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OP says: "What was the deal with the South, what caused this ethnocentric willingness to consider other races less than human?"
Do you REALLY think this all started with the South? I am native american. Let me tell you this started way before the south got involved. The original natives were decimated shortly (relatively speaking) after showing the "pilgrims" how to live on this strange-to-them land.
Yes, I am aware of that, however, I am really approaching this from the angle of Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party of this time (1830)
There was a clear geographical, as well as intellectual divide, between north and south in the House of Representatives. The vote to authorize the Indian Removal Act of 1830 was 102 aye, 97 nay. Most all of the legislative support for Jackson was centered in the South, as was the same viewpoint in force for slavery.
So, perhaps the better question, why did the legislative support for this Indian Removal Act come from the south, while much of the north voted against it?
I'm sorry for what happened to your people. It was genocide and ethnic cleansing. I visited the American Indian Museum in Washington D.C., a beautiful sandstone structure that has no corners, but is rounded like the rock found in the windswept Southwest. Unfortunately, the exhibits inside pretty much whitewash this fact. Thats another part of the tragedy, not owning it.
So, perhaps the better question, why did the legislative support for this Indian Removal Act come from the south, while much of the north voted against it?
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That can be quite easily explained, I think. The Indians to be forcibly removed were all in the southern states. Northern lawmakers did not have a dog in that fight. Northern states had already exterminated or driven out nearly all their Indians except a few restricted to inhospitable reservations..
I'm sorry for what happened to your people. It was genocide and ethnic cleansing.
I think the term "genocide" doesn't fit, not if you define it as the deliberate destruction of a people root and branch, as the Germans tried to do to the Jews.
The Indians were victims of conquest but being conquered isn't the same as genocide. What the Americans wanted of the Indians was submission not extermination.
Widening the definition of the term cheapens it and takes away it's sting; if conquering Indians and confining them to reservations is genocide then we need a new word for what the Germans did to the Jews.
I think the term "genocide" doesn't fit, not if you define it as the deliberate destruction of a people root and branch, as the Germans tried to do to the Jews.
The Indians were victims of conquest but being conquered isn't the same as genocide. What the Americans wanted of the Indians was submission not extermination.
Widening the definition of the term cheapens it and takes away it's sting; if conquering Indians and confining them to reservations is genocide then we need a new word for what the Germans did to the Jews.
We made them into slaves who were told to live a completely different lifestyle than the one they were accustomed to. We told them to change their ways of providing for themselves, which failed miserably and led to starvation. Many died, were murdered, or were starved to death. This happened over 100 years ago. Today, in the United States, 8 of the 10 poorest counties in America are on Indian Reservations. The legacy still exists
We destroyed a way of life and killed anyone who resisted it. I am content in the accuracy of the word genocide. Just because the U.S. government didnt kill in the same manner or method as Nazi Germany and the "Final Solution" does not change the fact it was genocide in the sense of killing anyone who resisted.
The destruction, therefore, was of both a people and a way of life
That can be quite easily explained, I think. The Indians to be forcibly removed were all in the southern states. Northern lawmakers did not have a dog in that fight. Northern states had already exterminated or driven out nearly all their Indians except a few restricted to inhospitable reservations..
This is true to a large extent. Geography surely had a huge role in this.
We made them into slaves who were told to live a completely different lifestyle than the one they were accustomed to. We told them to change their ways of providing for themselves, which failed miserably and led to starvation. Many died, were murdered, or were starved to death. This happened over 100 years ago. Today, in the United States, 8 of the 10 poorest counties in America are on Indian Reservations. The legacy still exists
We destroyed a way of life and killed anyone who resisted it. I am content in the accuracy of the word genocide. Just because the U.S. government didnt kill in the same manner or method as Nazi Germany and the "Final Solution" does not change the fact it was genocide in the sense of killing anyone who resisted.
The destruction, therefore, was of both a people and a way of life
I think the term "genocide" doesn't fit, not if you define it as the deliberate destruction of a people root and branch, as the Germans tried to do to the Jews.
I'm forced to agree with you up to a point. We have reduced the impact of "rape" by including statutory and date rape. We have reduced the impact of "torture" by including flushing a book down a toilet. We have reduced the impact of "special" by including teenagers who cannot dress themselves. We have reduced the impact of "terrorist" by including Cat Stevens. We have reduced the impact of "murder" by including therapeutic abortions.
Nevertheless, I think in this case, the sheer magnitude of the destruction of Indians comes close enough to genocide that you are quibbling over a pretty narrow gray area.
Yes, I am aware of that, however, I am really approaching this from the angle of Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party of this time (1830)
There was a clear geographical, as well as intellectual divide, between north and south in the House of Representatives. The vote to authorize the Indian Removal Act of 1830 was 102 aye, 97 nay. Most all of the legislative support for Jackson was centered in the South, as was the same viewpoint in force for slavery.
So, perhaps the better question, why did the legislative support for this Indian Removal Act come from the south, while much of the north voted against it?
I'm sorry for what happened to your people. It was genocide and ethnic cleansing. I visited the American Indian Museum in Washington D.C., a beautiful sandstone structure that has no corners, but is rounded like the rock found in the windswept Southwest. Unfortunately, the exhibits inside pretty much whitewash this fact. Thats another part of the tragedy, not owning it.
The ideology of the two U.S. regions was not all that different...you make it sound as if people in the North were more enlightened, educated, and socially aware than the shoeless dirt farmers in the South. Several northern states still hadn't abolished slavery until after the Civil War...and it certainly was not racially harmony and integration ANYWHERE in the U.S. I mean, there were racially motivated mob lynchings in NYC in the mid-1860s...
I guess you're assuming that because Andrew Jackson was southern, all southerners agreed with and supported his every decision? The removal of Native Americans was accomplished up and down the entire east coast...but the Cherokee etal was a more public and formal operation. It happened everywhere there were native settlements - not just in the South.
We made them into slaves who were told to live a completely different lifestyle than the one they were accustomed to. We told them to change their ways of providing for themselves, which failed miserably and led to starvation. Many died, were murdered, or were starved to death.
Yeah, sure.
Quote:
Originally Posted by odanny
We destroyed a way of life and killed anyone who resisted it. I am content in the accuracy of the word genocide. Just because the U.S. government didnt kill in the same manner or method as Nazi Germany and the "Final Solution" does not change the fact it was genocide in the sense of killing anyone who resisted.
But is killing "anyone who resisted" genocide? Sounds like war and conquest to me. Ruthless and cruel? Absolutly. Genocide? No, not unless the term is so broad that damned near every group on the planet can claim to be victims of genocide at one time or another. You risk making the term ordinary.
So again I gotta ask you, if we use the term genocide to describe conquest what do we call what the Germans did to the Jews? Because it sure as Hell was a totally different thing than what we did to the Indians. We wanted the Indians subdued, the Germans wanted the Jews DEAD. Not on reservations, not poor and opressed and downtrodden but DEAD. Every last one of them.
It will never happen. But I wish all historical discussions could ban references to Hitler, the Nazis, and the Holocaust. Because, I suspect (but cannot prove) that there are a very large number of people who have studied absolutely no history whatsoever, and have just blindly subscribed to the official story of the Holocaust because it is fashionable to do so, and maybe can't even find Germany on a map of Europe. For these people to introduce their shallow and narrow "knowledge"
of history into discussions unrelated to the Holocaust diverts any genuine scholarship away from the topic at hand.
I hasten to add that I have no reason to believe that you, Irishtom, are one of the offenders. But I see the Holocaust intruding into almost every thread on this board, almost every thread on politics and current events, almost every thread on Great debates, even a lot of threads in Food and Drink. I just wish we could discuss something without the Holocaust being placed in the discussion as some kind of gold standard for everything from logic to nomenclature.
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