Unpacking 528 years of systemic racism in the Western Hemisphere

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The box of systemic racism

 

We’ve all learned the children’s rhyme “In Fourteen Hundred Ninety-Two Columbus sailed the ocean blue…” blah, blah, blah… but most people do not know that in 1493 something called a “Papal Bull” was written by the Catholic Church called “The Doctrine of Discovery“.   Essentially what the Doctrine of Discovery says is that if a “Christian discovers” a place that is occupied by non-Christians the land is uninhabited by humans.

The Doctrine of Discovery has been used to justify all sorts of crimes against humanity for 528 years.   Christopher Columbus used it to justify the killing of more than a million people.   It’s been cited in US Supreme Court decisions.   It has been used to claim that people stolen from Africa and sent to the “New World” as slaves weren’t really people so the kidnappings, raps, murders, slavery, etc… “don’t matter”.   It has been used to justify the wholesale extermination of Native Americans and the creation of “Manifest Destiny”.   It was used to justify the treatment of people in Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia and even Hawaii and Samoa.

It is one of three foundational principles/documents of systemic racism in these United States.   The other two are Manifest Destiny and the US Constitution.   All three have been cited in US Supreme Court Decisions justifying all sorts of evil.

In the 1920’s the Catholic Church sent out hundreds of priests and nuns to make a determination as to whether those of us who are Not Caucasian “qualify” as human beings yet.   The Catholic Church determined we are all “proto-humans” in the same way that Neanderthal Man is a “proto-human”.

Here we are in 2020, once again, dealing with the same crap we’ve been dealing with for 528 long years… while Caucasians say “I didn’t DO anything”… “I’m not responsible for what happened” and “I can’t do anything about it”.    The words are excuses.   They are designed to be disingenuous.   They are designed to keep those whose skin isn’t “light enough” to make them Humans, according to the determination of the Catholic Church, from being treated as human beings.

I cannot speak to the African American experience but I can speak to the Native American experience with systemic racism.   I welcome input and observations from African Americans so that we can start unpacking this 528 year old box of trash.

The Doctrine of Discovery was cited in US Supreme Court decisions as recently as 2005:            “[1] Under the “doctrine of discovery,” Oneida II, 470 U. S. 226, 234 (1985), “fee title to the lands occupied by Indians when the colonists arrived became vested in the sovereign — first the discovering European nation and later the original States and the United States,”   

The Constitution says in several places “And Indians not taxed”  even as illegal immigrants (and let us be honest here, those settlers were illegal immigrants by every reasonable and rational definition of the term) continued to pour out onto these shores and Native Americans were slaughtered wholesale in the name of greed.   As an example of that greed we need only look at the Black Hills in South Dakota.

In 1868 the US Government signed a treaty at a place called Fort Laramie which “pledged that the Great Sioux Reservation, including the Black Hills, would be “set apart for the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation of the Indians.” By the terms of the treaty, cession of any part of the reservation required a new treaty executed and signed by at least three fourths of all the adult male Indians occupying the land.”  That’s not what really happened though…  in 1874 a man by the name of George Armstrong Custer entered the Black Hills and “discovered” gold… and timber resources galore.   He and his men proceeded to talk about the resources in question until the military was overrun with “settlers” wanting what “them heathen redskins” had and proceeded to STEAL it.   To the point the US Government STOLE the land and it wasn’t until the 1970’s that the case was finally adjudicated.   Well, sort of.   The words of my people are “The Black Hills are not for sale”.   Young or old, we all say it.   There’s more than a BILLION dollars in the “trust account” to pay for the Black Hills.   It requires 3/4 of all males of the Lakota (Sioux) to agree to accept the money for the “sale” to go through and I don’t know more than a tiny hand full who are willing to “take the money” and abandon our sacred spaces. 

The underpinnings of the United States are based on immoral beliefs of alleged racial and religious superiority.   If we aren’t willing to unpack that box we aren’t going to fix the damn problem.   If you aren’t willing to help unpack the box you aren’t helping People of Color.

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