Merlin Stone Remembered
Page 20
The Process
One of the first realizations that the examination of a broad spectrum of historical records provides is that racism is not, and never has been, a static attitude, a monolithic form of behavior, or a body of random events. The records make it clear that racism occurs as a long-term process comprised of specific stages. Not truly perceiving racism as a process may be at the core of our problems in confronting it successfully for just when we think we are lessening racism, as it exists in one of its stages, it may surprise us by moving into another stage. But the examination of the historical records also reveals that the many stages of the entire racist process follow a surprisingly consistent repertoire, i.e., specific stages of racism occurring at specific points in the process. By first perceiving racism as a long-term process, then becoming familiar with the full repertoire of the numerous stages within the process, and finally better understanding when each stage will be used, we can begin to see the predictability in racist behavior. We believe that it is this predictability that will be of value in our formulation of anti-racist activities.
To understand racism as a process, we should first delineate the two major aspects within it. Although these two aspects are closely interwoven in nearly all racist oppression, perceiving the specific nature of each aspect is necessary for a clear comprehension of the process. The first aspect, and nearly always the underlying purpose of racism, is economic racism, the theft of the land, property, resources and/or labor from people of a racial or ethnic group other than one’s own. The second aspect is cultural racism, the act of propagandizing and/or believing that a racial or ethnic group other than one’s own is innately inferior in human development. This second aspect may range from assertions of an innate lack of mental or creative capacities to an innate lack of various “moral” capacities. It is the assertion that the lack of these qualities is innate, i.e., genetic, as much a biologically determined factor as skin coloring, that is the core of cultural racism.
Once distinguishing between these two aspects of racism so that we may define each, we may then observe the progressive stages within each aspect—and how each specific stage of cultural racism is strategically dovetailed to support each specific stage of economic racism. Within the context of this paper we have simplified the progression of the process into two major stages but, as we shall explain, many sub-stages exist within each stage and the transitions within and between the stages occur on a gradual continuum, at times even overlapping.
The first stage of economic racism is the initial theft of the land, property, resources and/or labor belonging to another racial or ethnic group by violence as extreme as that required to accomplish the theft, e.g., unprovoked aggression, invasion, full scale war, massacre and/or kidnapping. This theft is supported by the first stage of cultural racism. This is the assertion that the victims of the theft are innately immoral, even innately evil, e.g., demons, cannibals, head hunters, savages, bloodthirsty, merciless, sadistic, vicious, child killers, rapists, heathen, in league with the devil, criminal, devious, sly, sexually perverse, dishonest, cunning, etc.
In this first stage of cultural racism there is little or no emphasis on a supposedly innate mental superiority of the aggressors; innate moral superiority is the issue. The aggressors declare that they are innately moral. The victims are supposedly lacking in fully developed human capacities for morals and ethics, leading to the aggressors’ declaration that they must be controlled or annihilated. The aggressors claim to be combatting this evil and immorality for the sake of all humankind or in the name of some supposedly higher divine force.
The purpose of first stage cultural racism is to incite fervor among the aggressors that will fuel and justify the unprovoked aggression and extreme violence of first stage economic racism. The various sub-stages within this stage encompass the aggressors’ first assertions of evil or immorality, along with their initial physical attack, and continue until the final defeat and subjugation of the victims. As increasing areas of the victims’ territories are conquered and/or greater numbers of the victims are subjugated, the assertions of evil and immorality lessen by degree, creating sub-stages that may range from the aggressors’ initial assertions of “demons” or “savages” to somewhat milder assertions such as innate dishonesty or cunning. The length of time of the entire first stage encompasses the initial attack until the final conquest, a time period that may range from several weeks to several centuries, i.e., as long as there is serious resistance by the victims.
The second stage of economic racism is the long-term control by the aggressors/conquerors of what they have taken by force and then claim is rightfully theirs. The land, property and resources of the victims are legally in the conquerors’ name no matter that they wrote the new laws themselves. The labor of the victims, now living in the conquerors’ land, is reimbursed with just enough to keep the victims alive, able to work, and to produce more laborers whether for cheap or slave labor. (This includes the conquerors’ control and regulations of the number of laborers, leading to enforced pregnancies when more laborers are wanted by the conquerors, or enforced sterilization and/or less concern for the food supply and health care of the victims when less laborers are wanted.) The level of overt violence in this second stage is lower than in the first stage but is always present as an example or threat against rebellion by the victims.
The second stage of cultural racism supports the second stage of economic racism. This is the assertion that the members of the subjugated population are innately mentally inferior, e.g., less able to learn, less inventive, less creative toward cultural accomplishments, at a lower level of human development, etc. The menial jobs allotted to the conquered victims supposedly affirm this innate mental inferiority. These assertions of the victims’ supposed inferiority are structured into the social institutions of the conquerors, as well as the laws, customs, educational and economic systems and, at times, the religious systems.
Deprived of their ancestral lands, property and resources, of their own cultures and customs, even of control of their own lives, the victims and their descendants gradually internalize the conquerors’ assertions of their superiority. The level of this internalization creates various sub-stages, forming a direct ratio to the level of repressive violence, i.e., the greater the internalization, the less overt the violence—and vice versa. (This does not apply to the less obvious violence of enforced pregnancies, sterilization, or lack of concern for food and health care used to control the labor supply.) The length of time of this second stage is determined by the ability of the aggressors/conquerors to maintain the subjugation of the victims and to fend off rebellion.
But the most important factor in understanding the entire process of racism is perceiving the conquerors’ strategy of revising both aspects of first stage racism upon any serious intransigence or rebellion by the victims at any time during the second stage, i.e., an acceleration of repressive violence accompanied by a reversion to the various forms of assertions of an innate evil or immorality in the rebellious victims.
We have long been aware of the increase in repressive violence as the conquerors’ response to confrontations of their racist behavior. What we have not seen as clearly is the conquerors’ strategy of vacillation between the two sets of quite different stereotypes of cultural racism: the correlations of assertions of an innate mental inferiority upon the passivity or cooperation of the victims; the assertions of an innate evil or immorality when the victims refuse to be victimized.
Observing the tactic of this vacillation to maintain economic racism and to repress all efforts to battle against it is vital to our understanding of the entire racist process for the historical records suggest that economic racism has seldom, if ever, existed without the support of some form of cultural racism.
Acts of economic racism have been recorded throughout written history. Written records supporting cultural racism are less plentiful but do surface in statements
made shortly before, or at the time of, various conquests, and in the records of the legal, martial, religious, social and educational systems of the aggressors/conquerors. Observing some of the specific accounts of cultural racism, as it has been used and re-used to support economic racism for over 3,000 years, gives us some idea of the repertoire of various cultural racist assertions and when each will be used.
First Stage
The use of first stage cultural racism appears in the accounts of the Germanic Saxons’ battles with Asian Turkic Magyars in the Tenth Century. To fuel their battles against the Magyars, the Saxons asserted the Magyars were “cannibals and vampires,” “the devilish offspring of Gothic witches who had mated with fiends in the wastes of Asia.” 1
This assertion of an innate evil in the Asian groups that were to the north and east of the Teutonic/Germanic tribes was to be revived time and again. It was used to fuel the Crusades that began at the end of the Eleventh Century. At the call of Pope Urban II in 1095, white European men began to gather in troops and make their way across the thousands of miles of Europe and Asia to conquer the “evil Asian infidel,” i.e., the Asian Seljuk Turkic peoples who were accused of threatening Christianity in Byzantine Turkey. It was not long before Semitic Jews in Europe, as well as Semitic Jews and Arabs of the Near East, were also regarded as “evil Asian infidels” by European Crusaders who attacked and murdered many Jews and Arabs along with Asian Turks.
After several centuries of ‘Holy Wars,’ the crusading Teutonic Knights of Germany ruled over large areas on the eastern bank of the Baltic Sea, extending their conquests well into western Russia, while the Levantine area that is now Israel, Lebanon and west Syria was conquered by the leaders of the Crusades who eventually crowned themselves as kings or princes of many eastern Mediterranean towns and provinces. Godfrey of Lorraine became King of Jerusalem. Tancred of Normandy was crowned Prince of Galilee. Guy de Lusignan ruled Cyprus, Raymond of Toulouse claimed Tripoli. De la Roche became Duke of Athens, as Baldwin of Flanders took the throne of the Emperor of Constantinople, declaring himself as ruler of the entire Byzantine Christian Empire.2
But the white European assertion that Asian peoples were evil did not originate with Christianity. It had existed among the Norse and Swedes in the pre-Christian Viking period. Norse accounts of the Ninth Century describe the Inuit (Eskimos) and the Asian Finns, who lived to the north and east of the Norse and Swedes, as skraelings, literally “wretched savages.” Declaring that the Asians’ darker coloring made them “evil in appearance,” Norse Vikings gradually occupied the Asian Finnish areas of Scandinavia. This attitude apparently justified the unprovoked Viking murders of “skraelings” in Vinland (now thought to have been Newfoundland), which the Vikings had also attempted to colonize.3
Much this same form of cultural racism was used to fuel and justify the four centuries of violent conquest of the entire western hemisphere. The concept of “Manifest Destiny” as the justification for white Europeans to invade and take the lands and resources of Native Americans by ruse and violence was rife with images of the indigenous populations of the western hemisphere as “bloodthirsty heathen savages.” Despite the reports of Columbus who spoke of the Arawak tribe of the Caribbean as peaceful and generous, despite the writings of the Sixteenth Century Montaigne who described the Native Americans as the most honest and forthright of people, the general attitude of the white European adventurists, and of the European royalty and business interests that funded them, was that the Native Americans were “heathen savages” worshipping “accursed idols” and practicing immoral social and religious customs, i.e., non-Christian. This attitude of first stage cultural racism appears to have been most prevalent among the Puritan “colonists” from Britain, but also appears continually in Spanish accounts of the conquest of Mexico and the Yucatan.4
The refusal of most Native Americans to be forced from their own lands, and their refusal to be used as slave labor for the Europeans, led to a prolonged first stage of economic and cultural racism that began shortly after 1492 and continued until the last half of the Nineteenth Century. The remnants of this attitude lasted well into the Twentieth Century, surfacing time and again in “Cowboy and Indian” films. Since so much more than Native American labor was to be gained by the European invaders of the entire western hemisphere, the first stages of economic and cultural racism continued to the point of an almost total extermination of the indigenous population of North America and much of Central and South America. Although many Native Americans, especially in Mexico, were taken as slaves by the Spanish troops, and “good looking Indian women” were taken as war booty, most Native Americans resisted enslavement so furiously that they were not generally regarded as potential slave laborers by the Europeans.5
But while Native Americans remained in the extreme violence of first stage racism for so many centuries, European “colonists” then kidnapped people from Africa to serve as the slave labor on the lands they had taken from the Native Americans. European ships sailed the Atlantic, repeatedly carrying the silver and gold taken from the Native Americans to Europe, returning with cargoes of healthy young people kidnapped from Africa.6 Forcibly removed from their homelands, hence in an even more powerless position than the Native Americans, the kidnapped Africans and their descendants in North, Central and South America more quickly became the victims of second stage racism. Thus, as the Native Americans were still being described as “bloodthirsty heathens,” and gradually being exterminated by the continuation of first stage violence against them, it was primarily African people who were used as slaves. The European “colonists” were quick to assert that the kidnapped black people were at a lower level of mental development.
The pattern of the stages of the racist process remained consistent, for when the Native American populations became so small that they were no longer able to physically resist the theft and aggression, the survivors were then stereotyped as mentally and motivationally inferior, while Afro-Americans, especially since the recent demands for civil rights, have been increasingly stereotyped as vicious or dishonest.
Equating the people of darker races, or darkness per se, with the devil, or some supernatural force of evil or immorality, has been used repeatedly in first stage cultural racism, not only in the Christian period but by pre-Christian white groups as well. As we will explain more fully, this form of first stage cultural racism appears throughout the religious accounts of the ancient Aryans. The ancient Aryan records provide a great deal of insight into the astonishing ideas invented by racist minds to support their abuse, conquests, and oppression of other peoples. But before discussing the early Aryan records, a look at some later records of second stage cultural racism may be helpful in better understanding the significance of the Aryan accounts and the role they played in contemporary racist attitudes.
Second Stage
Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries white Europeans invaded and conquered many areas of the world, in most cases those belonging to people of darker races who constitute the majority of the Earth’s population.
There was hardly a mile of the 5000 mile long continent of Africa that had not been appropriated by one European nation or another,7 as the conquerors eventually declared the innate mental inferiority of the indigenous African populations despite the reality that they had physically and culturally flourished on their own lands for thousands of years. From the Indian Ocean to the Pacific, from major portions of the mainland such as India and Burma, to the vast land areas of Australia and New Zealand, to large islands such as Borneo, New Guinea and The Philippines, to even the smallest of islands of the Polynesians in the mid-Pacific, the governments and troops of European countries such as England, France, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Belgium and Italy battled over which one of them owned the land, property, resources and labor of the people who had lived there for so many millennia.8 Initially spoken of as savages, cannibals, head hunters, or simply heathens
, the people of the many conquered populations eventually became the cheap or slave labor force for the European conquerors.
By the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, when many “colonies” were in the firm grasp of the descendants of white Europeans, the claims of second stage cultural racism were widely propagated and believed among most white Europeans, those still in Europe, and those who ruled the indigenous populations of the “colonies,” some of which had become separate white-ruled nations. These second stage cultural racist claims were often deeply internalized by the descendants of those who had been conquered and subjugated in their own homelands, and by the descendants of those who had been kidnapped for slave labor in other lands.
It was in the early Nineteenth Century that second stage cultural racism, which had previously been institutionalized primarily by the laws and social structures of the aggressors/conquerors, emerged in yet another social institution of white people—the universities of Europe. Formulated as an “academic subject,” and described as “racial theory,” second stage cultural racism was reinforced by members of the European academic community as several highly respected university professors claimed that the mental and creative superiority of white people could be “proven” by “documented evidence.” It is somewhat ironic that the use of this so called academic evidence and the educational system to further institutionalize second stage cultural racism eventually led to a complete academic refutation of this “evidence,” as we shall explain.