Technology and conquest

Technology was the key for expansion and domination.  Warfare technology was especially vital in this endeavor.  Jared Diamond wrote about this at length in his book “Guns, Germs and Steel” where he identifies those three as the most vital agents of conquest.  Here’s an excerpt from the  PBS website about the show based on the book:

Jared Diamond’s journey of discovery began on the island of Papua New Guinea. There, in 1974, a local named Yali asked Diamond a deceptively simple question:

Image via Wikipedia

“Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”

Diamond realized that Yali’s question penetrated the heart of a great mystery of human history — the roots of global inequality.

Why were Europeans the ones with all the cargo? Why had they taken over so much of the world, instead of the native people of New Guinea? How did Europeans end up with what Diamond terms the agents of conquest: guns, germs and steel? It was these agents of conquest that allowed 168 Spanish conquistadors to defeat an Imperial Inca army of 80,000 in 1532, and set a pattern of European conquest which would continue right up to the present day.

Diamond knew that the answer had little to do with ingenuity or individual skill. From his own experience in the jungles of New Guinea, he had observed that native hunter-gatherers were just as intelligent as people of European descent — and far more resourceful. Their lives were tough, and it seemed a terrible paradox of history that these extraordinary people should be the conquered, and not the conquerors.

To examine the reasons for European success, Jared realized he had to peel back the layers of history and begin his search at a time of equality – a time when all the peoples of the world lived in exactly the same way.

To get a little philosophical, I want to pose some questions: Is conquest necessarily a good thing?  Why was it important for a country like Britain to have a massive empire – in other words, why is expansion necessary to be seen as “thriving”?  Can’t a country or nation thrive without colonizing other places?  

Wetback, the Undocumented Documentary

It is often easy to forget about the impact of immigration on the individuals and families that experience it when the political conversation is all about building walls, border control and the new laws in places like Arizona and Mississippi. I recently saw an eye-opening documentary called “Wetback” which offers a first-person perspective of undocumented workers. It’s available on Netflix, here!

 

Image via IMDB

 

What it means to be a colony

America began as a colony of England in the 16th Century. At this time in history, European countries were busy at work colonizing areas – you may have heard this called the Age of Discovery. This era in history was focused on European powers competing with each other for the control of “new” territories (new to the Europeans, anyway). What often gets lost in the story of European expansion is the stories of all the indigenous people that were colonized by the European empires, and did not appreciate the Europeans “discovering” their long-established cultures.

Some of these European powers included the Portuguese Empire, Spanish Empire, French Empire, and British Empire. In addition to the negative effects on the indigenous cultures, the European demand for labor in its new colonies is what prompted the African enslavement system across the Atlantic. This devastating holocaust had a hard-hitting and long-lasting affect on Africa and Africans. The enslavement caused a depopulation, societal disruption and destruction of Africa, especially West Africa; a loss of youth and skilled personnel; and economic devastations among other repercussions.

Some positive aspects of colonialism are: technological advancements, medical advances and new institutions in the colonized area. Some negative aspects include: spread of diseases, social oppression and exploitation, enslavement and genocide of the natives by the colonizers. Do the positives outweigh the negatives?

If you’d like to learn more here are some resources:
The impact of the slave trade on Africa by Elikia M’bokolo

Slavery in Africa

Slave trade: a root of contemporary African Crisis by Tunde Obadina

As an anti-racist how do you, if at all, reject your privilege?

A question was posed to me on twitter from @journalproject: “As an anti-racist how do you, if at all, reject your privilege?”

My answer is too long for 140 characters…..

I see privilege as having multiple levels.  There is systemic privilege that I have because I live in a culture where European-American people dominate the media, business, real estate, banking, and education. Everywhere I go I see people who look like me, products that are designed for my skin tone and hair texture.  When I walk into a business I am less likely to be assumed to be a drug user, a criminal, a thug, or -insert negative stereotype here-.  I am assumed to be at least somewhat intelligent & capable just because I’m white. I feel that there is very little I can do in my day-to-day existence that rejects this systemic privilege.  It is infused through everything I do and see as a European-American in a culture dominated by European-American standards and ideals.

Then there is individual privilege, and what one chooses to do with it. Most European-Americans are blissfully unaware that they even have privilege; they see themselves succeeding and assume it is solely because of their hard work and sacrifice. The problem with this is that it gives an unrealistic view of oppressed groups and it ignores the centuries of policies and laws that were solely advantageous to white people.

Having white privilege has allowed me to be educated in private schools and maintain a good GPA even though I didn’t try very hard. It has probably gotten me into more than one job that I wasn’t completely qualified for. I have never been stopped for ‘driving while white’, and I’ve never had a problem finding greeting cards, toys, or hair care products that reflect my identity. These are things I cannot individually change; I can only be aware and educate others.

So how do I reject my privilege?  I reject it by speaking out when people make racist comments.  I reject it by acknowledging that my culture, my physical characteristics, and my language are not superior to anyone else’s. I reject it by believing a person of color when they tell me they’ve experienced discrimination. I reject it by pursuing a career where I educate young people about systems of oppression and privilege. I reject it by reminding myself that I got where I am today not because I’m a super genius but because the system was created so that I would succeed and others would not. I reject it by valuing the voices of people of color, by acknowledging that they have said everything I could ever say about white privilege and oppression (and much more eloquently than I could), and being okay with the fact that people of color need their own safe space that I am not allowed into.

Off the cuff, that’s how I reject my privilege.

Storm: The Baby With No Gender

I have been keeping an eye on the news story out of Toronto about a baby whose parents are not telling people the baby’s sex, and is raising the baby non-gendered. I personally see nothing wrong with this approach; I have personally considered ways to raise my (future) child as genderless as possible until they are able to identify their own gender.  There is a lot to say about the issue but Questioning Transphobia did an excellent job of covering many of the important points.

The full post is worth the read, but here’s some highlights:

As one can imagine in our cis-centric* society, the family has received an enormous amount of criticism and little praise for their parenting choices. They have been accused of making their baby in to a “social experiment”, of “borderline child abuse”, and “being amoral hippies” in commentary from a multitude of sources. This fire storm of controversy and personal accusation have all come in the name of the “the good of the baby”.

But it’s hard for me to believe that any of this criticism can be counted on as being intellectually honest or in the interest of Storm.  Storm and zir’s parents are experiencing what trans people are well used to, namely, they’re receiving criticism that is not about Storm at all. Instead, Storm and zir parents are being used by cis people as foils for their own personal conflicts, confusion and stereotypes about gender and gender relations.

 

Socialization can come in good and bad forms. For example many kids today are socialized in to racist ideology and behavior. Yet we don’t talk about the evils of that kind of socialization because it would challenge white supremacy prevalent in American society. And in this case, we don’t hear about objections over gender socialization until people are giving their children the free will in a challenge to cis-supremacy.

And our normative gender relations and stereotyping have an enormous political agenda, namely in defending patriarchy, heterosexism and cis-supremacy to the bitter end.

 

*Here’s a quick explanation (paraphrased from this source)

‘Cis’ is an abbreviated version of ‘cisgender’ or ‘cissexual’, i.e. the opposite of ‘transgender’ or ‘transsexual’.

‘Cisgender’ means those whose identity and sense of themselves is aligned with the sex/gender they were born with. They have no sense of ‘bodily dissonance’ that trans people experience.

So cis-centric has the same function as heteronormativity, the insistence on straight orientation being the ‘default’ and anything else being the ‘other’.

If our society is ciscentric, it is because it assumes cis people are normal while trans people are abnormal.

Are women the only ones who need work/life balance?

I was pointed to this article in the NY Times with the sensationalistic title, “Should Women Be Doctors?“

We never hear of a father who can’t handle being a parent and holding down a career. Why are women who have male spouses still expected to be the sole caretakers for their children, while the fathers are allowed to be worry- and distraction- free at work? Why isn’t parenting a shared responsibility? Why does the onus always come down on the woman – never the men – to make the (sometimes impossible) decisions between career and children?

I think it is time that we shed these old-fashioned gender norms where the woman is the sole caretaker of the children while the man works outside the home to support his wife and children.  It has been over sixty years since that was the norm for most urban households in this country. With an increase in women in the workforce we should also see an increase in the equity of parenting responsibilities.

I wonder if the norms are at all changed in my generation – people who graduated high school somewhere between 1993 and 2003. Young parents, are you equitable in your parenting responsibility?  Or are the women still required to balance her own life, plus the lives of her children, and a career?

 

Way Back Wednesday

I’m a big fan of historical photographs, particularly of subjects and events that are rarely covered in mainstream media.  So I’ve decided to create a new project here at Progressive Scholar, ‘Way Back Wednesday’.  I’ll be scouring the Library of Congress photo archives and other places for photos that captivate me.

Here are a series of photographs taken at the Agricultural and Mechanical College in Greensboro, North Carolina in the 1890s.  These photos were collected for the  “Exhibit of American Negroes,” which W.E.B. Du Bois helped to organize for the Paris Exposition of 1900. The collection, DuBois writes, is “an attempt to give, in as systematic and compact form as possible, the history and present condition of a large group of human beings.”  DuBois notes that the photographs encapsulates a wide range of different conditions, “beginning with the homeless freedman and ending with the modern brick schoolhouse and its teachers.”   The whole of DuBois’ article is spectacular so give it a read if you have the time or interest.

Founded in 1891, the Agricultural and Mechanical College quickly became one of the major African American colleges in North Carolina. Today it is known as North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.

A&M students learning Blacksmithing.

A&M students in the Biological Laboratory

A&M students learn buttermaking

Eight Things Whites Can Do To Be Anti-Racist

The other day I was conversing with folks on Twitter about what it means to be white and anti-racist, and whether it is possible, considering Derrick Bell‘s theory of Interest Convergence, to be anti-racist without having some self-interest in the outcome.  I commented that I believe it is in everyone’s interest to be anti-racist because the oppression of one holds the entire society back.  There is no true success that comes from privilege if someone else has been oppressed in order for me to “succeed”.

Out of that conversation and further reflection, I came up with this list!

Eight Things Whites Can Do To Be Anti-Racist (Not Just Less Racist)

“I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group” ~Peggy McIntosh

8.   Don’t assume that racism is gone just because of the Civil Rights Act or Brown vs. Board of Education.   This is a fallacy that a lot of white people want to believe.  It is your responsibility to have your eyes open and to be able to identify the current sources and causes of oppression and racism.

Given the way that whiteness has been rendered invisible in our society, much of our training as white people has taught us to see racism and racial hierarchies as normal. This is probably our single greatest challenge as allies. Even as we work to end racism, it is constantly cultivated in the world around us and in ourselves. We need to persistently root it out. ¹

7.  Learn American history.  Not the history you were taught in school, because that’s not accurate history.  Read A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America and A People’s History of the United States, for a start.  (Here’s the graphic adaptation of A People’s History, which would be great for kids and young adults – or anyone who doesn’t like to read.)  After you’ve read those, check out all the writers who wrote about oppression and white privilege way before any white people did: W.E.B. DuBois, Malcolm X, Sojourner Truth, Alice Walker, Richard Wright, Alex Haley, Audre Lorde, Harriet Ann Jacobs.

6. Understand White Privilege and be aware that you have it, all the time.  Read and reflect on Peggy McIntosh’s Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.  Share it with your friends and family; talk about it at work.

5.  Challenge yourself and your loved ones. Talk to your friends about white privilege and institutional discrimination. Be observant and mindful of your actions, and embrace the discomfort you may feel about being white in America.   Read Tim Wise’s We Can’t Teach What We Don’t Know.  Remember that it is your responsibility to call attention to racist comments, prejudiced thinking, and discriminatory actions.  I know it’s difficult, but you aren’t truly an anti-racist if you can’t challenge racism when it happens around you.

4  Remember that race is a social construct. Race is a label someone is given based on their skin tone and physical characteristics.  A person’s race is externally decided and has nothing to do with genetics, culture, intellect, or personality. Read that again: a person’s race has no influence on their intelligence, ability to speak clearly, or their ability to learn.

3. Don’t believe the colorblind myth.   I wrote a while back about this topic in more detail. People of color are not just exactly like you, except a different skin color.  This is a perilous way of thinking which drastically diminishes the value of difference and diversity.  It also forces those real differences in culture, experience, and perspectives to be oppressed.

2.  Don’t pretend to be an expert or think that you truly understand what it is like for people of color in America.   Because you will never truly understand their struggle.  Humility on your part is required, and your role is to be a supporting voice to people of color.  Don’t let anybody tell you that whites should not be involved in anti-racist work, because if whites aren’t involved, then racism and oppression will never stop.

1. Do something with that all that privilege. So you’re white, and you have a lot of privilege.  This can include economic privilege, social privilege (knowing the right people), professional privilege (getting jobs because you’re presumed to be more competent/capable than others), educational privilege, and the list goes on and on.   So what are you going to do with all that privilege?  One of the best things to do is to use your privilege to create opportunities for people of color so that they can reach their full potential, too.

References

¹ Michael, A., and Conger, M.C. (2009). Becoming an Anti-Racist White Ally: How a White Affinity Group Can Help. Perspectives of Urban Education.

Weekly Progressive Scholar Reader

There’s been great activity in the blogosphere lately.  Here’s just a hodge-podge of what I’ve been reading:

From COLORLINES:

Senate Negotiations Narrow DREAM Act’s Scope as Vote Nears

Image via Wikipedia

Rosa Parks and the Love For Justice

(Celebrating the 55th Anniversary of Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama.)

Campus Progress:

Pentagon Report on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t’ Tell Says Troops Are For Repeal

The Need for Unemployment Benefits Is Still Great

Celebrities’ Misguided Activism Compares Abstaining from Social Networking to Death

From EcoLocalizer:

Bicycle-Friendly University Award System

From Race-Talk:

World AIDS Day 2010: Victory and voice

ASU students rally to push passage of elusive DREAM Act

Why WikiLeaks is good for democracy

From Humane Connection:

Using a Little Sweat of Our Own to Find Out About Corporate Practices & Sweatshops

Dear Riki: Less Schtick, More Substance!

Ever since I read “Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Primer“, I have held Riki Wilchins as a role model and favorite queer theorist.  So you can imagine my glee (and my squeeee!) when I heard that she was slated to speak at my university.

Riki Wilchins (taken by Todd Franson, borrowed from metroweekly.com)

Having seen Angela Davis speak last year, I was expecting a brilliant speech about transgender issues and identities, an opportunity to open the door to more conversations of this sort and an increased awareness among the students, faculty and administrators in the audience. Instead, what we got was a whole lot of schtick and very little substance.