Sorry, Cav, I have a hard time believing it just completely doesn't exist, even in your social strata. Really don't know about Canada, really willing to accept the possibility, but really not true in a comparable social stata (read: any) in the U.S.
atta way to go, sozobe! finally, something posted on-topic again - thank you for trying!
In the U.S., which is all I can speak to, the obviously internalized views about black people began with the slave ships and have NOT been dealt with in a deep or honest way ever since. It looks as if you get it. I keep reading my update notifications on this topic and you're the 1st one to be able to discuss the actual issue since my recent post in which I stated (in part) that it was time for me to just give up. You have resurrected some hope and I sincerely thank you for that!
Er, thanks.
I do think that the musings about other forms of discrimination are pertinent, though, especially in terms of people who are not black getting a taste (if a small one) of what black people do have to deal with. I really liked sofia's observation about NOT getting smiles -- which she thought everyone got -- in this context.
(I'm white, but have spent a fair amount of time shopping with/ driving with/ listening to black people.)
I won't go into detail now, but the contention that the Puritans left for the New World because they were hated and persecuted is simply nonsense. I'll be back later to deal with that topic.
Not necessarily. It is the nature of conversations to wander, especially towards one's own personal experience.
I'm Jewish btw. There is abundant hatred to go around. I could tell you stories about Mexicans that would curl your toes. And deaf people. And women. And Native Americans. And and and and...
First, I shall rephrase. I didn't mean to imply that white privilege is non-existent in my social strata, or in Canada. We do have and have had our racial problems, and our white elite, but we are also a more liberal society, IMO.
sweetcomplication, your statement makes complete sense regarding internalized views about black people beginning with slavery, and the lack of addressing this in the U.S. (Maybe I am starting to get it too) I suppose that is why so many slaves risked their lives to come to Canada via the Underground Railroad. I found a great link regarding the 3rd generation black experience in Canada, but got a java virus warning, so I am not going to post it. I will find more.
Yes, Cav, precisely - and that is just part of why I do love you. You are open-minded enough to really listen. Thank you so much for your last post!
Sweet, indeed!
Looking forward to your links, Cav.
Setanta wrote:Being of Irish descent, skin color did not matter in dealing with the White Anglo Saxon Protestant, the most dangerous of wild animals in the human forest. Of course, the Angle-ish invented the term red-neck to describe the Irish peasant--although it now has connotations of oppressor rather than oppressed.
This should be White Anglo-Saxon Protestant studies--them boys and girls, and all who have aspired to be like them, are the source of the ills of which we all write in this thread.
dunno - my family (forfathers) escaped Ireland - cause they didn't have anything to inherit and were pound scum - peasants, part of them also gave up being Catholic.
sozobe wrote:Sweet, indeed!
aw, shucks, do go on;
; no, seriously: do go on!
:wink:
Uh oh, it seems Setanta is going to punish me for not listening in history class, lol
cavfancier wrote: I don't know if Canada is more of a melting pot than the U.S.A.
Everytime I visit BC (Penticton) I'm amazed at the diversity, course where I'm at less than 6% of the population is of some minority.
Interesting links! Didn't know that about property in Canada. "Lack of property rights gives government a tool to suppress speech, attack the politically unpopular, and do good, even to people who don't want good done unto them. It's all happened in recent times in Canada."
Yep, if it ain't the colour of your skin, they will find something. Not to mention they recently abolished rent control in Toronto.
Yer damned right, Cav, i'm agonna punish you all . . .
The first settlement north of the Rio Grande river in North America was made by French Huguenots at Hilton Head in 1562. But those left behind despaired of their situation, and, working through the winter, constructed a small vessel with which they sailed away in 1563. In 1564, the Huguenots tried again at Cape Canaveral with the establishment of Fort Caroline in 1564. When the Spaniards became aware that someone was "poaching" on their ground, a certain Nunez lead an expedition which destroyed the French settlement, and murdered many of the colonists-although they didn't wish to have any competition in the New World, they were able to avoid a clash with the French by portraying this as a crusade against the Protestant heretics. Alarmed that the vast interior of the northern continent was likely to lure competing European colonies, they established colonies in northern Florida and in Georgia, as well as in southside Virginia. The typical Spanish colonist of the Conquista was either a veteran of the tercios or a peon-both groups recruited in Estramadura in central Spain. For these colonists, the semi-arid plains of the central Mexican plateau, or of the coast of Peru seemed much like home, and they were able to quickly acclimate, doing well enough is not succeeding greatly. But the humid, densely forested coasts of the northern continent dismayed and discouraged them-the Spanish colonies wasted away, but not before leaving a legacy of mistrust and hatred for the white man.
The next colonizing attempt was made at Roanoke Island. This has been thoroughly discussed elsewhere in these fora, so i won't go into detail. The colonists removed at some point, and the evidence points to their having joined Indian allies on the mainland, with their "disappearance" giving rise to the legend of the "Lost Colony." We have now reached the 1590's, and the commercial enterprise which had sponsored the Roanoke Island colony, the Virginia Company (so named in honor of Elizabeth, the "Virgin Queen") was not discouraged, and planned to make a new attempt. However, the war with Spain which had delayed the relief of the Roanoke colony put a damper on new attempts, so it was not until after the death of the old Queen in 1603 that a new effort was put afoot. This resulted eventually in the foundation of the colony at Jamestown in 1607. In 1609, women were brought to the colony directly from England, and the new colonies in the West Indies sought a new market, and brought slaves in the same year. We are now at the point at which it is appropriate to discuss the establishment of an Anglo-Saxon Protestant ascendancy in the English-speaking colonies of the "New World." Champlain established a new colony on the banks of the St. Lawrence at what would become Quebec, but the colonial history of Canada is not in the scope of this examination.
It now becomes necessary to drop back a little, and examine the development of Protestant sects in England. The great philosopher of Protestantism was John Calvin. His Institutes of the Christian Church and the bible produced by Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli at Geneva, the site of their "Godly Republic," had a profound effect on the development of Protestantism all over Europe, as the original schism which had produced Luther's church continued to fragment the christian community. The dour Scot, John Knox, visited Calvin and Zwingli's religious republic at Geneva, and returned home with the newly translated bible and Calvin's seminal work of theology. Scotland was a separate kingdom at that time, so that the English had no say in the spread of Calvinism. However, the border obviously did not affect the enthusiasm of the religious, and Knox's teachings spread south. Elizabeth had inherited a kingdom badly torn by the assault on the traditional church by her father, Henry VIII, and the subsequent attempt by her sister Mary to re-introduce catholicism-and she was not disposed to renew religious strife. The new believers considered their belief to be "pure," and they were derided by other members of the Church of England as "Puritans." Apparently lacking a sense of irony, the new believers in England adopted the name with pride. Nominally, they remained members of the Church of England. Calvinism would eventually give rise to Presbyterianism, and the Independents, who are known in America as the Congregationalists. I won't take the time here to go into the various details of theology which divided them, leading to a further fragmentation. It is enough to say that, although there was struggle--which would eventually lead to the execution of a King and wars based on belief-there was no oppression of those who considered themselves to be Puritans. The notion that the "Pilgrim Fathers" came to the new world to escape persecution is simply not true-it is a part of the historical myth whereby New Englanders have tried to position themselves as guardians of a conscientious tradition of freedom and democracy. Although much was contributed to our cultural history which was useful in the evolution of free, democratic institutions, that historical myth is very disingenuous.
When Elizabeth died, she was succeeded by the descendant of her aunt, Margaret Tudor, who had married King James of Scotland. That descendant was also King James of Scotland, who became King James I of England. He couldn't shake the dust of Scotland off his feet quickly enough, and quickly set up in the sprawling Whitehall palace complex, with his lover, the Duke of Argyll next door, and his wife about a half mile away. He did his monarchical duty by his wife, and they produced a son. James knew the Scots well, probably better than he liked-he had no problems with them. His son Charles, however, was raised a thoroughly English gentleman, in the Church of England, and he knew nothing of the Scots, although he would have been a type for the legendary stereotype of a hard-headed Scot. His closest friend in the church was Bishop Laud, and he eventually made him the Archbishop of Canterbury, after he had succeeded his father to the throne in 1625. Charles wished to impose the Book of Common Prayer on the Scot, preparatory to rooting out the "heresies" of the Puritans in the English Church. However, when he went to Parliament for the necessary "supplies," the members immediately began to debate religious questions, something Charles had not bargained for, and something which he felt they had no right to do. In 1628, he prorogued Parliament, which means he sent them home without dissolving Parliament. They were to be in limbo for more than ten years.
Since the foundation of the Jamestown colony in 1607, various individuals had set themselves up on the Virginia coast, and the coast of the Massachusetts bay. Samuel Maverick had made a successful homestead where Salem now stands, and others had begun to set up on the shores of the bay, leading a group of merchants in England to obtain a royal charter for the Massachusetts Bay Company. These merchants were Puritans, and were hoping to establish a godly community in the wilderness on the model of Calvin and Zwingli's Geneva, but considered that there would be a better opportunity to do so in the wilderness. Many Puritans had gone to Holland, but the toleration of the Dutch Estates dismayed them, and they felt themselves more exposed to religious "impurity" there, than they had been at home. I feel certain that everyone here knows the history of the Mayflower well enough that i don't need to tell of the 1620 settlement. All such royal charters as that which had been given to the Massachusetts Bay Company had included an organization of a Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Selectmen to form a corporate board, which would meet on an occasional and regular basis in London. But the charter for the colony, due to an error which has never been explained, left out a clause to designate where the governor and selectmen would meet. This set the Puritan gentlemen to thinking. They decided that if they removed their corporate board to the site of the colony itself, they would be free of royal interference. When Charles prorogued Parliament in 1628, they were more anxious than ever to make this move. They settled upon a man, John Winthrop, who was then a lawyer in the Court of Wards and Liveries, to be the new governor. (The Court of Wards and Liveries was one of the most corrupt institutions of the royal establishment, making wards of rich orphans, who were, in effect, made entailed heritors, and the Crown became the "remainderman" in base fee, receiving all of the income of their estates while they were minors. Winthrop's participation in this court gives the lie as effectively as any other fact to the contention that the Puritans were a marginalized, oppressed group.) Winthrop proceeded to the colony in 1630, and the following year, in a move which was very radical for the day, made any man who was a regular participant in the church a voting selectman. It is upon the basis of this move that the New Englanders like to advance the specious claim of founding the tradition of democracy in the new world. This ignores that anyone propounding "heresy"-such as Roger Williams, the founder of Rhodes Island-was exiled from the colony. Selectmen were only selectmen as long as they were "religiously correct." The Puritan objected to the establishment of religion in England because it was, in their estimation, the wrong religion. They very firmly established religion in their own colony by making their brand of religion the established church.
Back in England, Charles finally came up with enough revenue to raise an army, and, in 1638, attempted to invade Scotland to put down the Kirk, and impose the Book of Common Prayer on the unruly Scot with the connivance of Bishop Laud. His army was not just defeated, it was scattered. He now was obliged to recall Parliament in order to come up with the funds necessary to raise another army. In the intervening decade, many of the original members had died or emigrated, and in the by-elections, almost every seat was filled with Puritans. The Parliament immediately took up what member of the next Parliament described as "the vexed question of religion." The King, frustrated of his design, decided to take "ship money," the tax which was willingly paid by merchants to support the navy which protected their commerce. John Hampden therefore refused to pay ship money, and the other merchants followed his lead. Charles dissolved Parliament, in the deluded belief that he could pack a new body. The Parliament which sat in 1640 was even more "radical," and took up the "vexed question of religion" immediately. Charles removed with his household, his family and his supporters to Cambridge, and raised the royal banner. Parliament immediately voted funds, raised an army, and the civil wars began. That history also lies outside the scope of this examination. Suffice it to say that Charles was executed in January, 1649, and in 1651, his son Charles was recognized as King by the Scots, and lead an invasion of England which failed at Worcester. Charles escaped because he was harbored by English Catholics. Finally, Oliver Cromwell made himself the second Lord Protector of England, and practiced a defacto tolerance. When he died in 1658, his capable son John was off in Jamaica with the expedition which took that island from Spain, and his eldest son Richard-Tumbledown Dick-was not capable of filling his shoes. The only military force left in the islands was the Parliamentary Guard at Coldstream in Scotland, under the command of George Monck. He marched slowly south in the spring of 1660, and eventually agreed with the Parliamentary rump to re-establish the monarchy in the person of Charles II.
Charles owed many debts. To the English Catholics who had harbored him, he was unable to offer reward in England because of the Protestant Parliament's intransigence-so he offered a chunk of land in North America to the leading English catholic family, the Calverts, in the person of Lord Baltimore. Lord Baltimore named the new colony Maryland in honor of Charles' beloved sister Mary. To Lord Fairfax, he gave about half of the Virginia colony. This put the FFV's-the First Families of Virginia-in the same leaky boat with the poor farmers of the colony, and inadvertently began a tradition of aristocratic rule based upon the interests of all free men, as the upper classes allied themselves with the small holders to defy the royal governors and their councils. Both Virginia and New England had survived on their own during the civil wars, and were not enchanted with the idea of accepting a renewed royal control. Charles Penn had supported King Charles I during the civil wars, and Charles II rewarded the old admiral's son, William Penn, with a huge tract of land which became Pennsylvania. A very tiny minority of Puritans and dissenters had supported the royal party in the civil wars, returning to the Church of England as "low church" or "chapel" members, and they were reward with the colony named in honor of Charles as South Carolina. The French Protestants who had fled persecution had remained loyal to the Crown which had harbored them, despite religious differences, and they were rewarded with another colony named for the King, North Carolina.
The upshot of this all is that Anglo-Saxon Protestants, whether the Congregationalists (formerly Puritans) of Massachusetts and Connecticutt, or the Presbyterians and Baptists and Dutch Reformed of New York and New Jersey, or the Quakers, Presbyterians and Baptists of Pennsylvania, or the slave-owning Anglicans of Virginia and parts south-all became the social powers in the new world. All of them believed that God's grace would only be evident in this world through the success they enjoyed in life. Those who did not succeed were, therefore, not loved by God. Catholics were obvious heretics, the Indians were heathens, and God had given the white man dominion over the African, because they had been cursed by their ancestor Shem, accordingly to these strict constructionists who had read the stories of the Old Testament. That Judeo-Christian tradition taught them that women were evil, the vessels of sin and corruption, and Leviticus told them that they must execute the adulteress, the homosexual, the disobedient child. This is the cultural tradition which has poisoned the polity of our nation.
I'm done now . . . no, no really, i am . . .
Boy, set, that was a mouthful, but I enjoyed reading it.
c.i.
Thanks, Boss, boy are my fingers sore . . .
