Let's be honest here.What precisely do Native Americans & African Americans have to be thankful for?

[jcmaine72]

Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to pee in anyone's picnic basket here. There's nothing inherently wrong with having a day of thanks. However, when one considers the origins and mythology of this particular holiday, shouldn't we at least acknowledge what we as Americans are actually celebrating?

If you're a Native American, do you scotch tape cutesy cardboard decorations on your front windows or door depicting cartoon pilgrims wolfishly grinning and winking at a smiling turkey in celebration of your ancestors being systematically swindled and butchered for their land?

If you're an African American, do you plop your kids down in front of the TV to watch Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving special, all while thinking how lucky you are to be descended from the minority of Africans who actually survived their brutal abduction, ocean crossing and enslavement?

Do both groups celebrate how their ancestors' dignity and humanity were summarily stripped away by those who viewed them as little more than animals?

With that in mind, simply for the sake of inclusion and/or common decency, isn't it long overdue that we cleanse our national day of thanks of the offensively dishonest myths that surround this holiday? Why can't it be redefined in honest, modern terms to be more inclusive and representative of all Americans?

Again, I'm not saying that there shouldn't be a day of thanks or that we as modern Americans don't have anything to be thankful for. We should, and we certainly do. However, I think we are fast approaching a time when we might want to consider detaching our most cherished national day of thanks from the thankless brutality and racism of the past.

I'm simply saying that we can be so much better than this as a people, can't we?

EDIT: Considering the some of the responses I got for daring to question the wisdom of celebrating Columbus Day, I'm sure this thread will be a dandy.

[MrScorpio]

1. Pretty much any day that were surviving and maintaining under white supremacy

And what ever joy we can receive in our own lives, such as our families for example.

[jcmaine72]

3. Of course. But wouldn't this holiday be more joyful for your family and have deeper meaning if

it didn't have at its core the grotesque, cartoonized mythology of pious pilgrims celebrating their religious freedom and survival while ultimately denying those very things to the original inhabitants of the lands they stole?

[uppityperson]

5. All sorts of peoples have harvest festivals. It's time to stop pretending that it has any basis

in pious pilgrims.

[jcmaine72]

6. Really? The fundamental mythology of Thanksgiving has already been expunged or altered?

I must've missed that. Someone should inform the TV networks, because It looks just like it always has on TV.

[LanternWaste]

22. If your sole measure of a thing is the branding of it given by media

"because It looks just like it always has on TV..."

If your sole measure of a thing is the branding of it given by media, you're merely looking one layer deep into a multi-layered concept, denying yourself the context, nuance and historicity.

[uppityperson]

23. You seem to have totally misread what I wrote as I agree with you

1. all sorts of peoples around the world have harvest festivals
2. It's time to stop pretending that it has any basis in pious pilgrims.

[democratisphere]

2. Life, semi-liberty, and the attempted pursuit of happiness.

It ain't easy!

[uppityperson]

4. As my child said during preschool year, we are thanking mother earth, father sky, and god

Mother earth and father sky for the food from them and god for making mother earth and father sky.

Harvest festivals are good for celebrating enough food stored for another year. That's what we celebrate, not some antiquated notion of pilgrim crap.

[JI7]

7. actually, yeah, black, native, other minority families DO celebrate holidays doing things like

watching charlie brown or other holiday specials, football or whatever the fuck many others do.

that doesn't mean there aren't big issues that need to be dealt with and which mostly hurt those communities.

most people don't celebrate holidays based on the history and how it came about itself. for most people it's just a time

to spend with family and others and have food and do other things they enjoy together.

[Demsrule86]

11. I find it disturbing to see how this OP views Black families as something apart from other

American families...which is not true...viewing POC as the 'other' is a pernicious form of racism.

[Vinnie From Indy]

15. +1

It could be the whole point of this OP.

[Demsrule86]

21. It may very well be.

Our middle daughter is madly in love with a nice young man of color. We are thrilled that she has found such a good person to love and are happy to welcome him into our family. His parents are lovely also. They have treated my daughter very kindly.

[cwydro]

16. Thank you.

Spot on.

I’ve been at the table of friends, as they have been at mine, all colors. Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to be with family and friends. I don’t think I’ve given the pilgrims a thought since elementary school.

OP sounds unhappy. That’s too bad.

[Demsrule86]

20. I agree...it is too bad. Hubs and I are healthy...kids are healthy all are employed.

There is love and support in this family...not liking Trump as president or evil GOP, but this to shall pass.

[LeftInTX]

8. My family eats and watches football

I end up doing dishes and wanting to go for a walk and wishing I hadn't eaten.

I think that is how many people spend thanksgiving.

My husband is Mexican. We spend it at his family's house.

The only thing that is different is the weather tends to be warm down here.

I think of how single people and people living alone celebrate thanksgiving. Or how someone who has been recently widowed or people who are lonely. People who have family and friends will find a way to get together. People who don't have people are the ones we should worry about.

The holiday isn't as political as you are imagining.

[secondwind]

9. So many wonderful and uplifting responses!!!

We are having a quiet Thanksgiving for two. The kids are scattered and the grandkids, from 9 months to 18 years and in college with 200k in scholarships, are sufficient reasons to be greatful and feel blessed. We’re relocating this coming year to San Francisco to be near family. Life is good.

[yuiyoshida]

12. its expensive here...

Even getting your car smogged checked, and fitted so it will pass inspection. California is a great state but wow, the price of groceries and San Francisco the city, is very expensive to live. If not for Rent Control, I would be living in the South Bay.

[Demsrule86]

10. I find your post somewhat disturbing...

Not all Black families are in dire straights you know...the belief that all POC of are desperate and live in ghettos is a racist view. I know many who are quite successful,happy and have much to be thankful for.

[HAB911]

13. Everybody knows the story of the first Thanksgiving in 1621

The Pilgrims, saved from starvation by kindly Native Americans, invite them to a feast, yadda yadda. The only problem is that it wasn’t really the first Thanksgiving celebration held in the New World.

Nope, the first one was held here in Florida.

More than 50 years before the Pilgrims, some 800 Spanish settlers led by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés landed at what became St. Augustine. As curious members of the native Timucuan tribe watched, the first Spaniard to wade ashore was a priest, Father Francisco Lopez, who carried a cross. When Menendez joined him on dry land, the conquistador knelt and kissed the cross.

They all gathered around a makeshift altar, where Lopez conducted a Mass to thank God for giving them safe passage across the Atlantic Ocean. Afterward, they feasted, and at Menéndez’s invitation, the Timucuans joined in.

"It was the first community act of religion and thanksgiving in the first permanent settlement in the land," University of Florida history professor Michael Gannon wrote in his book The Cross in the Sand.

Turkey was not on the menu. Instead the settlers dined on leftover garbanzo stew made with pork, garlic, saffron, cabbage and onion. The Timucuans may have brought alligator, bear, turkey, venison or even oysters, turtle, catfish or mullet.

http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/perspective/Oh-Florida-We-should-all-be-thankful-for-the-lady-accused-of-shoplifting-while-dressed-as-a-turkey_162707495

[Vinnie From Indy]

14. Why use the hiding emoji?

How would you "redefine" the holiday?

Why are we "fast approaching a time" to reconsider Thanksgiving?

DO you know anyone in Olgino?

[cwydro]

17. Do you even know any black families?

I’m thinking not.

Reach out in your community and go see how we all celebrate a nice family tradition.

[JCMach1]

18. Thankful the ethnic cleansing was so thorough

I don't have to think about my family's culture that was lost.

:Sarcasm:

Ok on a real note, color me totally conflicted. I am descended from the the founder of the freaking Pilgrims founder, who was burned at the stake, on my mom's side of the family and from Chowans and southern Tuscarora on my dad's side. The Native American background was so wiped clean that no one knew until I uncovered it in the genealogy.

[Iggo]

19. Ask 'em.

Let's be honest. You and I don't have a clue what any black or native family has to be thankful for.

[snooper2]

24. Well, I guess we can change it to FUCK YOU I GOT MINE day

Two turkey legs- FUCK you I got mine!

Last can of chicken broth at the store- FUCK you I got mine!

Parking in handicapped on Black Friday packed lot- FUCK you I got mine!


LOL

[NCTraveler]

26. Many things.

It's a very individual question that cannot be fully and accurately answered by a collective.

[LanternWaste]

27. It would be half-witted to think non-Christians do not celebrate Christmas

It would be half-witted to think non-Christians do not celebrate Christmas; yet in effect, you're simply asking "what do non-Christians have to celebrate on Christmas?"

Regardless of whether you can be so much better that this or not...

[BoneyardDem]

28. I find this OP to be disingenious

and suspect.

Plenty of people find gratitude today...some for the smallest of things, like getting good news from the Dr after many tests, like the college kid who scored 90% after lots of study, for the kindness of a stranger, for a job, for the joy of adoption, for still holding hands with a spouse after 45 years.

Your negative post, was not just biased, ill informed, but nasty and divisive, designed to enrage and even dampen changes that are all needed and finally making real differences. I won't ignore the past, but I will look ahead and be the change I want to see in others, since I cannot hope the change the past.

[msongs]

29. the thanksgiving holiday concept is learned behavior and can be unlearned just as easily nt

[Corvo Bianco]

30. I'm with you on all fronts.

To whitewash genocide with a "We were great guys and we all got along, let's celebrate our mercy on the uncivilized! (no, I haven't seen any Native Americans around... wonder why)" myth is as offensive to me as Alabama's false civil war narratives. Both are taught to children, both are lies, both are harmful. A misinformed child grows up to be a misguided bigot.

[roscoeroscoe]

31. Any holiday that features the Dallas Cowboys losing to the Chargers...

...is a holiday I can thoroughly enjoy!