Lecture notes, lectures 1-20 PDF

Title Lecture notes, lectures 1-20
Author Mitchell Jones
Course Introduction to Ethnicity, Race, and Migration
Institution Yale University
Pages 31
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Intro to Ethnicity Race and Migration 9/2/2014  



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Colonial Encounters and the Invention of “Race” Race and beginning for Native Americans had nothing to do with race. o They were simply a people o Each tribe had a different origin story with their own classifications of self, belonging, and home When Europeans met them, there was no shaped concept of race for natives o There was no indigenous, Indians, native or anything o Race became a conflict of ownership of people o This was a European projection onto the north American people of the time The emergence of scientific thought and philosophy in northamerica was due to Race a system of power that creates immutable differences in rights and power based on status, economic value etc European Imagination o European empires used race to describe a European planetary concept of the world  Columbus did this for Spanish monarchs  These lands were waiting to be Christianized  Waiting to be brought into European civilization  Columbus’ diary to the Spanish Monarchs showed this o We see in Columbus’ letter to the Spanish Monarchs that Columbus gives no credit to what he has learned about the land to the Natives. For him to know so much – such as what there are 8 types of palm trees and no iron there- he write his letters as if he has learned this all himself. Still he clearly must have had help from the natives o Ferdinand and Isabella were Catholics. So a narrative of evangelism was easily established for the Europeans to take over North America Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca (1490-1557) o Give the project to colonize Florida o Got lost. Marooned to an island of the current state of texas o Had to survive in coexistence with the Native people o Was with three other Spaniards and one African Slave o Became an expert in Medicine and used it to leverage and have a place in society o After more than 7 years see a native with an iron belt buckle and knows the Spaniard presence is there o Finds the group and finds himself not in parallel with the Spanish vision o He advocates for peaceful coexistence and falls out of favor with the monarchy o Cabeza de Vaca loses out to a rigid system of higher inequality and the forced conversion to Catholicism o The takeover and forced removal of people has to be legitimated by something.  Race is the way to create this justification  State emerges to provide the infrastructure for expansion into the Americas  Merchants emerge as important players in this modification of culuture

They brought people into this imperial system by creating a monetization of the current native culture  Furthermore allowed for new concepts of holding or owning land  Maps helped to categorize a world that was now revealed to be much larger than currently thought Alexander Von Humboldt 

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The establishment of race and inequality in the west was uniquely autonomous due to the basis upon equal rights and freedom that society was built on. John Locke o “Slavery can be legitimated because it is the slave that determines his own loss of freedom o Slavery a state so vile and miserable for human beings that it is outside of the social contract.  Thus the slave has a right to resist his slavery and refuse it….. by killing himself o Thus by placing slavery as a type of war, he can put it outside of social contract theory The new Government (US) is founded in this philosophy. This social contract philosophy with a unique new model of democracy for the rest of the world They said that any free person who had come to the US so long as it was not fleeing the british, was a citizen. Citizenship was tied to the land and blood. However there was a large indigenous population and a large slave population that could threaten the new nations people Thus a law must be established to make this difference distinct 1790 Naturalization act – Free white citizens were eligible to become citizens of the United States From then on out there was a different class of people within the borders of the nation with no opportunity to be a part of it. To James Madison blacks were a threat Jefferson said o As slavery will eventually end, the black population will die off o Without requiring the legal and social means to make it happen France emancipated slaves in 1794, Britain in 1830’s, and the US in the 50s 1820s Missouri Compromise – portions out how some will be able to hold slaves and some wont. Dred scott see this as a way to get freedom o He sued for his freedom and his case reached the supreme court o The ruling by the supreme court showed there was no expectations and hope for blacks to be protected by citizenship. o Born in Virginia and would go through the north with his master. His master would return to Missouri and die. He was then willed his masters wife, an arbitrator had to settle all claims because she was a woman. Scott takes the opportunity to sue for freedom, and the supreme court rules that Scott has no bounds which he can sue for freedom because he would be depriving his masters family of their property unfairly.

Thus his freedom as a human being was secondary to his life as property of first class white citizens o The case would signial for many years the death of a chance for black citizenship and freedom because property rights trumped natural law. Plessy V Ferguson o Plessy a free an whose great grandparent was black was technically nonwhite he was 1/8th black o He was not allowed to be in the whites car and sued. o He argued that separation implies inferiority o Court said if he felt inferior it was his own fault  Hence the establishment of separate but equal. o



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Rigoberta Menchu Tum o Spoke for the rights of indigenous people. o Guatemalan. o Menchu framed the armed conflict in Guatemala of racism against the indigenous people o Menchu longs for Guatemala of 1944 when there were free elections. o Rigoberta the inheritor of a struggle o What does she feel about colonialism?  Colonialisms authority creates an inability to act  The willingness to use unnecessary force is huge.  The inheritors of colonialism is talking about a system that denies people the ability to define their own destiny. – through the tools of racial oppression and genocide  Guatemala was created in the context of overeseas European rule o The inheritors of colonialsm result to violence o Over the long term, the country will develop and progress o Menchu said the natives were willing to mesh condition o Rigoberta had to confront criticism from within her own country Aztec Empire o Organized empire with different cities and groups US Origins show native American populations all over After 1992 Menchus effort for a new future for the indigenous was complemented by a movement throughout the Americas to secure indegnous language and to cultivate indigenous speakers and history The natives for so long thought of as a sideshow in the formation of the expansionist us. The first efforts to chronicle history came from the observes, scribes , and record keepers in native societies Some of the most powerful documents of natives we cannot read because of the loss of culture. Diego de Landa Calderon 1524-79 bishop of Yucatan – the Yucatan before and after the conquest 1566

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Learned man Intrigued that their view and culture could be so different than is his own Frustrates him He burns the Codexes of the Yucatan He tourtured subjects of the Yucatan to get religious conversion and accept Spanish authority “Clearly these very texts had to be eliminated, because they challenged his Christian faith. The burning of the texts pained the Yucatan people greatly We do not have native voices that can help us construct the lives of those people. All we have is de Landas ethnographic study and a stone with Yucatan drawings We can study the intricate forms of interdependence that allowed the Europeans to survive in America in the early days. According to Daniel richter much of the northeast stayed in native control until1820` THE Natives had to change policy and style  They started competing to be the mumber one seller in the fir markets for Europeans  Small pox devastated them  The Mohican formed an alliance with the English and the piqua with the dutch  The governor of the massachusettes bay colony raised a militia oto kill 700 pequot because they were suspected of killing Englishmen  Even as tribes suffered loss many were able to maintain power and autonomy by playing the European colonists off of each other. The ohio valley tribes united together to stop the british from continueing to clearing lands, access to gun powder, and british aggression  The introduction of alcohol also was unfortunate for the native peoples

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Lady and the tramp. Siamese cat scene o Came out in 1965 o Whats happening at this time?- red scare o Why is it in this film? o Communism depicted in the movie as one for you and one for me when the cats tried to share milk or the fish. The dog tried to save them. o Siamese cats are equals o America parades the individual o Siamese twin cats – Asian twins – lacking individuality Aladdin o Arabian nights song theme\ o Early 90’s o Whats happening at this time? – Gulf War o Intervene for Kuwait because of their commercial and geopolitical vulnerability o Plays off of Arabian nights

Which was a collection of what the Europeans saw and were fascinated by in Arabian lands o Aladdin gives us a way of seeing what Said is talking about with Orientalism  What makes these films digestable consumable pleasurable meaningful is that they are made inteligible to us through a discourse called Orientalism -SAID Orientalism- a set of ideas and representations created by Europe and North Americans that defines the ifferences between civilizations of the west and east o The orient a separate space o An ancient exotic space o That could be threatening to Europe and north American society o Book shows theportrayal of the orient as a place of struggle.  Influential text because it changed where literature lay in academic thought relative to politics and history o A critique of colonialism For Edward Said – a stateless person o Book was a key intellectually inquiry and a critizcism of immediately relevant concerns Said looks at ascholarship and its say of creating associations with people that are remarkably stable and unchanging over time Said want to discern where he was and what was possible for another way to depict his people. o He was Palestinian o Grew up in Jerusalem to Christians o Received elite british schooling o Went to Harvard o Wanted a sovereign Palestinian state The orient redefined as the contrasting experience Helps to show what becomes different in defining the us way of life. Orientalism express and represents that part of culturally and even ideologically as a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles India came to America by mistake Asians stereotyped as o Passive o Despotive people o Sensual o Silent o feminized o Malleable o Communism might spread quickly in china because it was Conquerable, inferior Arthur James Balfour o Balfour made the case for England to remain in Egypt and other areas o Balfour in a speech assert that Europeans can self govern since the beginnings of history and that orientals cannot. He asserts that all of their great centuries have been despotism. His assumption is that civilized can only objectively come from a western context. 



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Balfour asserts to know Egypt better than they do themselves Said uses this episode of british reasoning to take over Egypt to illustrate a much larger pattern that’s discernable across “the orient” Said argues that nativism is not a legitimate answer to undo the colonial takeover of colonial lands Some westerners have argued that the west does not have problems with islam but only with violent islamist extremists. Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise – Huntington  Said rebuttals that the frame of understanding must be shifted. Trying to play both sides and frame this as powerful vs powerless.

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For Simon Ortiz – all people are held by the land. The land was not owned by people Loss of land was detrimental to native American populations Natives lost almost all of their land in a 200 year period Sovereignty is not simply matter of definition for native peoples because they had to continually change this as their land was encroached upon o Who they were as a people had to change to suit their ever-changing circumstance o Led to the formation of inter-tribal ties to disrupt European colonialism o Worked to revitalize their peoplehood and culture At start of 19th century natives are struggle on how to bring their case to the Europeans who cross their agreements over land o Tribes conducted war to keep their lands through complicated means  Pit colonists against one another  Surprise attacks  Nonetheless the natives fell weak to diseases, expansion, and us market capitalism 1803 jefferson agrees to purchase Louisiana o Purchased French claims, but did not address the native American claims to it o Of course markets and trade was expanded into these lands as well This starts the emergence of a white republic o Citizenry for white males Yellowstone area o One claim made for moving natives off this land was that they were not treating the land right because they did not utilize its resources the way they should o The government saw its claims for expansion as a justification for indian removal 1763 william trent an agent of the british made a diplomatic peace treaty with native americans over land o In his journal wrote how they gave the natives two blankets and a handkerchief from the smallpox hospital he said “I hope it has the desired effect” In 1818 a us official said the sons of the forest should be neutralized or exterminated o What can be done is either they assimilate and take up the plow or direct warfare



o These quotes are made to seem reasonable by diminishing the natives as stateless. o They are diminished and not nations that deserve nation status The case of the Cherokee o In the beginning of the 19th century, people seeing the value of expansion have started using any means possible for further land appropriation o Cherokee living in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi  so immediately effected  look at themselves as a nation that should interact with the federal authority since they were a nation  in 1828 gold was discovered on Cherokee land  which introduces even more squatters  Cherokee had a constitutional government  Georgia passess laws that limit and threaten Cherokee land claims  Indians not allow to testify against whites in their courts  Georgia stepping out not only to hinder the natives but to force the federal governments hand o Forces john ross to come to Georgia to settle the dispute o Cherokees say state of Georgia is out of bounds because Cherokee nation is a nation as recognized by the federal govt o John ross translates the Cherokee claim to land that the us govt can recognize o He also says don’t think you can buy us off by pushing us on to other lands o Andrew Jackson is the president in 1829 when John Ross wrote the Memorial of the Cherokee Nation  Jackson wants the land  This dispute goes to the supreme court  The lawyer for the Cherokee nation argues they are a nation and are not subject to Georgia law  John Marshall decides against the Cherokee  Essentially says they are domestic dependent nation- which means they have land that is allotted to them  Said the natives look to our govt for its protection and rely on it for its power  Said they look to the us as its great father  “Their relation to the United States resembles that of a ward to his guardian”  Marshall does not reference the Cherokee but “the Indians”  Quotes from john marshal rulling in Cherokee v. Georgia, 1831 o 1832 wooster v. Georgia – Cherokee win, but does not stop them from being moved off land just stops Georgia from implement Georgian rules on Cherokees o 1830 indian removal act – submit or move west where you can start your own society  Started the trail of tears for the Cherokee in which many Cherokee died  Some tribes fought back – the Seminoles

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Moving the natives out became , like slavery, a structure of law and society Sand Creek massacre 1864  Whites moving in on lands of local native communities and hostilities begin to boil up  The chayenne and other natives begin guerilla warfare to defending themselves  Known as the Colorado war. The governor of Colorado tried to force native to sell their land and live on reservations. Natives refused  Militia led by Colonel John chippington and began a campaign of retributional violence, killing natives indiscriminantly, burning lands destroying native communities  Natives sought out white authorities to see how they could make peaceful resolution  Sent dignitaries to white military base to work out a solution  Black kettle and his men come with a white flag and camp out to surrender  Colonel chippington raised his 700 men and they massacred the native men  Instructed his men to take no prisoners  Men, women, and children were slaughtered. Black kettle hoisted an American flag with their white flag.  Chippington was subjected to congressional inquiry but was considered a hero in Colorado  He said to kill all the women and children because nits make lice o This is genocide.  Simon Ortiz poems – complicate if its all over. Things have changed for native americans, but is it all over?

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Aftermath of Emancipation and a rise of a new discrimination Odetta song – the waterboy o What do you hear? o The popping noised she makes with her voice and drums  Sound of a whip? How did slavery end in the united states? o Emancipation Proclamation declared slaves in slave state o Atrican o What would the freed people need to exercise their new freed rights?  Marked by the rise of legal segregation  Jim crow Slavery has stamped its character to deeply and to indelibly to stamp out its character in a few years – Frederick Douglass 13th amendment outlawed in 1865 disallowed involuntary servitude in all cercumstances except Jail Due process clause

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Equal protection clause 15th amendment ensured the voting rights of African American men The response of southern society to all of this is Panic o This changed economic wealth from the south drastically o Poverty was not limited to the poor and disenfranchised people of color o Poor whites were illiterate and worried about losing jobs to African Americans o This and multiple other factors lead to interaccial cooperation among; The black codes o Laws passed in former slaveholding states to renew them to their slave status o Made specific crimes for free blacks alone o These codes prohibited blacks for keeping firearms, cohabiting, interracial relationships o Vagrancy – all blacks over 18 had to be able to prove they had a job or they had to pay a fine or go to jail o Once African americans were in jail, they were able to be worked as slaves again because the constitution did not protect those in jail. o These rules allowed black people to be seized and confined by the state. o This becomes a period of race riots. o Whites formed vigilante groups that expressed hostility to blacks in order to keep them out of their coms o The town of Meridian had successfully placed blacks in the town government  In 1870 two black county supervisors were assassinated  The kkk rioted and murder all the important black men except a few  The black community pleaded for federal troops, but misissippi ignored and sent troops when it was too lat...


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