On mass deportations and racism in US History.

[nadinbrzezinski]

You are right, some of you on DU are very right... this is not like Nazi Germany... very, very right. This is about US History and it's patterns of ethnic cleansing and mass deportations.

You think I am kidding?

Well the first efforts to EXTERMINATE a people who dared live on OUR lands, was in Virginia early in the Colonial Period... yep, that is when a few things started, like oh poisoning whole groups of Warriors of those tribes that dared resist us. I mean it is not like they were good and descent Christians or knew how to properly work the land. And of course then we came with the Black Legend of the Spanish Conquest. I mean the Spaniards were far worst than we were... oh wait... what do I hear there? The Spaniards actually HAD kids with the locals... and a few more of the locals actually survived the experience. No, not because the Spaniards were better... oh no siree, but they were a little more effective in converting the locals and not killing ALL.

Of course this did not just stop with the early colony. All of you remember the French Indian Wars? If you do, take a bow... most Americans don't. Well, shall we say scalping is not something the locals invented. Oh no, that was us... oh wait, but Hollywood has managed to shine that turd.

Nor did this stop after Independence.

The Trail of Tears come to mind, or the whole sale stealing of Haciendas by the Anglos who came into the lands conquered from the Tejanos and Californios and others, some of whose descendants today face being criminalized for being brown. And of course, that shameful thing called the Reservation System... where do you think some European got ideas on how to treat undesirable groups? Who do think were the ones who inspired them? Good... another turd, and nasty bit we have managed to collectively forget.

But that is not all... then we got sneaky about cheap labor. And we got workers from Mexico to do our dirty bits during WW I, many of whom had children here, and those kids were deported during the Great Depression. On and this would repeat itself during WW II, and the 1950s. You may not be familiar with the term, but Brasero is not exactly a term of endearment.

So you think this bill in Arizona is about Nazi Germany or just plain out US History?

This is in the water, and it's come to us every so often.

Oh and let's not go into how these Mexicans are referred to. I mean they are carriers of disease and increase crime... like any person studying US History, I mean actually readying it, has not heard this before, for ahem insert immigrant group here. Yep, it is there, and this law in Arizona is about this. Oh and there is more. What the Lt. Governor of Georgia said today about them lazy ones that will not work... my lord was I readying Governor Berkeley of Virginia back in the days of the Jamestown Colony? This is also a theme... the poor and the disenfranchised are just cogs, to be abused so a patrician elite can make a good living.

This is not Capitalism by the way... it goes back to oh the 1600's and has a good link to the attitudes of the Lord of the manor over his serfs.

So you are right, this is not Nazi Germany, but as American as Apple Pie...

And I expect the usual suspects to now tell me why I am being chicken little and none of this ever happened, or why it would never happen again...

Mr. Santayana comes to mind... those who forget history (and most Americans do, regularly) are condemned to repeat it.

But forgive me if this echo of US History is also VERY SIMILAR to those of European History... as they say we are NOT that unique, or special. Just like everybody else, we shine our turds... until they come back at us in a blinding way. But we have chosen to be truly blinded by the shiny... and it is just fools gold...

[BlooInBloo]

1. Yep. Nothing more American that what's happened in Arizona. Nice post.

[UndertheOcean]

2. USA ==> United States of the Anglos

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Who the anglos are changes from generation to generation

I mean the early colony it was about political prisoners, indentured servants, and street kids who were the outsiders looking in.

So remember that.

[WillyT]

3. Off To The Greatest Page With You !!!

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. Thanks

[Ozymanithrax]

6. Nor should we forget what Carey McWilliams called the California Japanese War...

or Yellow Peril movement and it "White California" crusade led by a San Francisco mayor named Duval Phelan, elected to the U.S. Senate in 1914. This led to the Alien Land Act prohibiting Japanese immigrants from owning land in California. Then when Japanese immigrant brought in "Picture brides" from Japan so they could create families, the Immigration Act of 1924 prohibited Japanese from immigrating to the United States.

Yes, we Americans have enjoyed our white privilege at the expense of others.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. I knew I was forgetting a group

while trying to keep it short.

There are also the jobs that were appropriate for Jews (who were also barred from owning land in many area of the country) as well as Irish, Italian and poles

Hell, I have actually seen a deed for La Jolla going back to oh the 1950s, that forbid the house from being sold to Mexicans, Jews, Negroes and Irish. Not that many of the locals realize it, but La Jolla was a WASP refuge back in the day, and there were La Jollas all over the country in major and minor cities and towns.

And I could also go into the quotas for different minorities to go into Universities before the Civil Rights moment.

We got a few turds and nasty bits that many folks really do not want to talk about. I mean American Exceptionalism dies in the vine...

[Ozymanithrax]

9. In La Jolla, even up into the 60's after the civil rights act...

If realtor arrived at a house with a certain colored bit to cardboard int he window, the owners knew not to offer that property for a price that anyhone could afford.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. And that was the case in way too many La Jollas across the country

I mean houses going for over half a million when NO property was that expensive.

And sadly I know it still goes on in certain places. Why the Republicans want to go after Fannie and Fredy... I mean they LOAN to them undesirables that might move down the street. And I am not kidding here.

[Nikki Stone1]

19. Another reason to hate La Jolla....

[Ozymanithrax]

29. It is not La Jolla, but the people who made it. n/t

[Nikki Stone1]

18. And the Chinese Exclusion Act

When white workers building the Central Pacific Railroad began threatened to strike for higher wages in 1865, the Railroad first brought in Chinese workers, whom they treated pretty much like slaves. The Chinese proved to be cheap, fast and innovative and CPR began widescale recruitment of Chinese workers. When white workers refused to work alongside the poorly paid Chinese workers, the railroad hired only Chinese. By the end of the project, 15,000 of 17,000 railroad workers were Chinese.

The Chinese were coerced into accepting conditions worse than those given white workers and prevented from seeking recourse. Whites got $35 a month plus free board and lodging; Chinese got $26-35 without food and houses. Chinese workers did strike in 1866 for better conditions (equivalent to what the white workers were receiving). Apparently Chinese workers were whipped and stopped from looking for other work. To break the striked, the railroad company tried to get 10,000 African Americans to replace the Chinese. The attempt failed. Central Pacific RR stopped provisions to Chinese workers, starved them out. Stopped the strike.

When the railroad work ended, the Chinese were left abandoned in a racist California, without citizenship status and without wives. Leland Stanford, the head of Central Pacific Railroad, didn't care about the condition of these workers, just using them and leaving them to the whims of the California whites. (That's Stanford University to you and me.)

In the end, the US government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act

"By 1860 the Chinese were the largest immigrant group in California. The Chinese workers provided cheap labor and did not use any of the government infrastructure (schools, hospitals, etc.) because the Chinese migrant population was predominantly made up of male adults. <3> As time passed and more and more Chinese migrants arrived in California violence would often break out in cities such as Los Angeles. By 1878 the congress decided to act and passed legislation excluding the Chinese, but this was vetoed by President Hayes. California, in its zeal for excluding the Chinese, declared a holiday on March 6th, 1881 in order to hold widespread demonstrations to support the anti-Chinese legislation. Once the Chinese Exclusion Act was finally passed in 1882, California went further in its discrimination against the Chinese by passing various laws that were later proved unconstitutional.<4> After the act was passed most Chinese families were faced with a dilemma: stay in the United States alone or go back to China to reunite with their families.<5> Newspapers around the country and especially in California started to discredit and blame the Chinese for most things, i.e. white unemployment. The police also discriminated against the Chinese by using the slightest opportunity to arrest them. Although there was widespread dislike for the Chinese, some capitalists and entrepreneurs resisted their exclusion based on economic factors. <6>"

[Odin2005]

8. K&R

[unc70]

11. Initially more a MA colony rather than VA story.

And the justifications were certainly more the work of Increase and especially Cotton Mather. They are certainly more the philosophical, religious, and political foundation leading to abuses like Manifest Destiny or justification of racial and ethnic inferiority (the poor bring it on themselves), whether African, Irish, Catholic, or whatever.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. Actually White Slavery came to Virginia first

and MA was given permission by the Virginia Company... no harm no foul. both used convict labor, kids taken from the streets, and willful Indentured Servants. And both saw horrendous death rates and mistreatment (And I am using the term nicely... I mean people were beaten to death REGULARLY)

[WolverineDG]

15. It was still being practiced in the mid-late 1800s

my great-grandfather came to the US from Ireland as a "bond boy." Feckin' Irish---threw his mom in a Magdalene laundry & then sold him when he was old enough (most likely; most bond boys were "illegitimate"; we'll never know who his parents really were).

dg

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. Indeed and the White Star line transported many undesirables

to the US... and the Mormons also had a healthy indentured system going.

[WolverineDG]

28. He ended up in Indiana, so much for the "Free" North, huh

but it does appear that he was one of the lucky ones, since he did get some education & at some point, went off on his own, opened a store, married & had a family. IIRC, he was "bonded" to a doctor, so that might have had something to do with it.

dg

[unc70]

20. Racial, chattel slavery started in MA, not VA

"The first official legal recognition of chattel slavery as a legal institution in British North America was in Massachusetts, in 1641, with the “Body of Liberties.” Slavery was legalized in New Plymouth and Connecticut when it was incorporated into the Articles of the New England Confederation (1643). Rhode Island enacted a similar law in 1652. That means New England had formal, legal slavery a full generation before it was established in the South. Not until 1664 did Maryland declare that all blacks held in the colony, and all those imported in the future, would serve for life, as would their offspring. Virginia followed suit by the end of the decade. New York and New Jersey acquired legal slavery when they passed to English control in the 1660s."

http://www.slavenorth.com/slavenorth.htm


I agree about death rates in the colonies; insects and disease in the southern colonies were horrible. Malaria, typhoid, yellow fever. Conditions were little better in the northern ones.

Colonial NJ possibly had the worst treatment of slaves of any colony. The slave traders, almost all from from RI, MA, CT, NY, were brutal in their own ways.

It was a brutish world for everyone. Wives and children were routinely beaten, even in "good" families. The poor were poor because they were inferior, and that was God's will, predestined. Calvinism run amuck.

[nadinbrzezinski]

21. Give me a second

Bancrofft... "writing on the early Virginians, most of them were even convicts; but it must be remembered the crimes of which they were convicted were chiefly political."

James Davis Butler."British convicts shipped to American Colonies." American Historical Review, Vol 2, No 1 (Oct 1896) P 13

And now to the meat of RECENT research...

"In 1578 (Gilbert) set sail with a large fleet and 500 men, including at least one convict who had been reprieved from execution and handed over to him."

Don Kirkland. White Cargo. (New York: New York University Press, 2008) 50

Very recent research is showing that the first white slaves when to Virginia and that the first African Slaves were brought from Angola, not by a Dutch ship, but a British Privateer.

[unc70]

27. Gilbert's 1578 expedition failed, was heading into present day Canada

Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1578 never made it to North America; seven ships, crew partially from failed Irish plantations, had to turn back. His later expedition in 1583 made it to Newfoundland which he claimed in the name of the Queen; he did not start a settlement and on the return voyage, Gilbert's boat sank with the loss of all on board including Gilbert.

BTW When Gilbert claimed the land for England, the port town of St Johns had already been there for nearly a century as the hub of the Grand Banks fishing fleets from all over Europe, particularly French and Basque.

Gilbert's half-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, organized the ill-fated "Lost Colony" of Roanoke in NC which was an attempt at an actual English settlement. It went through several phases, but I don't think any of its company were slaves.

There were white slaves in the British colonies, though mostly in places like Jamaica on the sugar cane plantations, some of the most brutal places. Many of the early settlers in VA were under some sort of bondage, usually indenture. This was also the status of the group of Africans (formerly slaves on a previous ship) who were brought into Jamestown in 1619; they were indentured and became free after their period of bondage.

The earliest documented example of a slave-for-life in VA involved a Black owner of a Black slave. There were all sorts of bondage until 1865, when it became limited to criminals, wives, and minor children.

BTW In NC through 1865, free blacks (people of color) not only could and did own slaves, the could have black and white apprentices bonded to them. The most famous example of this was Thomas Day, the leading furniture and cabinet maker of his day.

[nadinbrzezinski]

30. I know that, but the precedent was his expedition

and the earliest slaves... err indentured servants, came to the new world in the next generation.

They came first to Virginia, and then to Massachusetts Bay. The difference is less than a decade, and it really does not matter. BOTH the Northern Colonies and the Southern Colonies were part of the Virginia grant, which later was divided. Hell, William Penn (and the Pilgrims) negotiated with the Virginia Company for land grants.

In fact, these indentured servants established a long term attitude versus labor in the United States. One that survives to this day... labor is less than, and if you are poor, you are morally corrupt and lascivious.

[unc70]

33. Attitude on labor set my New England elites, not indentured or other workers

There were slaves of all types all over the Europe, Africa, and the New World long before Gilbert even tried to sail to North America. Slaves for life, plus nearly every type of bondage anyone could imagine, were initially not based specifically on race. Many of the ships sailing along the North American coast prior to Gilbert would have seamen in some state of bondage.

That is a relatively minor point and one I hope is not central to "White Cargo".

I strongly disagree about it being those who came as indentured being the ones who shaped the unfortunate US CW on labor and the poor. It was shaped almost entirely by early New England elites with Cotton Mather as the most onerous. The link above concerning slavery and racism in the North includes a discussion of the use of language and revisionism to obscure the past and to hide the unsavory aspects of the NE powerful and wealthy families, particularly their domination and control of the slave trade (not just to the US South, but also Latin America).

The http://www.slavenorth.com site gives some interesting background plus a state-by-state discussion of slavery and race in the North and West. Also, look at the DeWolf family in "Inheriting the Trade" and "Traces of the Trade" to learn about RI being the center of the slave trade!

I agree with most of the items in this thread, just think the central reason for the divisive nature of American discourse, politics, and oppression is based firmly in Puritan New England and people like Cotton Mather.

[nadinbrzezinski]

36. It was not just Cotton Mather or the New England Elites

it was pervasive to the Colonies... not a colony, the colonies.

And yes it was the aristocracy, ALL OF THEM, who went there... and their descendants still believe this... and so do their political followers, who drink the kool aid.

These are long distant echoes, patters if you will...

American Historians tend to mostly stay away from this study of patterns. I mean after all we are outside of history, and patterns are only for those others (French Academy chiefly) who see them in history. But believe you me, there are echoes, distant echoes. Hell some of them go back to the medieval period, but most of the echoes in the United States go back to 16th century colonization which went hand in hand with the end of the Enclosure movement in the UK and the rise of a powerful landed elite.

Hell was thinking of just doing the just the facts ma'am school of history for this little history of labor, but I now have come to realize that patterns, echoes, are critical to the story.

[unc70]

39. Pervasive, yes, but led by New England, enshrined by NE historians

I will continue to disagree with your denial of the pre-eminence of NE Puritan predestination in the prototypical American view of themselves and the world. But there is much more where we agree.

I come from a more "free will" background which was more common in NC (Moravian, Quaker, Methodist, Universalist, FW Baptists), though we also had the more Calvinistic sects. NC has always been at odds with its neighbors further south and with those much further north.

Be curious to learn your thoughts on slavenorth.com and on the DeWolf family.

[nadinbrzezinski]

40. We are free to disagree

though I suspect Wintrop is screaming from the grave... THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEANT with that City on the Hill speech! DAMN IT!

As is right now looking at both older research and newer research... as well as primary sources... ah the first compact of Virginia is a pain... not more than oh the Letters of Cortez to the King... that ancient (insert language here) is enough to give you head aches.

Hey at least I don't have to decipher it (do a little old fashioned paleography) At least my mind is just rebelling at the "misspellings."

Oh and I forgot, American Exceptionalism is part of what you are talking about... and it is part of the American Creed, the civics lesson one. I suspect that as the Empire falls about us, this exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny will fall by the wayside, as we join the rest of the world in being well.. part of the world.

[unc70]

44. American Exceptionalism, intolerance, and bigotry are at the core of our problems

The ascendancy of Puritanism to be the dominant philosophical and moral basis and NE as the dominant financial and political center for the Republic forms the basis for much of what most progressives see as being wrong with our country. The status of women as subservient to their husbands (don't forget that original sin was Eve's fault), the inferior races and peoples (Blacks, Catholics, "Indians"), and the intolerance of others as heretics are all direct results of the Puritans seeing themselves as God's chosen people for the New World.

In the tradition of Calvin/Cauvin, those who disagreed were heretics and deserved to be burned to death on a pyre of their own writings.

BTW Have enjoyed the discussion. Probably most everyone else has moved on at this point.

Regards.

[Thothmes]

41. First African slaves British North America

were sold in Virginia in 1619.

[unc70]

42. They were not "slaves", but "servants" to use the terms of the time

The group in Africans in Jamestown in 1619 were indentured/bonded for a fixed number of years, a common practice by ship captains for whites or blacks at that time. After their period of "service", they became "free" and had the rights same as if they were white. At least one of that original group is documented as being a landowner some years later in the colony.

BTW It is estimated that over half of the First Families of Virginia arrived in the colony under similar circumstances.

When discussing specific forms of bondage and servitude, I try to restrict the term "slave" to those conditions involving "bondage for life" and by the 1700's involving "bondage by birth" for childred with slave mothers. Those bonded for shorter periods, either for a fixed number of years or until a specific age, are considered "indentured" or "apprenticed".

At various times and places, there existed all sorts of hybrids or modified forms of bondage in the colonies and the states. An interesting variation starting around 1790-1800 is how many states in the North "magically" decreased the number of slaves in their states -- their laws were changed for those slaves currently in the state on a certain date whereby their later children would not be slaves for life, only "indentured or apprenticed at birth" until they reached a certain age (e.g. 28).

Without any slaves becoming "free", they were now reclassified as "indentured" and were no longer subject to the restrictions that were being placed on slaves. They were not counted on the slave enumeration; instead, as indentures, they were counted fully by the census for apportioning the US House. Slaves from other states or countries could still be brought into these states after the "abolishion" date typically taught in schools. For example, there were still a few slaves in NJ in 1865.

[nadinbrzezinski]

43. and as a piece of trivia from very modern research

those indentured servants were sold not by a Dutch Captain, but a British Privateer flying Dutch Colors. I mean we could not have Captains flying the British Flag after we made nice nice with Spain.

And yes this is very recent.

And you are correct by the way

[phone]

That said the attitudes by the aristocrats towards their servants have a direct connection to current attitudes vis a vis the poor.

Ah those wonderful echoes.

[Brewman_Jax]

13. Shouldn't leave out the "sundown towns"

From the article: Beginning in 1864 and continuing for approximately 60 years, whites across the United States conducted a series of racial expulsions, driving thousands of blacks from their homes to make communities lily-white.

In at least a dozen of the most extreme cases, blacks were purged from entire counties that remain almost exclusively white, according to the most recent census data.

The expulsions often were violent and swift, and they stretched beyond the South.

It is impossible to say exactly how many expulsions took place. But computer analysis and years of research conducted by the Washington Bureau of Cox Newspapers reveals that the expulsions occurred on a scale that has never been fully documented or understood. The incidents are rarely mentioned in the numerous books, articles and movies about America's contentious racial past.

Even less has been written on the legacy of these expulsions.


http://www.journal-news.com/news/content/news/stories/2...

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/images/12/20/sundown.towns.... (This excerpt is taken from James W. Loewen’s Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, copyright 2005, published by The New Press.

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. Of course not

they are even less known that the origin of scalping...

If and when we look under the surface... US History is nu-thing like we 'ere taught in Social Science... and it starts looking more and more like the history of just about every other nation. We got our good stuff, but boy there are some things that are very dark indeed.

[unc70]

35. Sundown towns first in early colonial times, whole states later

Overlooked in the discussion of sundown towns is the stark reality that states like Illinois and Indiana were essentially "sundown states" prior to the Civil War. The rules varied slightly over the years, but most of the "Free" states (vs "Slave") were in practice "White-only" states. In some, free people of color were not allowed to move to the state or buy property. There were lots of examples of "ethnic cleansing" prior to the Civil War in places like Cincinnati.

There had been similar laws in most of New England back during colonial times, many persisting until long after the Civil War and the 14th Amendment. Sometimes they were explicit legal prohibitions, but often they were dead convenents or restrictions on property ownership.

In a post a few weeks back, I noted that a free black man in NC in 1860 had all the rights of a white man except the right to vote (and had that right until the 1830's), while the same man was not allowed to move to Lincoln's Illinois!

Most efforts to expose and discuss these "secret history" items are met with bashing of the South without recognizing that race and slavery were not and are not problems limited to the South. No argument that the South has it share, but so does everywhere else without exception.

The site I referenced has a fairly good introduction to some of the hidden history of slavery in the North, much as this article highlights the secret history of sundown towns.

[Ron Green]

17. "Plane Wreck at Los Gatos," Woody Guthrie

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"

My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?

[Scurrilous]

22. K & R

[Kablooie]

23. And there were the Irish, the Italians and the Chinese. All were severely discriminated against.

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. Of course

they are just the workers, the cogs...

They were disposable, and to a point still are... the Scott Irish are just above in the line of who is a working poor.

[Kablooie]

25. But they were all pretty well assimilated but it took a over a generation to happen.

[nadinbrzezinski]

26. And we'd have to ask why the brown were not, mostly

here is why, fears of miscegenation... the mixing of the races. Race is part of this... deeply.

[fishwax]

31. k/r -- good post and discussion

Though it's not exactly the same as the Arizona law today, your post reminded me of another event that connects your interest in labor history (so you probably know about this, but I'll mention it anyway, in case it might help your project) with Arizona's efforts to get rid of "undesirables": the Bisbee Deportation.

One small quibble, with a point of fact about scalping: we didn't invent it. It was practiced in North America at least as far back as the 14th century, and may have also occurred in medieval European warfare. What colonial governments did do, though is offer rewards for scalps, which I'm sure helped to spread the practice.

[WinkyDink]

32. The Protestant ethic. But ethnic cleansing in this hemisphere began with Columbus and the Arawaks.

[nadinbrzezinski]

37. You know my problem with the Spanish Black Legend

is that we were not better than Columbus. We were just as ruthless...

To whit, no, Columbus was no saint, but neither was Berkeley.

[conscious evolution]

34. History will not

look kindly on this experiment in democracy.

[nadinbrzezinski]

38. Sadly depends on who wins this battle

alas how you shine that turd.