- Anything Else -

Sweep away petty excuses! Colonize those Hopi!

In Reply to: Petty excuses for overlooking the indefensible posted by MDG on December 13, 1999 at 13:26:38:

: Believe it or not, Sam, one can actually protest the genocide of First Nations people, protest the conquest of North American by capitalist Europeans, and even commit crime of having white skin (as for being smug and liberal, you're free to engage in all the juvenile name-calling you want) AND recognize that even oppressed peoples can themselves oppress others. Why are you so eager to defend the smothering of eagles?

SDF: That's the thing -- you might be protesting imperialism, but in fact your communiqués are PART of imperialism, however necessary you may think this imperialism of yours will be. Have you asked the Hopi Tribal Council what they think of your campaign? Have you even bothered to communicate with real Hopi about this? Did they embrace your initiative wholeheartedly? Will they once again follow the wisdom of the superior white man?

On the other hand, I'm sure that destroying Hopi culture through the methods I've outlined will save the eagles in THE MOST EFFICIENT POSSIBLE way (they can nest on top of the casinos/ saloons/ mines the tribal leaders will build, while they are forbidden to pursue their religion), eliminating ALL "petty excuses" and getting right to the task of upholding animal rights.

The understanding of one's historical and privileged position requires a great deal of political clarity. However, political clarity can never be achieved if one accomodates a position of ambiguity that usually suppresses one's ideological contradictions. This process of suppressing ideological contradiction is not just common place among many white liberal educators working with subordinated students; it was also a trait of the liberal colonist who

while he happens to dream of tomorrow, a brand new social state in which the colonized cease to be colonized, he certainly does not conceive, on the one hand, of a deep transformation of his own situation and his personality. In that new more harmonious state, he will go on being what he is, with his language intact and his cultural traditions dominating. Through a de fact contradiction which he either does not see in himself or refuses to see, he hopes to continue being a European by divine right in a country which would no longer be Europe's chattel.

- Donaldo Macedo, quoting Alberto Memmi's The Colonizer and the Colonized, in the introduction to Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of Progress, p. xxx.

And the Hopi most assuredly ARE a country of their own.

Follow Ups:

• Your words, not mine. MDG December 13 1999 (2)
  • The struggle for recognition 1: respect the human for her brains Samuel Day Fassbinder Citizens for Mustard Greens USA December 14 1999 (1)
    • The question is, can they suffer? MDG December 14 1999 (0)