An Interesting Unscientific Poll on Race
So here is something that I don't understand; it befuddles me. I have taken an unscientific poll in my classes for a couple of years now. I have no numbers to relate...it is only qualitative. Quick background: in my classes I require students to participate in a group project. Five students per group and the topics range from Native American reservations to the Great Depression to the Culture Clashes of the 1920s to the Vietnam War. They have to watch a film that I assign specific to each group but more importantly they have to go to assigned websites that have posted primary sources.
One of the group projects is on the Japanese Camps of the 1940s where U.S. citizens and non-citizens of Japanese descent were imprisoned after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. The Library of Congress has an excellent collection of Ansel Adams photographs from Manzanaar. Here is another site that my students are required to use for this project (you have to register for this site but it is free and worth it). In 1988, Congress authorized reparation payments to the survivors of the camps at $20,000/person.
Here is where the informal poll comes into play. Remember my students tend to be fairly conservative suburban and rural students. Almost all of my students agree that reparations should be paid to the Japanese-American survivors, in fact they argue quite demonstrably that $20,000 is not enough and more should be done. So, I try to push them a little further. I ask the students if Jews should be paid reparations for the money stolen by the Nazis during World War II? They reply unanimously that indeed Jews should receive reparations. Then I ask if the United States should use American taxpayer dollars (just as they did for the Japanese-Americans) to pay reparations for stolen land and resources from Native Americans? This is usually not unanimous but an overwhelming majority will say, yes, the U.S. should do this, although they claim that non-pecuniary measures should be included such as free education, health care etc.
Here is where it gets strange to me......I then ask if the U.S. should pay reparations for slavery?
One or two will say yes but the vast majority will say NO! In fact, the students get very restless even angry with me for bringing this up. It is an amazing shift in attitude within 5 seconds. I can feel the disdain from the students when I ask this question. So I then ask, why not? They respond something along the lines of: "it was a long time ago and if we could have paid reparations to the actual freedmen, then that is ok....but my family had nothing to do with slavery and so I owe them nothing. In fact, my family was poor and look at me...I have pulled myself up by my bootstraps, why can't they? They are too reliant on welfare." When I point out that the U.S. actually tried to pay reparations in the 1860s via the Radical Republican agenda of "40 acres and a mule" through the Freedmen's Bureau but southern whites through the Democrat Party actually undermined this process through Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws that established segregation, particularly in the South, I find that they are incapable of processing this. So then I bring up the connection between race and class that hurricane Katrina and New Orleans made so evident, and they have trouble understanding that blacks in New Orleans could not get out of the city....they think that African-Americans CHOSE to stay in the city during and after the hurricane. In other words, they are unwilling to acknowledge that one reason class is tied to race is because when slaves were freed whites made specific laws that were designed to stifle black, but help white economic progress and that legacy is still often felt today....i.e. Hurricane Katrina.
So this has got me in a quandry. Obviously they are not being intellectually honest....or intellectually aware of their own argument. Native American land was stolen over a hundred years ago and the Native Americans living on reservations today are not the ones whose land was stolen during Indian removal policies of the 1830s-1890s. To me, this distinction of time, reference to slavery reparations, makes no sense at all. Why are they willing to support reparations for Native Americans but not African Americans? I don't consider 95% of them to be racist (after all, they support reparations for other racial/ethnic groups) but I can't quite figure out why most of them think about race in this particular way: there seems to be a disconnect on the issues of race. Is it because we as historians still have a huge task in front of us in dismantling the historical myths written by southern historians from 1865-1964? This was truly a case of the losers writing the history books; am I still seeing the fruits of this in 2007? Or has Reaganomics and conservative-cowboy-rugged-individualism so gripped these students that they are not able to see that a free market does not actually exist in the United States......that democracy in America has, for the most part, meant democracy for whites and (until recently) disenfranchisement for blacks both politically and economically? Or is it an expression of white guilt coupled with a resentment of defeatism and colonialism in the South? At least I got them to admit that Native Americans should receive compensation of some sort.....I count that as a victory.
3 comments:
Perhaps your students support raparations for Japanese Americans because the raparations went directly to Japanese Americans who had been interned, not their descendants. (Actually, there were two rounds of raparations. The U.S. paid claims for loss of property and income to Japanese American immediatley after the war. You should have told your students that Japanese Americans were required to move away from the west coast. Those able to relocate were not forced into the internment camps. Also Japanese Americans were free to leave the internment camps at any time, provided they didn't return to the West Coast until the end of the war. Some who had relatives to stay with or were able to find jobs away from the west coast, did leave the internment camps. Students could leave the camps to attend college.)
The primary argument against rapartions for African Americans is that African Americans enjoy much higher standards of living than Africans whose ancestors were not transported to America. This makes them beneficiaries rather than victims of the slave trade. Also, blacks as well as whites onwed slaves. About 6 percent of whites owned slaves while about 1.6 percent of free blacks owned slaves.
Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the Native American waged incessant, brutal warfare against one another. The purpose of these tribal conflicts were to decimate or exterminate rival tribes and seize their women, property and territory. The casuality rate, as a percentage of population, was much higher than Europeans conficts, event those of the 20th century. If the Europeans have been of the same race as Native Americans, the European conquest would be seen as benevolent.
The reservation system is a form of raparations but it traps many Native Americans (except those whose reservation includes gambling casinos)in a cycle of proverty. We could end this cycle of poverty by ending the reservation system and forcing Native Americans who live on reservations into the mainstream of American societys, where they would be virtually indistinguishable from Hispanic Americans.
Hi Blair, thanks for responding. Sorry I haven't posted earlier but the grading has gotten to me as of late.
I guess I would have to disagree with some of your interpretations. I don't think that students supported the Japanese reparations because they went directly to those who suffered. The students in my class also supported reparations for Native Americans, who although you could argue are still directly suffering, are the descendents of the people who actually lost land to the U.S. I am struck by the literal interpretation of the post...indeed some people could leave, particularly if they volunteered to serve in the military, but I am not comfortable with your level of interpretation that "Japanese Americans were free to leave the internment camps at any time, provided they didn't return to the West Coast..." I think that statement significantly dilutes the reality that the U.S. government forced them to sell their homes, farms, etc. often at a financial loss and the camps were so obviously constructed along racial/ethnic definitions. I don't think that many were able to leave as easily as you suggest....otherwise, they would have left. The first round of reparations hardly qualified as anything resembling justice. Very few people actually were compensated.
I think the notion that African Americans "enjoy higher standards of living than Africans whose ancestors were not transported to America" is highly problematic. Such a school of thought only imagines slavery from a post-1964 position, that is to say, after political equality (not economic equality) became law. It would be impossible to articulate such a statement in 1850. Compensation not only for the forced migration to another continent but also for the hundreds of years of black labor via an oppressive and often cruel labor system is also included in the demand for reparations. I think this school of thought also underestimates some of the wealth in Africa. There are certainly huge regions of poverty in Africa...but there are huge regions of poverty in the United States too. John Thornton persuasively argues that the slave system in Africa was not as oppressive as the "peculiar institution" in the United States. I do not think that slaves in America had it better than the people in Africa; it was much worse in the U.S. Neither does this position acknowledge the Black Codes and the Jim Crow Laws made by whites to insure that blacks would remain poor, illiterate, and submissive. A statement regarding African Americans living better than Africans could not be articulated in 1850 or 1910 or, for that matter, 1963. To say that African Americans enjoy a much higher standard of living ignores the problems of race and class uncovered by Hurrican Katrina. I think this is a statement that is true for SOME African Americans and only for the last 20 years. I think it would also be accurate to say that there are many white Americans today who have worse lives in the U.S. than many Africans. In other words, this point of view fails to acknowledge poverty in the U.S. and the existence of a middle class in Africa. So the reparation arguement that the transatlantic slave trade, and for that matter, slavery, was a "good thing" is way too whiggish to be considered accurate.
Your statistics: what time period do these cover? 1680s, 1750s, 1850s? Slavery had changed over the centuries and when it became race-based around 1690 or so, the numbers begin to fluctuate.
I think, again, your statment miscalculates the lives of Native Americans before European Contact and during the Columbian Exchange. Native Americans were not trying to exterminate each other. They were trying to control other tribes and accumulate wealth and sometimes this did end in extreme brutality, particularly when an opposing tribe violated the unwritten boundaries of hunting, fishing, etc. But no one was really trying to exterminate each other. Such a statement suggests that Indians were simply barbarian hordes who had no ability to govern, negotiate, or build hegemonic blocs of power. This is simply not true. Historians Richard White, Vine Deloria, Jr., Robert Hoxie, even priests who witnessed Cortez's brutality and wrote critically of the conquistador would reject this statement. Yes it was brutal, yes they tortured, yes they killed but they were acting the same way Europeans were acting. What they were not doing was committing genocide; the same cannot be said of Europeans, particularly the English after they realized the power of smallpox and used it to decimate villages by handing out "gifts" or blankets laced with the smallpox virus. It is simply false to say "If the Europeans have been of the same race as Native Americans, the European conquest would be seen as benevolent."
To argue that the reservation system is a form of reparations is simply untrue. The Dawes Severalty Act dishonestly, and perhaps even illegally, took reservation land away from Native Americans. Reservations are not the remnants of reparations, they are the remnants of thievery. Vine Deloria, Jr. would disagree with your idea of doing away with the reservation system so that the U.S. could assimilate them into American culture. He would argue that the only solution is to simply "leave us alone."
So, considering all of this, I cannot accept your assertion that my students accepted Japanese American reparations because compensation went directly to those who suffered. There is something else going on and it is definitely influenced by their perspective (I would go so far as to say misunderstanding) of race and how it is intertwined with class. Thank you for your comment Blair, it has been very stimulating to think about.
In 1945, when the federal government paid damages to Japanese-Americans for lost property and income, they paid 85 percent of the claims exactly as presented. The argument that arose later was that the lost property would have increased in value had Japanese Americans held onto it for another 50 years. They wanted to be paid in 1990s dollars rather than 1945 dollars. The poor logic of this argument is that the same claim could be made after another 50 years have past, since the lost property will have again increased in value.
Only a small percentage of Japanese American internees volunteered for military service—who could blame them. The famed Japanese American combat units came from Hawaii, where Japanese Amricans were not interned, probably because there were too many of them.
Living conditions were considered substandard in only one of the interment camps. A new interment camp was quickly built to replace it. Once the Japanese Americans had moved to the new camp, the U.S. Army moved U.S. soldiers and their families into the old camp.
The Japanese Americans put the first round of reparations to good use. They bought new properties and started over. Today, their average incomes are higher than non-Hispanic whites and they make up about 45 percent of students at California’s flagship universities, even though they remain a small percentage of the population.
I think slavery appeared to become race-based because because the gradual decline of slavery in Europe robbed it of diversity. Slavery predates written history, and for most of history it offered equal opportunity to slaves of all races.
Hundreds of white slaves--not to be confused with indentured servants--were transported from Europe to the Americas. There were slaves in the same slaves sense as black slaves were slaves. The Americans perferred African slaves who had a partial immunity to yellow fever and malaria, which killed the white slaves in droves.
The number of whites who lost homes to Katrina is much closer to the number of blacks who lost homes than news footage shot in New Orleans makes it seem. If you looked beneath skin color in New Orleans, what you saw was thousands of single mothers with dependant children. African Americans are disproportionately poor. About 9 million African Americans live in poverty compared to about 16 million non-Hispanic whites who live in poverty, a fact that is not often mentioned since it would tend to dilute support for affirmative action programs. The primary cause of poverty for both groups is unwed or divorced mothers with dependent children. There are, of course, more unwed white mothers than unwed black mothers, but the percentage is higher for blacks. (Activists say racism causes black mothers to bear children out of wedlock; sexual intercourse is suspected as the cause of pregnacy among unwed white women.)
Only about 10 percent of non-Hispanic whites live in poverty compared to about 24 percent of black. Racism is undoubtedly a major reason for this, but demographics also play a role. There are about 750 million Baby Boomers, nearly a third of the total population. They are overwhelmingly white and they are at the peak of their income-earning potential. They own equity in their homes and no longer have dependent children to support; this makes them seem very rich. However, the first cohort of the Baby Boom turns 60 this summer, and most will retire over the next two decades. About 750 million non-Hispanic whites are about to see their incomes cut by about 60 percent. To make matters worse, the overly optimistic Baby Boom has spent more than it earns and a larger percentage of them are sunk deep in debt (Bill Gates is rumored to have some funds set aside). This is going to do wonders in reducing the “wealth gap” between white and black America.
Thanks largely to Civil Rights legislation enacted in the 1950s and 1960s, about 76 percent of African Americans are middle class. We need to leave affirmative action programs in place a little longer. As the Baby Boom retires, we will lose nearly one-third of the work force and are going to needs lots of people of all races to fill vacancies. African Americans need to position themselves and their children to take advantage of shifting demographics. Their competition will come from Hispanic Americans who now make up the nation’s largest minority group. At present, 23.9 percent of Hispanic Americans live below the poverty level, but this doesn’t count millions of undocumented workers. The high school dropout rate is dismal for blacks, but it’s really horrendous for Hispanic American students. More blacks than Hispanics are going to college, so African Americans have a head start, but will it last?
Most Hispanic Americans are Mexican Americans, who tend to be about 60 percent European and 40 percent Native American. (Mexicans emphasize their European heritage while Mexican Americans celebrate their Native American heritage, which make eligible for affirmative action.) Intermarriage between Anglos and Hispanic is common, and the offspring of these unions (think Cameron Diaz) also become eligible for affirmative action. Surveys show Mexican Americans are most likely than non-Hispanic whites to have more racist attitudes toward blacks.
Today, many white college students, who often live in interracial dorms and share rooms with black or Hispanic students, say racism is no longer an important factor, except on campuses where cultural centers and racially exclusive dorms continue to divide the races. As a person who grew up in the segregated South, this sounds too good to be true. At any rate, the conflict between races is becoming a conflict between African Americans and Hispanic Americans, who aren’t likely to favor reparations for slavery. In cities such as Dallas and Houston, Hispanics have already taken control of the school boards and city councils from African Americans. They will soon become an absolute majority in Texas and California, the nation’s two most populous states.
I live in El Paso, a city of 750,000 that is 80 percent Hispanic. Once the city’s African Americans, Native Americans, Asians and non-Hispanic white females are included, about 95 percent of the population is eligible for affirmative action. (As you might guess, about 95 percent of El Pasoans favor affirmative action.) The city’s Anglo population is shrinking, not only as a percentage of population but in real numbers. It’s not a case of white flight; the city’s suburbs are more predominately Hispanic than the city itself. Anglos like living in El Paso, but are simply aging and beginning to die off. (Oddly, El Paso boasts of its great diversity, as if by becoming 100-percent Hispanic it will become 100-percent diverse.) Hispanics dominate every neighborhood, from the $450,000 houses perched on the high mesas to the tiny adobe dwellings pushed up against the Rio Grande opposite the slums of Juarez. They also dominate every income group. Race relations are exceptionally good; even the city’s African Americans agree. However, the city is developing along the same pattern as cities with more diverse populations. The inner city is poor and decaying while the outer city is affluent and unapologetic. In the lower valley, the poor shop in a gigantic flea market filled with second-had clothing and pirated DVDs; in the upper valley the children of second- and third-generation Mexican-Americans shop at upscale suburban shopping malls. We have rich kids’ schools and poor kids' schools, but all schools are overwhelmingly Mexican-American. The rich kids get affirmative action admittance to Ivy league schools while the poor kids drop out or go to community college and, later, to the University of Texas at El Paso, where they wear T-Shirts emblazoned “La Universidad. My perception is that a “raceless” society would differ from the society we have today only in skin tone.
Students should ask themselves what might have happen if the balance of power between Europeans and Native Americans had been reversed. Since Native Americans are descended from Asiatic people, the Mongol invasions of Europe might supply part of the answer. The first clash between Europeans and Native Americans occurred in Greenland rather than in North American or South America. Greenland was empty when Icelanders settled it around 984. The Scandinavians built settlements in deep fjords in the south and central part of the island, which is practically continental in size. About 200 years later, Inuits crossed from North America to Greenland, established settlements in the north and began attacking the Icelandic settlements. (The Scandinavians were unaware of the Inuits’ presence until they found one of their villages destroyed and its inhabitants murdered.) After a few inconclusive battles, the Inuits and Scandinavians settled down to a peaceful coexistence with the Inuits never venturing south and the Scandinavians never venturing north. After almost five hundred years, the Scandinavian settlements simply vanished. This could have been due to famine or the bubonic plague or the Inuit may have simply exterminated the Scandinavians as their population shrank. Many historians conclude it was a combination of these three factors.
Most Americans believe Native American tribes lived on their “ancestral land” for thousand of years before Europeans arrived, but this is not even close to the truth. They migrated constantly to escape diminishing natural resources, unfavorable climate changes, or hostile neighbors. For example, we often hear of how the Black Hills are sacred to the Lakota (Sioux) who have lived near them since “time immemorial.” However, the Lakota first arrived in the Black Hills around 1775, years after the French had explored the region and only 40 years before the first white settlement. The emerging horse culture lured the Lakota onto the plains. As they migrated from the Great lakes area to the Black Hills, they pushed aside tribes that lay in their path. At one site each of the Missouri, they destroyed a fortified Mandan, Arikara and Hidatsa village and slaughtered 400 men, women and children. By way of comparison, Colorado volunteers killed 180 Native Americans at Sand Creek, the most infamous of European atrocities against Native Americans.
While Native American tribes sometimes absorbed other tribes, they never attempted, as the Europeans did, to preserve an opposing tribe’s culture by allocating land to them and distributing aid. Cultures that do not adapt disappear; Native American culture endures mostly as a tourist attraction. Most Native Americans live on large cities. Some Native Americans ask only to be left alone on their reservations, but most very much like modern conveniences: electricity, running water, indoor plumbing, cable television, personal computers, schools and supermarkets. When activist refer to “traditional” Native Americans, it’s an euphemism for “minority.” Most tribal councils eagerly approve mining, drilling and commercial ventures (casinos and tourist shops) that bring in revenue. Few Native Americans believe rain dances impact rainfall or that the moon is a celestial reincarnation of Shining Woman, any more that the Irish believe in leprechauns. Some medicine men or shaman still eke out a precarious living, but most Native Americans understand chants and herbs work best when combined with antibiotics.
Human being may well have been happiest and healthiest during the hunter-gathering stage of existence, as some people claim, as long as they were located near a dependable food source and could fend of rivals. It will be interesting to see what happens if the global warming alarms turn out to accurate. As a teacher, it must help you interest your students in cultural adaptations. Do we have to adapt or die, or will be able to struggle along until the advance of the next ice age.
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