Racism is insidious and can lie dormant in our social relations as long as the hierarchy is maintained. [...]]]> Huh?  What?  Is that a word?  Yeah, it is…  But we’ll get to that in a little bit.  First, I want to introduce you to a bit of American history you may not know.  Most people don’t.

Racism is insidious and can lie dormant in our social relations as long as the hierarchy is maintained.  This is true for the White – African-American relationship that evolved after the Civil War and it is true for the White – Native American relations since the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

In 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act which was designed to force the so-called “Five Civilized Tribes” to move west of the Mississippi, then the western boundary of the burgeoning United States.

While the Act was supposedly “voluntary,” there were countless examples of coercive action on the part of the US government.  This was all part of the so-called “Manifest Destiny” of the United States.  Native Americans were pushed west and into, for the most part, Oklahoma.

Once they were removed from the east (and the higher-denstity population zones), the real process of eradication and assimilation could begin.  Not necessarily physical eradication (although our treatment of Native Americans barely rises to the level of indifference, that’s a topic for another day), but a cultural eradication.

Boarding schools were major agents in the loss of Indian languages.  Children who were caught speaking Indian languages were rapped on the knuckles or made to stand in corners with rags tied around their mouths.  Many children forgot their languages or became ashamed to even admit that they knew them.…

Language is the major carrier of culture.…  When the language is lost, a great deal of the culture is lost also.  Many things cannot be fully translated.  With the words, sounds and rhythm of native speech goes the heart of the culture.  Nothing was done more to weaken Indian culture than attacks on Indian languages made in B.I.A. [Bureau of Indian Affairs] boarding schools….

Many Indian children who spent their formative years in boarding schools grew up unable to fit comfortably into either Indian or non-Indian society.  These children had essentially lost their parents and the chance of a normal family life.  They had been subjected to rigorous discipline combined with attacks on their personal and cultural identity, and denied nurturing relationships with any adults.…

When and if these children returned to their tribes, they often had difficulty fitting into a family and tribal life which they did not completely understand.  Having been denied normal Indian childhood experiences and role models, they were delayed in their social and emotional development as Indian people.  A large number of these children developed severe problems in adulthood, such as alcoholism, depression and violent behavior.

One lasting consequence of the boarding school experience has been an upsurge in child neglect and a cycle of removal of successive generations of Indian children from their parents. (from The Swinomish Tribal Mental Health Project (1991))

So imagine my surprise when I read that a school in Wisconsin, in 2012, was re-enacting a version of this cultural hegemony.

SHAWANO, WISCONSIN – What’s love got to do with it? Not much, especially if you say the words “I love you” in the Menominee language in front of a certain Wisconsin teacher.

Seventh grader Miranda Washinawatok, Menominee, found this out.

Miranda speaks two languages: Menominee and English. She also plays on her basketball team. However, two Thursdays ago she was suspended for one basketball game because she spoke Menominee to a fellow classmate during class.

Miranda attends Sacred Heart Catholic Academy in Shawano, Wisconsin. The school body is over 60 percent American Indian. The school is approximately six miles from the south border of the Menominee Indian Tribe Reservation.

Miranda and a fellow classmate were talking to each other when Miranda told her how to say “Hello” and “I love you” in Menominee.

Ketapanen, the title of this post, means “I love you” in Menominee.

“The teacher went back to where the two were sitting and literally slammed her hand down on the desk and said, “How do I know you are not saying something bad?”

Perhaps this teacher should learn a few words in the native language of 60% of her students.  Perhaps she shouldn’t assume that the children are misbehaving.  Perhaps she could ask the question, “Excuse me, that’s beautiful!  What does it mean?”

The story did not end there. In the next session, another teacher told Miranda she did not appreciate her getting the other teacher upset because “she is like a daughter to me.”
By the time, Miranda was picked up by her mother she was upset for being suspended.

This young woman was suspended for having the audacity to speak her native language.  Cultural eradication rarely percolates to the surface like this, but when it does, it’s instructive to recognize the roots of this institutional racism.  This is why what this teacher did was so awful.

But I expect this teacher will come to regret targeting this particular Native American student.

“Miranda knows quite a bit of the Menominee language. We speak it. My mother, Karen Washinawatok, is the director of the Language and Culture Commission of the Menominee Tribe. She has a degree in linguistics from the University of Arizona’s College of Education-AILDI American Indian Language Development Institute. She is a former tribal chair and is strong into our culture,” states [Miranda's mother,] Tanaes Washinawatok.

Haven’t Native American’s suffered enough at the hands of Europeans?  Must they go on suffering this kind of cultural humiliation?

But people close to Paul’s operations said he was deeply involved in the company that produced the newsletters, Ron Paul & Associates, and closely monitored its operations, signing off [...]]]> Ron Paul’s attempts to deny his involvement in the creation of racist newsletters that bear his name are becoming increasingly hard to reconcile with reality.

But people close to Paul’s operations said he was deeply involved in the company that produced the newsletters, Ron Paul & Associates, and closely monitored its operations, signing off on articles and speaking to staff members virtually every day.

“It was his newsletter, and it was under his name, so he always got to see the final product. . . . He would proof it,’’ said Renae Hathway, a former secretary in Paul’s company and a supporter of the Texas congressman.

A person involved in Paul’s businesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid criticizing a former employer, said Paul and his associates decided in the late 1980s to try to increase sales by making the newsletters more provocative. They discussed adding controversial material, including racial statements, to help the business, the person said.

“It was playing on a growing racial tension, economic tension, fear of government,’’ said the person, who supports Paul’s economic policies but is not backing him for president. “I’m not saying Ron believed this stuff. It was good copy. Ron Paul is a shrewd businessman.’’

The articles included racial, anti-Semitic and anti-gay content. They claimed, for example, that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “seduced underage girls and boys’’; they ridiculed black activists by suggesting that New York be named “Zooville” or “Lazyopolis”; and they said the 1992 Los Angeles riots ended “when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks.’’ The June 1990 edition of the Ron Paul Political Report included the statement: “Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities.”

Not just racism, but racism for profit!  The Klan would be so proud…

For those who don’t know, Ron Paul was not OK with freeing the slaves through the Civil War.  It represented an illegitimate theft of private property from the southern plantation owners (property the [...]]]> Ta-Nehisi Coates takes Ron Paul to the woodshed over his position on the abolition of slavery.  It’s a thing of beauty…

For those who don’t know, Ron Paul was not OK with freeing the slaves through the Civil War.  It represented an illegitimate theft of private property from the southern plantation owners (property the rest of us casually refer to as “people”).

Here is Ron Paul speaking with Tim Russert and blaming the Civil War on Lincoln.

MR. RUSSERT: I was intrigued by your comments about Abe Lincoln. “According to Paul, Abe Lincoln should never have gone to war; there were better ways of getting rid of slavery.”

REP. PAUL: Absolutely. Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war. No, he shouldn’t have gone, gone to war. He did this just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic.

MR. RUSSERT: We’d still have slavery.

REP. PAUL: Oh come on, Tim. Slavery was phased out in every other country of the world. And the way I’m advising that it should have been done is do like the British empire did. You, you buy the slaves and release them. How much would that cost compared to killing 600,000 Americans and where it lingered for 100 years? I mean, the hatred and all that existed. So every other major country in the world got rid of slavery without a civil war. I mean, that doesn’t sound too radical to me. That sounds like a pretty reasonable approach.

Ta-Nehisi Coates points out the gaping flaw in Dr. Paul’s logic (the same Dr. Paul who thinks the gold standard is just ducky, he shouldn’t have to share a toilet with gay supporters and that the Federal Reserve should be abolished):

When Ron Paul claims that Lincoln “shouldn’t have gone to war,” he is deploying a convenient and erroneous frame which necessarily holds that the inciting aggression was not in raising an Army, seizing federal property and arms, urging revolution among ones neighbors, and then firing on a federal fort, but in democratically electing a president with whom slave-holders disagreed.

Throughout the War, Lincoln attempted to bring about a peaceful and magnanimous end. He pitched compensated emancipation, and was rebuffed, not by the Confederates, but by slave states still loyal to the Union. When Union armies brought states back under federal control he urged easy paths to regaining citizenship.

The racist states-rights advocates have been advancing the same, tired argument since 1865.

Some things never change.

This image comes from a collection of photographs by Teenie Harris, an African American photographer from Pittsburgh.

Let me tick some people off…Did you get drug tested today? Thank you Florida, Kentucky, and Missouri, which are the first states that will require drug testing when applying for welfare. Some people are crying and calling this unconstitutional. [...]]]> I found this a few places on facebook today(I have too many right wing friends):

Let me tick some people off…Did you get drug tested today? Thank you Florida, Kentucky, and Missouri, which are the first states that will require drug testing when applying for welfare. Some people are crying and calling this unconstitutional. How is this unconstitutional? It’s OK to drug test people who work for their money but not those who don’t?… Re-post this if you’d like to see this done in all 50 states. I just did!!

Despite the fact that this is yet another example of “small government” republicans increasing governments influence on your life, it is also a brilliant example of “Do as I say not as I do.” It is not just the unemployed who get their money from the “taxpayers” and it is not just the poor that live off welfare(yes Walton Family I am talking to you) The Daily Show decided to check and see how serious Rick Scott was about drug testing. It turns out(big surprise) that he is the typical republican – Do as I say not as I do.

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Well, look no farther than your own backyard, Professor Rick! One in  31 Americans are now either in prison [...]]]> Never one to miss an opportunity to reference Soviet style communism, adjunct Law Prof and intellectual homunculus Rick Esenberg snidely asks in a recent blog post, ” Where can you find a decent gulag nowdays? “

Well, look no farther than your own backyard, Professor Rick! One in  31 Americans are now either in prison or on probation and parole, and though we have only 5% of the worlds population we have 25% of its prisoners.

So you keep asking the obvious questions , Professor Esenberg, and we here at Blogging Blue will continue to provide you with the obvious answers.