On Jul 3, 2007, at 2:54 PM, harriott lomax wrote:
> ....., "Doesn't it make you angry...hate white people...etc...?"
> My response was "My African ancestors were brought here to work
> uncompensated for my English ancestors who stole the land from my
> American ancestors, how am I suppose to feel?"
An interesting but not quite complete point. I was reading and
agreeing until the last bit before the how am I supposed to feel part.
There are a few points i would like to bring up for consideration.
She stopped with "my American ancestors" whereas the completed
picture would be "my American ancestors who took it from my other
American ancestors". The Powhatans had not long been in the Virginia
Tidewater and had conquered other tribes already in possession of the
land. The archaeological record cannot at this point show who was
here earlier tribally and cannot really demarcate tribal identity
from artifacts yet anyway. It may be possible but would take a lot
more effort than has thus far been put to it.
Stronger groups push out, subsume or otherwise eliminate other less
strong groups. Whether that's in Africa, Asia, the Middle East,
Europe, North, Central or South America, Australia, etc. that's the
way humans have operated when there were enough of them to force
their will upon others. It increases group/tribal/chiefdom/city state/
region/country, etc. wealth, widens the gene pool, and increases
productive territory so that more little tribal members are produced.
Your basic Darwinism.
Each of these groups has something that it considers valuable. Gold
to the Aztecs and Inca wasn't wealth, it was a metal that could be
made into things that had value as things, not for the material from
which they were made. Gold to Europeans was something else entirely.
Copper to the Powhatans was valuable. To the English, it was nothing.
The records show that for a tiny scrap of copper, Europeans were able
to get food, women, or whatever the Powhatans had that they wanted.
Copper flooded the market so devaluation occurred. Glass beads worked
the same way in the fur trade for a while, then became totally
worthless.
I once read a science fiction story wherein earthlings went to
another planet and found the ground to be covered with diamonds,
rubies, emeralds, etc. As these were so plentiful, the inhabitants
valued something the earthlings had in abundance but was mundane on
earth and of little material value there. Real estate people talk of
"location, location, location" to determine value and the answer to
"what is a house worth?" is "what you will pay for it". Simple,
simplistic, but that's the reality.
So we switch to the Native American-English interaction sphere that
was Jamestown and early Virginia of the 17th century. The English
viewed the Powhatans as unsophisticated savages and the Powhatans had
exactly the same view of the English. Smith was able to "treat" with
the Powhatans because he had experience with the Muslim world that
operated in some ways similarly to the Powhatans. Each side got more
or less what it wanted from the other. Manhattan was sold to the
Dutch for $24 worth of beads and doubtless other transactions took
place. In each one of these, both sides got what they considered
valuable. The Dutch got a chunk of real estate from the Indians who
undoubtedly thought they'd pulled one over on the credulous Euros and
the Dutch doubtless did likewise.
1) Acquisition of territory by purchase using "currency" that both
sides agree is worth the deal will stand in any court of law,
assuming both sides are of equal mental capacity. 2)Acquisition of
territory by military means is what was also done, whether right,
wrong or indifferent to the standards of the day or now. 3)
Acquisition of territory by treaty between nations is the third
mechanism of land ownership transfer.
The welfare state analogy in a previous post was not on point for
that post but is slightly illustrative. If a majority has mistreated
a minority in the past and said minority now enjoys the full legal
benefits of the majority and is thus on an equal footing, I am quite
mystified as to why there should be attempts made to make me feel
guilty for events that my ancestors did not perpetrate, and in fact
died to stop, but because I am a Virginian and white, seemingly
automatically assumed to have been a de facto oppressor. Further,
given the dire straits that my ancestors appeared to have lived in in
all of their generations prior to my father's, I am also mystified as
to why it is felt necessary to provide additional benefits/
opportunities beyond those enumerated by the Declaration of
Independence. The DOI does not guarantee everyone anything but an
equal opportunity to succeed. This country was brought into being by
that document that we had an opportunity to "pursue" rather than to
"have" success. Again, I am writing about Virginia history, not the
broken treaties of the 19th century farther west. It seems to me
demeaning to the people who are quota-ized because it assumes that
without "help" they on their own cannot exceed the threshold. But, I
suppose we can all become Serbs who bemoan the loss of a battle 800
years ago and hold grudges forever.
Lyle Browning
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