NATIVE INTELLIGENCE
A Column By
Native American Studies
University of California, Davis
Native Americans often see little difference between Democrats and Republicans. But, in the recent past, and especially under presidents Reagan, Bush Senior, and Bush Junior, GOP policies have been characterized by hostile acts towards Indigenous People, both in the USA proper and, from 1981 to 1992, in Central and South America where hundreds of thousands of American Indians were slaughtered in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and elsewhere with the active support of Republican administrations.
In the 2002 elections the Republicans carried
almost every inland and rural county in Oregon, losing only urban centers and
college town areas. Similarly, in California the GOP, even with an inept
candidate for governor, carried virtually all foothill, mountain, and rural
counties. Or, if we look at the country as a whole, the GOP carried virtually
every interior and southern state, with a handful of
exceptions.
The fact is that the Democrats' victories were
restricted primarily to urbanized regions, mostly located on the West Coast or
in the northeast, areas characterized by large non-white populations, mixed
racial families, cosmopolitan and immigrant cultures, major universities, and
information-based economies.
In contrast, Republican victories swept across the
South and the central and western parts of the country, regions where there are
sometimes fewer non-whites, or where African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, and
Native Americans can be defeated at the statewide level because of "block"
Republican voting by whites, regions also with less prestigious universities,
extractive economies, more fundamentalist religious followers, dominance by
corporate agribusiness, and a greater proportion of whites of
non-recent-immigrant origin, i.e., Anglo-American whites who trace their
ancestry back to the armed conquest of the country.
One can argue that a majority of western and
southern white males have come to identify with the GOP, in spite of economic
issues associated with the Republican indifference to the fate of small farmers
and middle-class persons in general. In fact, much of the economic distress in
rural areas can be blamed on GOP-led policies, such as the World Trade
Organization's free trade policies and the triumphant growth of
corporations.
I would propose that many white persons, and
especially males outside of cosmopolitan areas, are voting on non-economic,
ideological grounds which have not generally been recognized. What are these
grounds? First, I will argue that these persons constitute part of an
historically "WHITE PRIVILEGE" population. What this means is that they are the
descendants of people who, because they were white, had the expectation for
several centuries of being able to steal land, timber, minerals, fisheries, and
all other resources from the Original Americans.
In other words, they could look forward to a
government willing to take resources from the First Americans and make them
available to white persons either without charge, or on a nominal fee basis. In
this manner huge areas of timber, fertile land, river and ocean front property,
mineral locations, potential cattle and sheep range, etc. were seized from the
Native People (or, in the Southwest and Texas, from Mexican-Americans) and were
given to privileged Anglo-Americans and to other European immigrants. In
addition, in many states, non-whites were not allowed to testify against white
persons, thus nullifying any crimes unless there was a white
witness.
In Oregon, as one example, the tribes of western
Oregon experienced ethnic cleansing and then were given two tiny, minuscule
reservations at Siletz and Grand Ronde (after two other reserves were
abolished), while the privileged whites had the entire resources of the
Willamette Valley, southwestern Oregon, and the Pacific Coast opened up for
their near-exclusive enrichment. The same pattern was repeated in other states.
But what has happened in the late twentieth
century? The "privileged" Anglo-Americans of the west have lost much of their
dominant position. Their "rights" to use "public" lands as they please are
threatened. Their "rights" to carry guns and have an arsenal are partially
regulated. Their dominance of the USA is threatened by growing non-white
populations. Their presumption that they should be able to cut down trees, clog
streams, dig up mountains, make roads wherever they want to, and be "free" of
control by a Federal government (or state governments) sensitive to "city folk,"
all have contributed to a "sagebrush rebellion" and now to support of the GOP.
In the South, of course, the presence of large African-American and other
non-white populations presents a different challenge to the formerly-privileged
white group, but with analogous ideological results. For example, in Georgia the
GOP candidate won the governorship by supporting a return to a racist symbol, a
state flag with the Confederate flag on it.
In other words, white supremacy, broadly
interpreted, is what the GOP victory margin is all about. George Bush has
managed to package a new vision which appeals to "white privilege" not only
because of his sympathy to gun-owners, cattle-ranchers, loggers, mill owners,
mining companies, and the like, but also because of his open espousal of US
dominance in the world. Bush, in foreign affairs, has assumed a posture of "old
west" toughness, with the US acting like the Texas Rangers. But the Rangers are
no longer going after Mexicans, Comanches, Kiowas, and Apaches. Now they are
going to attack and dominate ANY country which the US considers to be a
potential threat to its national interests, not only in the Americas (which has
long been fair game) but everywhere apparently.
The US talk of establishing control over Iraq
signifies, I think, the birth of a new "empire", one with great appeal to
frustrated people used to racial dominance of others. Maybe the Republican vote
is, for the less-than-wealthy, a vote for super-nationalism, dreams of "manifest
destiny" and privileges restored.
(Jack Forbes is professor emeritus of Native
American Studies, University of California, Davis. He is of Powhatan and
Delaware background and has been writing about interethnic and international
issues for over forty-five years.)