This is a reply to a post made by "Topiltzin" on Wed Apr 4, 2007 where she/he quoted the below article. I have excerpted it from the original:
Combating White Racism Against Indigenous Peoples
By Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer
(...)
...If we're going to get to the roots of racism, we go beyond the point of colonization.
Before Cook sails to Hawaii, what brought him there? What brought Columbus to America? What sent the Spaniards to Central and South America? How did that happen?
Well it started back in the 1500s and it started in Rome. From edicts that were enunciated through the Papal Bulls. These were statements and pronouncements that came from the Vatican. And with these pronouncements, the world was divided up for European,
Christian colonizers.
What was actually happening at the time was that the monarchs of the Christian nations - the Brits, the French, the Italians, the Dutch - began to fight and war over land and natural resources. In seeking a way to resolve this bloodshed in Europe, they went to the Holy
Father.
This is at a period of time in Western history that predates the concept of secularization, there wasn't a division of the Church and the state and the Pope was the head of the world.
And so we had, for a period of a couple of hundred years, these Papal Bulls sought to prevent the fighting by dividing the world.
My favorite one is the Papal Bull of Pope Alexander the VI, it's called the Inter Caetera. When I read the translation of it, (it was written in Latin), it just stunned me. The Pope is saying here that he will sanctify the subjugation of the new world and its barbarous
nations.
So the blessing of the Pope was given, and the colonizer sailed out. It's important that we understand this to be the root of racism, because to this very day, the churches form a central part of the social system of the nation states that are Christian.
And so the Pope divided up the world. When you look at the colonies, especially in North, Central and South America, you can see this division to this very day.
{ends}
My reply:
An interesting take on things, except for one thing. You make it sound like the pope knew about "the new world" even before columbus sailed.
While I think it makes tons of sense what you're saying (statesmen always looking for ways to deflect the continuous building frustration of "the masses"), i see this view as yet another symptom, and not really "the root" or even near the heart of racism.
I mean, what moved columbus to go "off the end of the Earth" into the Unknown?
In my view (inviting additions), what it seems to boil down to is that all of these "explorers" were continuously seeking ways to continue getting their paychecks (in the context of their belief in their society), so that they could continue to escape the society they wished to escape, yet had no idea of how to do so in real terms.
Is that at all possible?
And no matter how "free spirited" their lost hearts might be, they were used, tooled, in a [i]meta[/i] way by the system in which they were products of. [b]Whether that system consciously understood the "fine tuning" of social control at the time (and honed it into a so-called "fine art" as today's social and cultural managers might well say) may be a moot point.[/b]
The fact is, as it seems to me anyway, that these "men of daring" --as a kind of radical within their formal positions, perhaps similar to university professors who play at radical ideas without being actually *from* (or having direct experience with) such intensities-- [b]were leashed.[/b] They were leashed and they were tooled to perpetuate the value system of the realm.
Others could probably articulate this better, but I'm the kind who tries to get the idea out into *some* kind of consciousness...even if i only have the idea "on the tip of my tongue" so to speak.
This is something i've been thinking about for awhile. The idea that all these adventuresome people had the balls to go into the Unknown, [b]but were consistently reined-in by their "betters" when it most counted.[/b] I think this is true of Lewis and Clark too, but i'm getting off the subject.
root and heart of racism
As to the root of racism, i have to agree with the crux of what the Lakota wisdom keeper, John Trudell says; that [b]racism has been a tool amongst quite a few other tools, to fool the implementer class [/b](those implementing Given policies, from nobles/middle classes "down" to peasants/working class) into believing that they were allowed "A Seat At The Table" of "Power" (really, tyranny, terrorism)...and thus get them to do the bidding of the kings/upper classes (who Play the Meta Game in dutiful ways).
Surely there are holes to poke in this theory, and that's why I want to post it here. What am I possibly missing?
To delve further, the HEART of racism, i see, is a NORMALized experience in the context of a severely alienation-oriented society. A society, a host of societies --perhaps civilization itself?-- organized for various forms of perpetual war. A society which uses its masses as [i]fuel[/i] to run the confined imaginations and constructs of a so-called "elite" machine (the machine characterized by the reduction of realities allowed to be viewed as Possible/Reputable/Valid).
In this scenario, the perpetually kept off-balance "citizenry" is kept as a kind of guard dog to the Social Order --while the "elites" (nobles to princes), in their youthful indoctrination stage are kept as a kind of handler. And I do mean *kept*; because the way the thing works is that even the "elites" are manuvered to *believe* in the Given Way Of Doing Things. And they are threatened if they don't follow along in this dogma as well! (i.e. haven't you heard of threats to kick rich kids out of their family wills, or to send them to military boarding schools, or even psychiatric facilities?)
Having said all of that, I hesitate to throw yet another coercion upon them, such as calling them "clinically psychotic"; i can see the value of arting such intensity, yet i question the value of reproducing the Given social order in any shape or form...even tho it may well be important as a phase in our contentions.
Combating White Racism Against Indigenous Peoples
By Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer
(...)
...If we're going to get to the roots of racism, we go beyond the point of colonization.
Before Cook sails to Hawaii, what brought him there? What brought Columbus to America? What sent the Spaniards to Central and South America? How did that happen?
Well it started back in the 1500s and it started in Rome. From edicts that were enunciated through the Papal Bulls. These were statements and pronouncements that came from the Vatican. And with these pronouncements, the world was divided up for European,
Christian colonizers.
What was actually happening at the time was that the monarchs of the Christian nations - the Brits, the French, the Italians, the Dutch - began to fight and war over land and natural resources. In seeking a way to resolve this bloodshed in Europe, they went to the Holy
Father.
This is at a period of time in Western history that predates the concept of secularization, there wasn't a division of the Church and the state and the Pope was the head of the world.
And so we had, for a period of a couple of hundred years, these Papal Bulls sought to prevent the fighting by dividing the world.
My favorite one is the Papal Bull of Pope Alexander the VI, it's called the Inter Caetera. When I read the translation of it, (it was written in Latin), it just stunned me. The Pope is saying here that he will sanctify the subjugation of the new world and its barbarous
nations.
So the blessing of the Pope was given, and the colonizer sailed out. It's important that we understand this to be the root of racism, because to this very day, the churches form a central part of the social system of the nation states that are Christian.
And so the Pope divided up the world. When you look at the colonies, especially in North, Central and South America, you can see this division to this very day.
{ends}
My reply:
An interesting take on things, except for one thing. You make it sound like the pope knew about "the new world" even before columbus sailed.
While I think it makes tons of sense what you're saying (statesmen always looking for ways to deflect the continuous building frustration of "the masses"), i see this view as yet another symptom, and not really "the root" or even near the heart of racism.
I mean, what moved columbus to go "off the end of the Earth" into the Unknown?
In my view (inviting additions), what it seems to boil down to is that all of these "explorers" were continuously seeking ways to continue getting their paychecks (in the context of their belief in their society), so that they could continue to escape the society they wished to escape, yet had no idea of how to do so in real terms.
Is that at all possible?
And no matter how "free spirited" their lost hearts might be, they were used, tooled, in a [i]meta[/i] way by the system in which they were products of. [b]Whether that system consciously understood the "fine tuning" of social control at the time (and honed it into a so-called "fine art" as today's social and cultural managers might well say) may be a moot point.[/b]
The fact is, as it seems to me anyway, that these "men of daring" --as a kind of radical within their formal positions, perhaps similar to university professors who play at radical ideas without being actually *from* (or having direct experience with) such intensities-- [b]were leashed.[/b] They were leashed and they were tooled to perpetuate the value system of the realm.
Others could probably articulate this better, but I'm the kind who tries to get the idea out into *some* kind of consciousness...even if i only have the idea "on the tip of my tongue" so to speak.
This is something i've been thinking about for awhile. The idea that all these adventuresome people had the balls to go into the Unknown, [b]but were consistently reined-in by their "betters" when it most counted.[/b] I think this is true of Lewis and Clark too, but i'm getting off the subject.
root and heart of racism
As to the root of racism, i have to agree with the crux of what the Lakota wisdom keeper, John Trudell says; that [b]racism has been a tool amongst quite a few other tools, to fool the implementer class [/b](those implementing Given policies, from nobles/middle classes "down" to peasants/working class) into believing that they were allowed "A Seat At The Table" of "Power" (really, tyranny, terrorism)...and thus get them to do the bidding of the kings/upper classes (who Play the Meta Game in dutiful ways).
Surely there are holes to poke in this theory, and that's why I want to post it here. What am I possibly missing?
To delve further, the HEART of racism, i see, is a NORMALized experience in the context of a severely alienation-oriented society. A society, a host of societies --perhaps civilization itself?-- organized for various forms of perpetual war. A society which uses its masses as [i]fuel[/i] to run the confined imaginations and constructs of a so-called "elite" machine (the machine characterized by the reduction of realities allowed to be viewed as Possible/Reputable/Valid).
In this scenario, the perpetually kept off-balance "citizenry" is kept as a kind of guard dog to the Social Order --while the "elites" (nobles to princes), in their youthful indoctrination stage are kept as a kind of handler. And I do mean *kept*; because the way the thing works is that even the "elites" are manuvered to *believe* in the Given Way Of Doing Things. And they are threatened if they don't follow along in this dogma as well! (i.e. haven't you heard of threats to kick rich kids out of their family wills, or to send them to military boarding schools, or even psychiatric facilities?)
Having said all of that, I hesitate to throw yet another coercion upon them, such as calling them "clinically psychotic"; i can see the value of arting such intensity, yet i question the value of reproducing the Given social order in any shape or form...even tho it may well be important as a phase in our contentions.
