Thursday, November 27, 2008

white quotation of the week (robert jensen)



At this point in history, anyone who wants to know this reality of U.S. history -- that the extermination of indigenous peoples was, both in a technical, legal sense and in common usage, genocide -- can easily find the resources to know. If this idea is new, I would recommend two books, David E. Stannard's American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World and Ward Churchill's A Little Matter of Genocide. While the concept of genocide, which is defined as the deliberate attempt "to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group," came into existence after World War II, it accurately describes the program that Europeans and their descendants pursued to acquire the territory that would become the United States of America.

Once we know that, what do we do? The moral response -- that is, the response that would be consistent with the moral values around justice and equality that most of us claim to hold -- would be a truth-and-reconciliation process that would not only correct the historical record but also redistribute land and wealth. In the white-supremacist and patriarchal society in which we live, operating within the parameters set by a greed-based capitalist system, such a process is hard to imagine in the short term. So, the question for left/radical people is: What political activity can we engage in to keep alive this kind of critique until a time when social conditions might make a truly progressive politics possible?

In short: Once we know, what do we do in a world that is not yet ready to know, or knows but will not deal with the consequences of that knowledge? . . .

Imagine that Germany won World War II and that a Nazi regime endured for some decades, eventually giving way to a more liberal state with a softer version of German-supremacist ideology. Imagine that a century later, Germans celebrated a holiday offering a whitewashed version of German/Jewish history that ignored that holocaust and the deep anti-Semitism of the culture. Imagine that the holiday provided a welcomed time for families and friends to gather and enjoy food and conversation. Imagine that businesses, schools and government offices closed on this day.


What would we say about such a holiday? Would we not question the distortions woven into such a celebration? Would we not demand a more accurate historical account? Would we not, in fact, denounce such a holiday as grotesque?

Now, imagine that left/liberal Germans -- those who were critical of the power structure that created that distorted history and who in other settings would challenge the political uses of those distortions -- put aside their critique and celebrated the holiday with their fellow citizens, claiming to ignore the meaning of the holiday created by the dominant culture.

What would we say about such people? Would we not question their commitment to the principles they claim to hold? Would we not demand a more courageous politics?

Comparisons to the Nazis are routinely overused and typically hyperbolic, but this is directly analogous. These are fair, albeit painful, questions for all of us.

Left/liberals who want to claim they are rejecting that European-supremacist and racist use of Thanksgiving and "redefining" the holiday in private clearly avoid the obvious: We don't define holidays individually -- the idea of a holiday is rooted in its collective, shared meaning. When the dominant culture defines a holiday in a certain fashion, one can't pretend to redefine it in private. One either accepts the dominant definition or resists it, publicly and privately.

Of course people often struggle for control over the meaning of symbols and holidays, but typically we engage in such battles when we believe there is some positive aspect of the symbol or holiday worth fighting for. For example, Christians -- some of whom believe that Christmas should focus on the values of universal love and world peace rather than on orgiastic consumption -- may resist that commercialization and argue in public and private for a different approach to the holiday.

Those people typically continue to celebrate Christmas, but in ways consistent with those values. In that case, people are trying to recover and/or reinforce something that they believe is positive because of values rooted in a historical tradition. Those folks struggle over the meaning of Christmas because they believe the core of Christianity is experienced through the people we touch, not the products we purchase. In that endeavor, Christians are arguing the culture has gone astray and lost the positive, historical grounding of the holiday.


But what is positive in the historical events that define Thanksgiving? What tradition are we trying to return to? I have no quarrel with designating a day (or days) that would allow people to take a break from our often manic work routines and appreciate the importance of community, encouraging all of us to be grateful for what we have. But if that is the goal, why yoke it to Thanksgiving Day and a history of celebrating European/white dominance and conquest? Trying to transform Thanksgiving Day into a true day of thanksgiving, it seems to me, is possible only by letting go of this holiday, not by remaining rooted in it. If there were a major shift in the culture and a majority of people could confront these historical realities, perhaps the last Thursday in November could be so transformed. But that shift and transformation are, to say the least, not yet here.

For too long, I ignored these troubling questions. To get along, I went along. I buried my concerns to avoid making trouble. But in recent years that has become more difficult. So, this year I want to acknowledge my past failures to raise these issues and commit not only to renouncing Thanksgiving publicly but also to refusing to participate in any celebration of it privately. . . .

Obviously there are people in the United States -- indigenous and otherwise -- who do not celebrate Thanksgiving or who mark it, in private and/or in public, as a day of mourning.

Also obvious is that there are people who may not have a family or community with which they celebrate such holidays; it's important to remember that there are people on such holidays who are alone and/or lonely, and to them these political questions may seem irrelevant.

But for those of us who do get invited to traditional Thanksgiving Day dinners, how do we remain true to our stated political and moral principles? I think we have two choices.

We can go to the Thanksgiving gatherings put on by friends and family, determined to raise these issues and willing to take the risk of alienating those who want to enjoy the day without politics. Or, we can refuse to go to such a gathering and make it known why we're not attending, which means taking the risk of alienating those who want to enjoy the day without politics.

This year, I've decided to disengage and explain why to the people who invited me. These are people I love, yet who have made a different decision. My love for them has not diminished, and I trust the conversation with them about this and other political/moral questions will continue.

Once I make that decision, of course, I also have the option of participating in a public event that resists Thanksgiving. I'm not aware of one happening in my community, and because of commitments to other political projects, I didn't feel I could organize an effective event in time for this Thanksgiving Day. But on the assumption that others may feel this way, I have started thinking about what kind of public gathering could make such a political statement effectively, and in the future I hope to find others who are interested in such an event locally.

So, what will I do on Thanksgiving Day this year? I'll probably spend part of the day alone. Maybe I'll take a long walk and think about all this. I'll try to be kind and decent to the people I bump into during the day. I'll miss the company of friends and family who are gathering, and I'll try to reflect on why I've made this choice and why this question matters to me. I'll think about why others made the choices they made.

But this year, whatever I do, I won't celebrate Thanksgiving. I'm going to let that parade pass me by.


[excerpted from Robert Jensen's article "Why We Shouldn't Celebrate Thanksgiving"]


Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007) and The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege.

3 comments:

  1. Well, Macon, I sure you didn't give up Thanksgiving. Eff the Pilgrims. Bad enough they set the chain reaction for genocide, but damned if their issues ever cross my mind, or will ever cheat me out of the turkey and family fun or giving thanks for our blessings.

    I feel the same way about Christmas. If I ever became an atheist (that's about a zero chance), I still wouldn't give up the tree and gift giving. It's too pretty, the family fun in dressing it, having company over for good times and food, and even exchanging something small and handmade is nice... a reflection of love. As a lover of God and all the beauty He made, my Nativity scene is a reminder of this.

    Out of many acts of evil spring good, just as good deeds sometimes go terribly wrong and inadvertently result in evil.

    Anyway, dear, I hope you had a lovely day... we did, and it was so nice. Take care. ~ Kit

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  2. Robert Jensen is wonderful. I have read "Getting Off", it was a great read. I do tend to agree, and I am guilty of this myself. I have tried to justify celebrating Thanksgiving by focusing on family versus the white washed history. I did that yesterday.

    What can a person do though to remedy this. Do we call to action a way to end the holiday, do we rename it something else. Do you think that collectively people will be ok with changing up the holiday to something else, or will it be considered an assault on "American institutions"

    In terms of Christmas, my husband and I are atheist (I am more agnostic atheist, than straight up atheist) and every year we celebrate christmas, although neither one of us are religious. But I also found it weird we celebrate on December 25, which was before Christmas a pagan holiday,and that Jesus wasn't born in December.

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  3. You always help to take me to the next level, Macon -- not shockingly ahead of me, but in a logical step by step progression that leads me where I want to go anyway. Thanks for that. And this post. Jensen is one of my favorites and this is a good example of why.

    Because I gathered Thursday with some of the most radical and committed folks I've met in a loooong time and therefore had BIG fun, Jensen's first few paragraphs made me nervous. I thought, "Oh, shit. This is going to change everything next year." But as I read, it occurred to me in a blinding flash of the obvious that I can feast with friends anytime I want to or at least any particular week-end we choose next year. We could just forego "celebrating" "Thanksgiving Day" and do something more consciousness-raising (as a group?) on that particular day. Duh!

    I've already been making it a point not to shop on "Black Friday." In the future, I can make it a point not to celebrate "Thanksgiving Day." Then, I can gather with people I love and respect on a different and more appropriate day to celebrate the contributions of indigenous peoples to my world.

    Those who have the power to define our culture want us to believe it's all or nothing at all (which is how they portray people who protest federal policy as "un-American" or people who don't go into debt at Christmastime as "weird"). We can define our culture any way we choose -- keeping (and even embellishing?) all the good, untainted stuff and re-framing all the stuff that runs counter to our emotional, psychological, political and spiritual health as individuals and as a nation.

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