5 Years Ago: The Peculiar Blindness, Part 5: Missing Dates

 

I'm currently back in the South, so it's timely that I revisit this five-year old post. 

Although Juneteenth remains a legal public holiday, President Trump unilaterally deleted both Juneteenth and Martin Luther King Day from the list of days when we can all* enter national parks for free. In their place, the president proclaimed his own birthday as a day when we can all enter national parks for free, in addition to Constitution Day and Theodore Roosevelt's birthday. 

*"All" excludes non-citizens and non-residents, who must pay one HUNDRED dollars PER PERSON over the age of 16 to enter some national parks. For a family who might have wanted to spend several days in the area, is that per day? Or maybe the entrance is good for several days? I don't know the answer to that. 

The bleaching of America continues. I often think back to the Readings on Race Book Club I joined during my year in Ferguson, Missouri. One of our members said this: "Brown is the global majority." The US is not, and never has been, a white enclave. Clinging to a delusional white supremacy paradigm will only carry us to the salvage yard of civilizations flattened by their hubris, never seeing - until too late - the ripplings of innovations from newer, younger, hungrier peoples. 

I know there's the Santayana quote: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," referring to societies as a whole, not just individuals. I've come to believe that we WILL strive to repeat dark histories because that's our nature when unchecked. It is complacency that dooms us to repeat our dark histories because while knowing our histories - all of our histories - is critical, we can never never never assume that any current civil rights or freedoms or equitable access to education, income, healthcare, and other opportunities have anything more than shallow roots, all too easy for disruptors to pluck out. 

Thursday, June 17, 2021

The Peculiar Blindness, Part 5: Missing Dates

 

Museum and Tourist's Center list of Important Dates in history of Washington, Louisiana. March 2015.

I'm in Birmingham, Alabama.

Juneteenth 2021 is coming up this weekend.  

I've been going through past photos, editing and organizing. 

I bumped into a photo I took in 2015: A list of Important Dates in the history of the historic village of Washington, in Louisiana. 

Apparently not a thing in Washington, Louisiana:

• Slavery
• Civil War
• Emancipation
• Opelousas Massacre (with its catalyst in Washington) (or heck, even call it the Opelousas "Riot")

Nor are these noteworthy events: 

April 9, 1866: The first civil rights act in the United States, which overturned the Black Codes and which established that "all persons" (including Black persons) born in the U.S. are citizens. [But: The Act specifically excluded most Native Americans from citizenship.]

July 9, 1868: The 14th Amendment to the Constitution re-affirmed that all persons born in the U.S. are citizens. [Note: But voting rights were denied to all women and to most Native Americans. The 14th Amendment was generally interpreted to deny citizenship to most Native Americans, as well.]

June 2, 1924 (less than 100 years ago!): The Indian Citizens Act allowed as how Native Americans are U.S. citizens, too.

Here in Alabama, the state scrubs out the federal holiday that commemorates Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday by bleaching it with a state holiday that honors Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general. 

In fact, Alabama has three PAID holidays that honor those who fought and died to protect their right to enslave fellow human beings.

In good news, there are efforts afoot to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. 

 

A couple of days ago, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. 

Yesterday, the U.S. House voted in favor of same, over the objections of, yes, two of Alabama's four representatives. (On the other hand, Governor Ivey recently proclaimed Juneteenth as an important day.)

Related posts

• The Peculiar blindness, Part 1: Introduction
• The Peculiar Blindness, Part 2: The "Yes, But" Mask
• The Peculiar Blindness, Part 3: You Don't See What I Don't See
• The Peculiar Blindness, Part 4: Casual Contempt

 

Ferguson: History I Don't See

History mural, Ferguson, Missouri. June 2018.

On the corner of North Florissant and Airport/Hereford, there is a US Bank. The bank has a mural on its side depicting Ferguson history.

History mural, Ferguson, Missouri. June 2018.

Who's not there?

History mural, Ferguson, Missouri. June 2018.

We've got to stop being so blind.

El Paso: History's Long Reach: Oñate

"You will tell your grandchildren: I remember 9/11. Well, we remember Juan Oñate. Send him back to hell."


Soon after I arrived in El Paso, I watched a 2008 documentary called The Last Conquistador, by Cristina Ibarra and John J. Valadez. You can watch it in its entirety here and the trailer below:

The documentary, albeit 10 years old, is as timely today as it was then, particularly when we consider the national debate about keeping or removing monuments that glorify the Confederate Union.

Unless noted otherwise, all quotes below are from statements made by people featured in the documentary. 

The documentary is about some people's vision for a world-sized statue that honors a man who "brought the entire Hispanic culture to New Mexico," a man named Juan de Oñate.  Installed in 2008, the statue stands outside the El Paso Airport.

How to blow off another person's history entirely

• In response to Native American concerns about the statue: "... [the Spaniards] did come; they're here; deal with it; get over it."

How to discount another person's history

By discount, I mean: to reduce its importance, its relevancy, its influence.

• "It's time to let it go [history]."
• "Everybody's been screwed, go back far enough, let's face it ..."
• "Rightly and righteously, today, we condemn conquests, imperialism, colonialism, and human bondage of any form, but we shouldn't go about damning people four centuries ago, who were doing what society did... and especially the idea of Indians crying victim will bring you immediate attention and it also leads you to believe that you have attained the moral high ground, and then to use that club to beat up people who are descendants 15 generations later, seems to me, all wrong." 
• "Of course, what happened to the Native Americans was very unfortunate. It happened here; it happened all over." 

How to whitewash the severity of the history

• "I understand what the Indians are saying, but ...."
• "There was an altercation." [between Oñate and the Acoma Indians]
• "[Oñate] was not politically correct."

Blindness

• "Oñate was a hero of the red man; he didn't come as a conqueror."

Listen

• "We always see ourselves as bearers of good fruit; that fruit is poisonous to other people."
• "[The artist] wanted everything to remain sort of Disneyfied, McDonalized, without really seeing the guts and the gore of history ... "
• "I think the journey [Oñate led] north was heroic, but they had not come to till the soil themselves. They relied for shelter, for food, and virtually everything else on the people who were already there."
•  "When you have someone coming in to your home [and demand scarce resources from you, then of course, you're going to fight back]."
• "[The project] sounded very exciting until .... a glorification of Don Juan Oñate ... the Native Americans were devastated ... felt their roots don't matter ..."
• "You're really commemorating that one group of white people took away the land of another group of brown people. Is that really the great mission, the great vision that America was founded upon?" .....so many of us are part Indian on one side and part Spaniard on another side. So which side are you going to take?"
• "... by focusing completely on these notions that make a lot of sense to you, and making no attempt to see the other person's point of view, that's how evil comes about."

So about Juan de Oñate

The fact is, Juan de Oñate's actions were so egregious, even for his contemporary times, that he was charged, tried, and found guilty by the Spanish-American system in Mexico City for mismanagement and extreme cruelty to both Indians and colonists.

After the statue's installation, the sculptor and advocate and fundraiser, after absorbing so much painful testimony from Native Americans in Texas and New Mexico, said this:

"Art does have power. And with that power comes responsibility. The inhumanity of the period was unrecognized by the perpetuators of those crimes. And we brought it out in the same way that Oñate did. There was a certain blindness in society of that time. And that blindness is still with us today. I had neglected the depth of the injury that he had done to the Native American people. And that point, now, is too late to rectify. I have to suffer this, to carry this, because it's not what I intended for people to get out of this work. I think it's something I should have been able to anticipate, and I didn't. And I'm sorry."

"And that blindness is still with us today."


Related posts

• Bernalillo, New Mexico: The 300-Year Old Promise
• The Peculiar blindness, Part 1: Introduction
• The Peculiar Blindness, Part 2: The "Yes, But" Mask
• The Peculiar Blindness, Part 3: You Don't See What I Don't See