I said they create backlash that hurts their intended purpose.
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Herb Rothschild has a comment on my post.
Herb Rothschild (Harvard, PhD 1966) taught English literature at LSU and later at the University of Houston. During that time and after he retired, he was active in justice and peace work, first in the Civil Rights movement and later in work to end the U.S.-U.S.S.R. nuclear arms race. Since moving with his wife to the Rogue Valley in 2009, he has continued such work. In 2021, after the commercial paper serving Ashland folded, he helped found the non-profit Ashland.news, for which he writes a weekly column.
Guest Post by Herb Rothschild
Should we take responsibility for the past? If so, why and how? And how far into the past should our responsibility extend? These questions arise from the Up Close blog of December 3, in which Peter maintained that land acknowledgements are “a disastrous idea: bad history, bad patriotism, and very bad politics.”
Am I obligated to make amends for injuries I did to people in the past, even though the law doesn’t compel me to? Am I obligated to make amends if my father swindled someone out of his life savings, even though I’m not legally compelled? And even if I don’t make amends, am I obliged to at least acknowledge such wrongs if for no other reason than not to repeat them?
How much of this can we extrapolate from individual history to social history? If all the parents of my group injured all the parents of another group, can the two groups live in harmony without any acknowledgement of that past? As Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
To illustrate that truth, consider those who wish to sanitize the history of African-Americans in school textbooks. The very politicians who claimed that acknowledging things like the violent denial of Black participation in elections teaches kids to be ashamed of their country (a view Peter came close to echoing in his blog) seized upon the U.S. Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act twelve years ago to pass laws once again making it difficult for Blacks to vote. That was not coincidental. Controlling the past is one way to control the present.
Turning to settler treatment of Native Americans, the focus of the land acknowledgements, Peter casts that enormous harm as something in the distant past: “I don’t feel guilty over the behavior of other people’s great-great grand-parents.” The harm, however, didn’t end once the tribes were confined to reservations.
Forcibly taking Native children from their families on the reservations and putting them in the notorious Indian boarding schools, whose purpose was to eradicate their identity, began early in the 19th century and didn’t end until end until 1969. Remains of dead children are still being excavated at some of the sites. Many survivors are still alive. Jim Bear Jacobs, director of community engagement and racial justice for the Minnesota Council of Churches in Minneapolis, noted that “every Native person alive today is no more than three generations removed from a direct ancestor being in boarding school.”
Native lands are still under attack. Ignoring Native claims whenever there are valuable minerals to be extracted from them is an old story. Uranium mining on many reservations left mountains of tailings still emitting low level radiation. It’s also a current story. To take only one example, the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine is under construction on 18,000 acres of ancestral lands of the Northern Paiute and Western Shoshone peoples.
Peter mistakenly conflated guilt with responsibility. Just as counselors tell addicts, “It’s not your fault, but it is your responsibility,” so the purposes of the land acknowledgements—and any acknowledgement of past injustices—are to recognize what happened, understand the consequences, and make sure there are no repetitions.
I feel no guilt that I live on 10 acres that long ago were wrested by force from a Native people. I have no intention of trying to return the land to their descendants. But I will continue to donate to the American Indian College Fund, to lobby Congress to pass the bill establishing the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies in the United States, and to oppose mining on Native lands without their consent.
Such commitments don’t place me in a political faction (Peter’s “the Left”) constituted by “aggrieved peoples.” They place me among people committed to justice. It matters not which party is in power if its leaders don’t understand that the goal of politics is justice, a community in which each of us has a fair shot at realizing our potential and all of us are encouraged to be our best selves.
7 comments:
I'm not responsible for the actions of dead relatives I never met, just like I'm not legally liable for their financial debts. I can sympathize, but I'm not responsible in any fashion. However, If my relatives stole something, then passed it on to me, then I have a moral obligation to return that stolen property. That theory doesn't apply to my property (house) that I paid for. I don't have a guilt-trip regarding American Indians, since the US Government has bent-over backwards to rectify some of the atrocities of the past committed against them. The same could be said for Blacks (African-Americans). The government has bent-over backwards to help them.
Depending on the historian, counterfactuals may be a blessing or a curse. Regardless, we cannot know if the marauder Comanche tribe would have eventually sought to officially acknowledge and then correct the error of their ways, or if the imperialist Aztecs, left alone, would have established a (Surviving) Lesser Peoples College Fund.
That said, I respectfully disagree with the eminently reasonable Professor Rothschild that the sanctimonious SOU land acknowledgement and its ilk are born of a desire to take responsibility, as opposed to assigning fault, and establishing guilt. Yes, it's of the political Left, which--with or without scare quotes--is generally apposed to the political Right. Much of today's Left co-opts and mascotizes the credentialed aggrieved, typically in service of anti-capitalism, collectivism, and globalism.
In the academy especially, morality is often defined not by opposition to sanitizing but by the eagerness to demonize American (and European) history, as if the by-product of uniquely sinister oppressors, even as the very template for historical Oppression itself. Puritanical prigs and pharisees, like zealots and apologists, can hail from across the political spectrum.
For practical purposes, employing past and present, domestically and globally, the crux of the modern social justice debate is in my view whether or not equality of outcome is the fairest gauge of equality of opportunity. Put another way, does inequality, in groups or individuals, upon arrival signify fault, and establish harm culpably done by some at the expense of others.
Every time an angel earns his wings, a bell chimes. (I learned that from "Its a Wonderful Life.")
Every time a person sits through a long-winded land acknowledgement someone becomes one notch closer to agreeing with the odious Donald Trump.(I learned that by sitting through land acknowledgments.)
The American origin story is racist theft. This is classic liberal patriotism: hang your head in shame. Is that a winning slogan? Is that what liberals think is aspirational and motivating? Head's up to Democrats: Dr. King said he had a dream. People want a better future, not a lecture telling them to study up on what shits they are.
This backfires on advocates for justice. It is a resentment generator. Why not mention the Irish building the railroad? And the Chinese Exclusion Act? And Japanese internment? And Black being enslaved, segregated, and redlined? And women? And Jews? And immigrants? No apology to any of these? Didn't they all get screwed?
Land Acknowledgements are the "thoughts and prayers" equivalent to the response of gun rights people say after mass shootings. Empty words. When people sit through a land acknowledgement they think Democrats are pandering to the Indian vote. Classic liberal guilt trip.
This is a good way to make DEI a winning issue for Trumpers. Trump's billionaire pals should pay money to insist these acknowledgments get read at every opportunity.
Blue voter in Portland
I taught computer science at Portland Community College for 20 years. The place was always predominantly left-wing, but starting in the 2010s, wokeness rolled in like an ideological tidal wave.
There were always lectures and things like teaching-related book clubs for us instructors, and I attended and enjoyed many of them. But as this tidal wave broke over us, just about all of these sessions turned into wokeness indoctrination.
In particular, there was a strong suggestion from the administration that we include land acknowledgments in our syllabi. For me, this meant that my description of my course and what it required (all of it having to do with technical, computer-related topics), was also supposed to include an act of obeisance to a far-left ideology that I did not agree with, and that had nothing to do with computers.
This was one of a number of such demands that the administration placed on us instructors. I never did include a land acknowledgment. What I did with the other ideological crap they insisted that I include in my syllabus was to add it at the end in a very small font, under a heading that said “Material Required by the College.”
Our politics and policies appear to vacillate between the Noble Indian and the Bloody Savage.
For what purpose do we read Land Acknowledgements? Are you prepared to return the land or repatriate it? Who truly has a claim to this land? Instead of reading a Land Acknowledgement statement, why not advocate for full citizenship for Native Peoples? We live in a society rooted in capitalism; observe how some Indigenous individuals have leveraged their positions to benefit themselves and their families.
The SOU land acknowledgement does not call on anyone to hang their head in shame. It calls for "collective healing and partnership." What's wrong with that? I assume that people who equate these words--healing and partnership--with a guilt trip are white. If my assumption is correct, then that's all the more reason for SOU to promote healing and partnership (except, as we now know, real Americans don't want a partnership with those "garbage" Somali Americans from Minnesota).
Republicans have been trying to make "social justice" a pejorative term for a long time, but that makes it no less a noble cause. It's the reason most of our ancestors migrated here.
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