I've been thinking a lot about Quynh's thoughtful provocation about Thanksgiving. What, indeed, prevents us from mourning with those who were massacred in the creation of the United States who every year celebrates a myth of national unity, in denial that a great crime happened on this very soil? There are many resources on the internet that point to thoughtful people who are marking tomorrow not by gorging, but by fasting and mourning. Tomorrow, I will be reading these poems and stories and remembering the dead. Here are some of the few I've gathered:
William S. Burrough's Thanksgiving Prayer, on video and in print.
Full text of the 1970 speech by Wampsutta, a Wampanoag Elder, that inaugurated the National Day of Mourning when he was disinvited to the Pilgrims' Feast for his views.
An article by a Duke Grad Student: "But being thankful for the privilege that comes at the hegemonic cost of others is not something to celebrate, or to give thanks for."
A review of Howard Zinn's book on Myths of American Exceptionalism that begins with recounting the slaughter of Pequot Indians and ends with US torture today.
An interview with Russell Means, American Indian Movement activist - not all of it is pertinent but there are some stirring parts where he cautions against casting American Indians as relics of the past when they are still constantly being wronged in the present
we all know that questions, interviews, discussions... initiated by colonizers are always set up against the colonized, so it's very enjoyable to come across answers like these:
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When asked if he (Malcom X) would accept outer help from the Communists:
"Let me tell you a little story. It's like being in a wolf's den. The wolf sees someone on the outside who is interested in freeing me from the den. The wolf doesn't like that person on the outside. But I don't care who opens the door and lets me out."
"Then your answer is yes?"
"No, I'm talking about a wolf."
:-)
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Q: If Muslims ultimately gain control as you predict, what do you plan to
do with white people?
MALCOLM X: It’s not a case of what would we do, it’s a case of what would God
do with whites. What does a judge do with the guilty? Either the guilty one repents
and atones, or God executes judgment.
Q: You refer to whites as "the guilty" and "the enemy"; you predict divine
retribution against them; and you preach absolute separation from the white
community. Do not these views substantiate the fact that your movement is predicated
on race hatred?
MALCOLM X: Sir, it’s from Mr. Muhammad that the black masses are learning for
the first time in 400 years the real truth of how the white man brainwashed the black
man, kept him ignorant of his true history, robbed him of his self−confidence. The
black masses for the first time are understanding that it’s not a case of being
anti−white or anti−Christian, but it’s a case of seeing the true nature of the white
man. We’re anti−evil, anti−oppression, anti−lynching. You can’t be anti−those things
unless you’re also anti−the oppressor and the lyncher. You can’t be anti−slavery and
pro−slavemaster; you can’t be anti−crime and pro−criminal. In fact, Mr. Muhammad
teaches that if the present generation of whites would study their own race in the light
of their true history, they would be anti−white themselves.
Q: Are you?
MALCOLM X: As soon as the white man hears a black man say that he’s through
loving white people, then the white man accuses the black man of hating him. The
Honorable Elijah Muhammad doesn’t teach hate. The white man isn’t important
enough for the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and his followers to spend any time
hating him. The white man has brainwashed himself into believing that all the black
people in the world want to be cuddled up next to him. When he meets what we’re
talking about, he can’t believe it, it takes all the wind out of him. When we tell him
we don’t want to be around him, we don’t want to be like he is, he’s staggered. It
makes him re−evaluate his 300−year myth about the black man. What I want to know
is how the white man, with the blood of black people dripping off his fingers, can
have the audacity to be asking black people do they hate him. That takes a lot of nerve.
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Q: You say that white men are devils by nature. Was Christ a devil?
MALCOLM X: Christ wasn’t white. Christ was a black man.
Q: On what Scripture do you base this assertion?
MALCOLM X: Sir, Billy Graham has made the same statement in public. Why not
ask him what Scripture he found it in? When Pope Pius XII died, LIFE magazine
carried a picture of him in his privatestudy kneeling before a black Christ. What was
the source of their information? All white people who have studied history and
geography know that Christ was a black man. Only the poor, brainwashed American
Negro has been made to believe that Christ was white, to maneuver him into
worshiping the white man. After becoming a Muslim in prison, I read almost
everything I could put my hands on in the prison library. I began to think back on
everything I had read and especially with the histories, I realized that nearly all of
them read by the general public have been made into white histories. I found out that
the history−whitening process either had left out great things that black men had
done, or some of the great black men had gotten whitened.
Other striking quotes by Malcom X (or "calling it what it is")
"I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American.... No I'm not an American, I'm one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy.... I'm speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of a victim. I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare."
"If I have a cup of coffee that is too strong for me because it is too black, I weaken it by pouring cream into it. I integrate it with cream. If I keep pouring enough cream in the coffee, pretty soon the entire flavor of the coffee is changed; the very nature of the coffee is changed. If enough cream is poured in, eventually you don't even know that I had coffee in this cup. This is what happened with the March on Washington. The whites didn't integrate it; they infiltrated it. Whites joined it; they engulfed it; they became so much a part of it, it lost its original flavor. It ceased to be a black march; it ceased to be militant; it ceased to be angry; it ceased to be impatient. In fact, it ceased to be a march."
"I can't turn around without hearing about some 'civil rights advance'! White people seem to think the black man ought to be shouting 'hallelujah'! Four hundred years the white man has had his foot-long knife in the black man's back - and now the white man starts to wiggle the knife out, maybe six inches! The black man's supposed to be grateful? Why, if the white man jerked the knife out, it's still going to leave a scar!"
