one of many among his own kind. Second, the colonial situation manufactures colonists, just as it manufactures the colonized. It is not just the predisposition to become a colonizer or colonized that produces these roles...but the colonial situation itself. The colonizer comes with power into the colonial context: he has the economic and military might of the metropole behind him. The colonized has no power. If he attempts to fight, he is physically conquered. The colonized is not free to choose between being colonized or not. The colonizer can enforce his usurpation with great punishment. The colonized adjusts to the situation by developing those traits with which the colonizer characterizes him... Many of these traits are incompatible with each other, but that doesn't bother the colonizer, because the general traits are designed to destroy any culture or history that the colonized brings to the relationship. [gleaned from "Fantasies of the Master Race," by Ward Churchill, pg. 151 (City Lights edition). He quotes Martin Carnoy from his book, "Education as Cultural Imperialism," pg. 64.]

This is a big pattern, the relationship of colonizer to colonized. There is much to understand here that is both macro and micro, as should be well noted.

Here, lets go to the micro, cultural apporpriation. There is a peace group who uses the name of an Annishinabe activist. This name was used without permission from the family. The man, Whitefeather, whose name was appropriated for this alleged peace organization, was also re-interpreted by the head of this organization for means of creating legitimacy to his cause (as if peace wasn't legitimate enough). Currently, and in many circles, Indians are an excellent source of legitimizing ones cause without asking permission nor giving credit nor having a real understanding of the historical context.

This is another form of colonization. The colonizer gets to use whatever he wants from the colonized. He gets to mine intellectual resources, recreate them in an image useful to his own aggrandizement, and claim, falsely, an allegiance without substantiation nor participation of the colonized. This is not uncommon.

In order for the colonizer to be a complete master, it is not enough for him to be so in actual fact, but he must also believe in his legitimacy. In order for that legitimacy to be complete, it is not enough for the colonized to be a slave, he must also accept his role. The bond between colonizer and colonized is thus destructive and creative. It destroys and recreates the two partners of colonization into colonizer and colonized. One is disfigured into an oppressor, a partial, unpatriotic and treacherous being, worrying only about his privileges and their defense; the other into an oppressed creature whose development is broken and who compromises by his defeat. [gleaned from "Fantasies of the Master Race," by Ward Churchill, pg. 151-2 (City Lights edition). He quotes from Albert Memmi's book, "The Colonizer and the Colonized."]

The colonized usually do not speak too loudly about issues like "Whitefeather." The reason should be made clear in the Memmi quote. The colonized has been severly beaten and the colonizer has the tools to destroy any fight he may put up. There is NO equal footing on this issue.

The colonizer takes what he wants from the colonized for his own gain. The colonizer is aware of their role as master and the abilities, or lack thereof, of the colonized to fight back. The colonized are not allowed equal footing in the intellectual realms. The colonized do not have the media and the masses at its disposal. They would not be allowed equal footing, for example, in intellectual challenges to the use of Native names and mascots. The recent issue in Carpinteria, California is an excellent example.

The fact that the colonized face a rather daunting one sided fight, the colonized are aware of the challenges they face when confronting such issue as their names or mascots depicting racist imagery being used. That is on the face of it completely racist.

Why this is an issue and why Indians, for example, fight the racist use of their names and imagery, is because the only people it serves are the colonizers. It helps protect the colonizers privilege. It dehumanizes the colonized, and when the colonized reach up to fight back, they are knocked down and reminded of their position to the colonizer.

For the Peace Movement to use the name of an Indian without permission and WITH an imperical possession of everything colonized IS racist, and thus, in reality, not peaceful at all. It assists the colonizer in the dehumanization process of the colonized and aggrandizes at the colonizer at the colonized people's expense.

In Carpinteria, the colonizer with all of its imperical authority filled the school board with pro-mascot sympathasizers, as explained in previous posts. The colonizer clearly has the power on what is clearly an unequal playing field. The mascot reinstated, the colonizers make it clear to the colonized through things like death threats the position of the colonized in this situation.

This, the colonizer calls "freedom." This, the colonized, calls (and correctly in my opinion), "oppression."