Bob Hope once said of his hyper-exclusive Cypress Point Golf Club in Pebble Beach, CA, "One year they had a big membership drive at Cypress. They drove out 40 members." American Indian tribes, especially since Congress gave each tribe the right to one (but only one) casino, tend to hold similar views of what comprises a successful membership drive. Thus, from today's Washington Post:
One of the nation’s largest American Indian tribes has sent letters to about 2,800 descendants of slaves once owned by its members, revoking their citizenship and cutting their medical care, food stipends, low-income homeowners’ assistance and other services.
The Cherokee Nation acted this week after its Supreme Court upheld the results of a 2007 special vote to amend the Cherokee constitution and remove the slaves’ descendants and other non-Indians from tribal rolls.
You'll note that when it comes to defining who gets access to racial/ethnic privileges, Indians behave the opposite of blacks and Hispanics, tending to define access narrowly. Only a handful of blacks, such as Henry Louis Gates and Lani Guinier, have complained about people (like Barack Obama) with no family ties to American slaves benefiting from affirmative action for blacks. (And Gates and Guinier appear to have avoided mentioning their complaints in connection with Obama.)
How come?
Unlike casino benefits, which are extremely finite legally, affirmative action benefits for blacks and Hispanics have no theoretical limits, so black and Hispanic leaders tend to have expansive views of who should be eligible for quotas as being black or Hispanic. The more who benefit from affirmative action, they reason, the more supporters for affirmative action in the political arena.
Of course, if anybody stopped to think about it, they'd realize that the more beneficiaries of affirmative action, then the higher average costs imposed upon each benefactor, which would tend to increase political resistance among nonbeneficiaries. So, conceptually, it's not obvious that the black/Hispanic approach to winning political battles over racial preferences is a clear-cut winner.
How come?
Unlike casino benefits, which are extremely finite legally, affirmative action benefits for blacks and Hispanics have no theoretical limits, so black and Hispanic leaders tend to have expansive views of who should be eligible for quotas as being black or Hispanic. The more who benefit from affirmative action, they reason, the more supporters for affirmative action in the political arena.
Of course, if anybody stopped to think about it, they'd realize that the more beneficiaries of affirmative action, then the higher average costs imposed upon each benefactor, which would tend to increase political resistance among nonbeneficiaries. So, conceptually, it's not obvious that the black/Hispanic approach to winning political battles over racial preferences is a clear-cut winner.
But ... that's racist! So, nobody thinks about it. The easiest way to win political debates is to not hold them because you've redefined thoughts you don't like as crimethink.
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(but only one) casino
The Cherokee Nation seems to have more than one.
A kind of modern scalping.
Me no gamble.
American Indians - the one ethnic group in America today that is manifestly worse off for European settlement here.
American Indians - the one ethnic group in America today that is manifestly worse off for European settlement here.
I don't know if you are being serious but I think Native American Indians benefit from having access to modern technology and medicine.
White professional women form part of the alliance to extract concessions from White males. Hence the growth of the power of that alliance. Of course, eventually they are going to have a falling out. That's already started, there are a limited number of teaching jobs and now a Black Professor is calling for a defenestration of "Nice White Ladies" (tm Steve Sailer) teaching non-White kids. Excellent, I hope that happens. Nothing like a good fight among your enemies about who gets what spoils.
"American Indians - the one ethnic group in America today that is manifestly worse off for European settlement here."
Maybe, but not obvious. They have horses (and cars), houses with plumbing, and electricity. Also TV, etc. And probably live longer.
But there are fewer of them, they dont "own" all the land, and the males don't get to enjoy battle. A mixed bag.
Robert Hume
A Boy Named Sue said:
American Indians - the one ethnic group in America today that is manifestly worse off for European settlement here.
Hunsdon said:
The more I read history, the more I come to one conclusion: don't be the Armenians. "Who now remembers the Armenians?"
Tribal leaders who backed the amendment...said the vote was about the fundamental right of every government to determine its citizens...
This actually sounds like a pretty effective way for governments to deal with fiscal problems. The US government could simply apply this fundamental right and revoke the citizenship of, say, anyone who's been unemployed longer than a couple months. A quick, tangible cut in government spending, plus an immediate upturn in economic statistics!
Out of work too long? Too ill to contribute to society? The wrong ethnic group? Sorry, it's nothing personal; it's just a fundamental right. Best of luck in your future status, former citizen!
This is fascinating from an economic point of view. Have they worked out how many children each family can have or are they just culling the herd periodically knowing that fewer beneficiaries means a bigger share for each person left in the tribe. Perhaps someone like Steve could offer his services so tribes could find ways to limit membership without damaging their public image.
Tribes: an organized ethnic group that negotiates benefits for its members.
Maybe more of us should get on that bandwagon.
On a reservation in the mid-70's, a high school made a big deal about announcing that money had been granted to form an Indian club. The White students in attendance went to the administration and announced they were forming HAM: Honky Americans, and they, too, felt the need for some granted money. (The school then announced they weren't giving any money to the Indian club, but restored the funding later.)
"American Indians - the one ethnic group in America today that is manifestly worse off for European settlement here."
Can't say I square with this comment. Life expectancy is arguably the ultimate arbiter for a population's quality of life, and for Amerindians, life expectancy when Columbus arrived was in the low 30s. Nowadays it is in the low 70s. Life expectancy has roughly doubled for Amerindians in the 500-ish years since 1492.
Hard to imagine Amerindina culture, on its own, doubling life expectancy for a people who had barely progressed beyond Stone Age tech even by 1750.
Also, I must note that, on the Res, where Amerindian culture joins with grinding welfare-state spiritual and material poverty, life expectancy tends to be lower--and on the notorious Pine Ridge res, it is in the upper 40s/low 50s.
The history of Amerindians in the Americas tends to be an unhappy one overall, as it generally tends to be for a conquered people. But using the metric of life expectancy as a barometer, there is no question that Amerindians are better off for the European having arrived here than not.
The best way to ruin a thread is for 5 or 6 people to respond to a really obvious troll. All the astute people will roll their eyes and move on.
Life expectancy and material goods don't really seem to be adequate measures especially considering more fundamental things like sociobiology and genetic interests. Also considering that they had evolved under a hunter-gatherer lifestyle but not really under civilization.
What happened to the Indians of North America is basically what's happening to Whites now, and I don't think a longer life expectancy and more flat screens or whatever are going to make up for the ongoing and likely future dispossession.
"Of course, if anybody stopped to think about it, they'd realize that the more beneficiaries of affirmative action, then the higher average costs imposed upon each benefactor, which would tend to increase political resistance among nonbeneficiaries."
An alternative view is that these "benefactors" are a weakly organized population that's unable to avoid being expropriated, and against which Blacks have historic grievances. As long as these "benefactors" are kept passive by the mass media and a mostly hostile state, the more they are taxed the more they are ground down. That's win / win.
Some of y'all are seriously trying to make the case that Native Americans are "better off" being a defeated, ripped-off people (albeit one with plumbing and TV) than they were when they had the whole continent to themselves?
White professional women form part of the alliance to extract concessions from White males.
That is just plain stupid. They are automatically entitled, by birth, to "concessions" from White men. Forming an alliance to share those concessions with others MAKES NO SENSE.
The real mystery is why white Americans so passively accepted 'affirmative action'
After all it sits rather badly with 'rugged idividualism' and 'home of the free and the brave'.
Even the peoples of communist ruled eastern and central Europe during the worst excesses of Stalinism wouldn't have put up with that shit for one second.
How can anyone explain to me the madness of the majority and supposedly dominant population supposedly voting itself into second-class citizen status? - I've heard of collective madness (a la Nietzsce), but never madness on that scale.
I'm not an American, by the way.
One of the most chilling coincidences I have ever noticed involved the following two sentences.
The first sentence is from Charles Murray's infamous Footnote #44:
Using a nationally representative subsample for the analysis, one finds that the mean AFQT score of the black women was 85.7. Sixty percent of the children born to this cohort were born to women with AFQT scores below that average. Another 33 percent were born to women with scores from 85.7 to 100. Only 7 percent were born to women with IQs of 100 and over.
The second sentence is from the Wikipedia article on Jim Thorpe's "alma mater", Carlisle [Pennsylvania] Indian Industrial School:
When the “noble experiment” at Carlisle ended, nearly 12,000 children had been through the school. Students came from 140 tribes from all over the United States. Less than 8% graduated from the full program, while well over twice that percentage ran away.
"7 percent"?
"Less than 8%"?
That's a remarkably [eerily!] tight fit for the right tails of two entirely different bell curves whose measurements occurred just about a century apart from one another.
So the "Cherokee Freedmen" can no longer double-dip on NAM privileges? How sad.
Though if I were one of the many very white-looking "Cherokees" whose tribal membership depends on a tenuous application of the one-drop rule that is currently used to determine membership, I might be a little concerned as well.
"But using the metric of life expectancy as a barometer, there is no question that Amerindians are better off for the European having arrived here than not."
Right, who can sincerely argue that an insulated home heated with piped-in natural gas doesn't beat a tipi heated by campfire?
Still, though, an honest person would admit, alcoholism has devastated the Indian, and alcohol came with the European. Fetal alcohol syndrome partially explains Indian children's poor scholastic achievement. (Genetic low IQ and dislike of school explain the rest.)
In a world without p.c. making us stupid, we could talk about the genetic basis of alcoholism. If the White Man were to find a gene treatment for alcoholism, the American Indian's lot would improve immensely.
Without the burden of alcoholism, the Sioux might find the ambition to breed a giant herd of buffalo for themselves on their reservation, rather than lie about complaining there are no jobs and drinking away the welfare check.
Limiting vs broadening access to an ethnic group probably has most to do with perceived quality of the candidate stock.
The Cherokees simply don't want their ranks filled with blacks. That's probably the whole story. I doubt they'd much mind Euro-looking one-drop-Cherokee members.
Anonymous asks How can anyone explain to me the madness of the majority and supposedly dominant population supposedly voting itself into second-class citizen status?
Good question!
First, note that just about every time people have had the opportunity to vote on affirmative action by itself, they vote to ban it (e.g., California, Michigan, Washington ballot propositions). Issue polls show the same thing.
But advocates of AA have been very sneaky and tenacious in instituting such policies through court rulings and executive agency actions that are insulted from direct voter control. And while liberal politicians favor these policies, they do not run on their support of them--quite the opposite, they blow a lot of smoke (they'll say "I am strongly against quotas!" when they are strongly in favor of racial preferences). Finally, the press is strongly in favor of AA and does not help the voters to get a clear sense of which politicians are instituting such policies and how.
So liberal politicians probably have suffered a significant political price for their support of these policies, but nothing like the price they would have paid if the voters understood the issues well.
Daybreaker said: An alternative view is that these "benefactors" are a weakly organized population that's unable to avoid being expropriated, and against which Blacks have historic grievances. As long as these "benefactors" are kept passive by the mass media and a mostly hostile state, the more they are taxed the more they are ground down. That's win / win.
Blacks present win/win will be pretty short lived... maybe 30 years tops. Hispanics have a very poor regard for blacks, and don't give a hoot about their grievances. The benefactors cohort will be ever shrinking, and the increasing Mestizo majority feels no sense of responsibility for black failure and dysfunction.
What? Lani Guinier gripes about affirmative action for blacks who are not descended from American slaves? I did not know that.
I assume that she has never benefited from affirmative action. If she has, she's a hypocrite.
Her father was Jamaican. I've never understood why American institutions should be held responsible for the lasting effects of Carribean slavery.
Her mother was even further removed from its effects.
Even the peoples of communist ruled eastern and central Europe during the worst excesses of Stalinism wouldn't have put up with that shit for one second.
A kind of affirmative action in the form of formal quotas (that were never never officially acknowledged), flourished in the USRR. The purpose: to develop "national cadres" in the republics (various -stans in particular).
"How can anyone explain to me the madness of the majority and supposedly dominant population supposedly voting itself into second-class citizen status?"
The leadership of the majority was decapitated or co-opted by quotas and affirmative action. Read the EEOC's Diversity in the Media report. Look at the Democrats' "let's not call it a quota" quota for national delegates.
If you don't embrace affirmative action and diversity, you don't become a leader. There aren't any "credible" critics of these trends, because these trends have defined what it means to be a credible leader.
"Still, though, an honest person would admit, alcoholism has devastated the Indian, and alcohol came with the European. Fetal alcohol syndrome partially explains Indian children's poor scholastic achievement."
I would say its more health problems related to switching to a Western diet that includes alcohol. I've known too many alcoholics of European descent to be comfortable with anyone pointing the finger at Indians wrt this disease.
Also, I doubt they're testing kids with fetal alcohol syndrome as if they are normal. From your vague and general pontificating, I doubt you've read one article about the scholastic performance of Indian children, fetal alcohol syndrome or even the effects of alcoholism on Indian tribes.
I know how fun it is to get on the internet anonymously and say all kinds of crap but there was a time at isteve when the comments section wasn't dominated by this type of drivel.
As long as your big business pro-globalization policies are destroying the quality of life of the little people who would otherwise benefit from strong national economies, I'm not gonna worry one iota about who the government is making reparations to or giving special privileges.
Just say NO to irresponsible Republican businessmen like JSM bloated with their politics of greed and mostly eating everyone else's lunch in the meantime.
"How can anyone explain to me the madness of the majority and supposedly dominant population supposedly voting itself into second-class citizen status? - I've heard of collective madness (a la Nietzsce), but never madness on that scale.
I'm not an American, by the way."
Obviously not American or European.
AA policy is mostly worldwide now probably with the exception of East Asia, some Middle Eastern countries. It seems to be Marxist in origin though not out of Russia which puzzles me endlessly.
In the US, AA came in through the backdoor not by vote of the American people. It started in a limited way but eventually wound its way through every institution in America. It seems to be federalism run amok.
A social safety network is one thing but systematically and endlessly getting preferential treatment because your present circumstances aren't optimal enough supposedly because of past discrimination is another. I hope you're not suggesting that AA is good simply because it helps people. There are plenty of ways to assist people in improving their quality of life without buying into some mythology that if only x, y or z hadn't happened in the past, their descendants would be wildly successful in the present. You can't ignore individual ability or drive but AA insists that we do.
"How can anyone explain to me the madness of the majority and supposedly dominant population supposedly voting itself into second-class citizen status? - I've heard of collective madness (a la Nietzsce), but never madness on that scale.
I'm not an American, by the way....
...Hold on, I'll finish that thought, I have to check the mailbox for my unemployment check...
"I don't know if you are being serious but I think Native American Indians benefit from having access to modern technology and medicine."
If no Europeans had crossed the Atlantic for another 200 years, they would have access to modern technology and medicine - as, say, Korea and Mongolia have. But I think it's fair to argue that without the USA, there wouldn't have been as much tech or med.
Maybe Indians did this cuz blacks drive them crazy than for any other reason.
Is there something between idealism and realism? How about irealism, i.e. realism guided by ideals or idealism tempered by reality.
Am pleased to see the ACLU, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, NAACP, and the general media screaming in outrage at this unjust treatment of the descendants of slaves.
"The real mystery is why white Americans so passively accepted 'affirmative action'"
Initially, it may have been generosity. In the 60s, it seemed as US economy would only grow bigger and white people didn't foresee the future rise of China or massive influx via immigration.
But with increased PC indoctrination since the 60s, white people accept it for the same reason that the airport inspector during 9/11 slapped himself. Most white people have been conditioned to think, 'If I oppose affirmative action, I must either be a 'racist' or be full of 'resentment' and unwilling to share 'white privilege' with oppressed groups.' So, white people have learned to repress all thoughts of white interest or white justice. (I think whites should use the term 'justice' more often. We hear of white interests, white power, and on occasion, even white rights, but we never hear of white justice.) Also, the media has a way of cowering people asking for white justice with a few familiar tropes--images of KKK and ropes and trees and burning crosses. In the collective mind, talking of white justice is associated with white power which is associated with Jim Crow and then finally Nazism. We are not supposed to associate blacks with tribal African savagery or criminal thuggery or associate Jews with communism or financial robbery, but we are supposed to associate anything to do with white justice with KKK and Nazis.
Most white people are sheeple who watch TV for news and opinions. And their kids are teacher's pets.
"After all it sits rather badly with 'rugged idividualism' and 'home of the free and the brave'."
Americans don't believe in those things. They are not even considerations to the typical modern American.
"'White professional women form part of the alliance to extract concessions from White males.'
That is just plain stupid."
Of course it is.
"They are automatically entitled, by birth, to 'concessions' from White men. Forming an alliance to share those concessions with others MAKES NO SENSE."
Of course it doesn't.
I'm not exactly sure what your point is here. You're a smart guy and it's not like you to belabor the obvious.
Surely you can't be implying that you're puzzled as to why women would decide on a course of action that makes no sense.
"Forming an alliance to share those concessions with others MAKES NO SENSE."
Right. When Whiskers insists to White men (i.e., readers of HBD blogs) that White women are enemies, he's just showing that he is anti- White boys.
Can't say I square with this comment. Life expectancy is arguably the ultimate arbiter for a population's quality of life, and for Amerindians, life expectancy when Columbus arrived was in the low 30s.
I don't know. What about alcoholism and suicide rates?
Cennbeorc
"The real mystery is why white Americans so passively accepted 'affirmative action'."
There seems to be multiple layers of psycho-politics which make white people fear to speak the truth. If a white person breaks out of one layer, there is yet another layer, and then another.
For example, there is the layer of indoctrination. Then, the layer of guilt. Then, the layer of pride. Then, the layer of intellectualism. Then, the layer of ostracization. Then, the layer of isolation. Then, the layer of fear. Then, the layer of hatred.
Consider the issue of black IQ, which goes to explain why many blacks fail in school.
Initially, due to the layer of indoctrination(via media and education), a white liberal will flatly deny the notion of lower black IQ as a 'racist lie'. But, suppose she discovers the truth and realizes black IQ is generally lower. So, will she speak the truth?
Ah, but there is the layer of 'white guilt' which keeps her mouth shut.
But suppose she overcomes this guilt. Will she now speak the truth?
But then, there is the layer of pride. Since her personal moral pride is founded on 'anti-racism', she hesitates to speak. But suppose she overcomes this vapid pride. Will she now speak the truth?
But then, there is the layer of intellectualism. All the top intellectuals seem to say 'racism' is wrong, and so she hesitates because all the smart and hip people seem to be saying different.
But suppose she overcomes this intellectual vanity. Will she now speak the truth?
But she now faces the layer of ostracization. If she speaks the truth, she will be ostracized by others, especially people who 'matter'. But suppose she overcomes this social pressure. Will she then speak the truth?
But then she faces the fear of isolation. Shunned and ignored by others, she may be left all alone. But suppose she overcomes this too. Will she now speak the truth? But then, there is the layer of fear. She might actually be penalized or locked up(already happening in EU or Canada)for 'hate speech'.
But suppose she builds up courage to overcome this too. Will she now speak the truth? But she now faces the layer of hatred. Antifa or black thugs may attack her, but the media will remain silent and suppress the news.
So, through forces both psycho-internal and socio-external(and via carrots and sticks), a person is kept from speaking the truth.
It's like in the movie A MAN ESCAPED. He frees himself from one confinement to find himself in yet another level of confinement, on and on, throughout the film. Finally, he breaks out of prison, but he's still in Nazi-occupied France. (And France was liberated from Nazis, people were still confined in the prison of mortality, ignorance, and imperfection; the film covers all levels of confinement: psychological, physical, political, moral, spiritual, existential, etc).
The massive virgin soil epidemic happened before European settlement in North America. We didn't know nearly enough about disease, and a great deal of it was learned here, to do anything about that.
California, a done deal. Texas to follow. And then GOP will never win a national election again.
Forming an alliance to share those concessions with others MAKES NO SENSE.
You are ignoring the fact that there is strength in numbers. To the extent that that is true the alliance makes sense.
But there are fewer of them, they dont "own" all the land, and the males don't get to enjoy battle. A mixed bag.
It's funny how often the Indians get drawn into rhetorical battles over immigration policy. As if that gives other non-Whites or Ashkenazis some kind of juice. As if (many of) the Indians didn't fight tooth and nail against "immigration."
I read an interesting comment somewhere recently that sedentary Indians were allowed to keep their land; it was only nomadic Indians that were forced onto reservations far from their ancestral homes. I don't know if it's true, but eventually I'd like to find out.
Should nomads really get to call the land they roamed "stolen," in any case?
The whole Indian thing is odd to me - the arguments that get made, I mean. So many people seem to take the history as black and white, and it's so damned politicized, much of it roughly on par with the lampshades of Jewish skin and soap from Jewish fat myths from THE HOLOCAUST!!!
One of the primary conceits of the leftoid version is that Indians all belonged to some overarching group. Nope. Not even close. Left and right, you had groups falling onto different sides in the Indian Wars, one group siding with Whites against another group. They don't call them tribes for nothing.
Really, the whole problem with the Indians boiled down to the fact that they were savages - tribal. E.g., you could make a deal with one faction of one tribe for peaceful coexistence, only to have another faction start kidnapping your women and children and scalping your men, or more likely, stealing you blind. The nomadic Indians were simply too uncivilized to deal with. Their way of life was too bound up with raiding, with living by the sword. Every Indian you met, you didn't know where he stood until you made an individual deal with him. How else can you deal with that, coming from an ordered civilization?
And what is the assumption, I wonder, about how the Indians' lives would've turned out if the Europeans had stayed home? Rainbows and unicorns? No. Their way of life was over. If Whites hadn't destroyed it, someone else would have. No way in hell this prime piece of real estate would have remained in the hands of hunter-gatherers. Somebody would have developed it, brought order.
Should nomads really get to call the land they roamed "stolen," in any case?
We didn't let our own people roam around as nomads, living by hunting, rustling, and raiding, either, by the way. And we don't now. So it's not like we imposed an order on others that we weren't following ourselves. What really happened is, one way of life replaced another.
The history of Amerindians in the Americas tends to be an unhappy one overall, as it generally tends to be for a conquered people. But using the metric of life expectancy as a barometer, there is no question that Amerindians are better off for the European having arrived here than not.
See? This is what I mean. "A conquered people?" WHAT "people"? Amerindians are not "a people." They never were. This is a White construction, or a disingenuous Red construction for dealing with guilty Whites, not an honest Red construction.
What happened to the Indians of North America is basically what's happening to Whites now, and I don't think a longer life expectancy and more flat screens or whatever are going to make up for the ongoing and likely future dispossession.
You REALLY have to squint to see what's happening to Whites now as "basically" what happened to Reds then. No, the Reds were not the world's dominant civilization, attracting the surplus population of the world with their wealth and technological power, and destroying themselves with their own paralyzation and inability to even consider their own interests. It's also absurd to think that we'll be allowed to live on reservations.
If no Europeans had crossed the Atlantic for another 200 years, they would have access to modern technology and medicine - as, say, Korea and Mongolia have. But I think it's fair to argue that without the USA, there wouldn't have been as much tech or med.
Historical "what if" is of course fraught with peril, but how would the Japanese boot have felt on Red necks (no pun intended, lol)? I bet the Chinese could offer some opinions.
There seems to be multiple layers of psycho-politics which make white people fear to speak the truth. If a white person breaks out of one layer, there is yet another layer, and then another.
YES. I was just thinking about this the other day, how PC has "defense in depth." You have to be a real racist bastard to push through them all. It's easy, once you get your head squared away, but for the average poor schmuck, this defense in depth PC is very effective.
For example, there is the layer of indoctrination. Then, the layer of guilt. Then, the layer of pride. Then, the layer of intellectualism. Then, the layer of ostracization. Then, the layer of isolation. Then, the layer of fear. Then, the layer of hatred.
I was thinking more in terms of specific arguments. There's an example of this in an episode of the Sopranos. Tony doesn't want his daughter dating a fractionally-black Ashkenazi kid. When it turns out her bike was stolen by a Black, Tony makes the statistical argument about Black crime. His daughter says that's racist, to which Tony replies, facts are facts. She then switches tack, arguing that it's all about SES. Defense in depth. Tony doesn't know enough to compete, and is worn down.
And of course, knowing enough to compete is "racist." The more you know that runs counter to the defense in depth, the more "racist" you are. By the time you've won an argument with a well-indoctrinated leftoid, you're Hitler.
But, good point about the qualitatively different layers of leftoid defense in depth.
The article says the Cherokee nation sided with the Confederacy. LOTS of Indians sided with the Confederacy. I've NEVER seen anyone give them any shit for this. Why not? Why don't the Cherokee, for example, inherit some Red Guilt?
The Cherokee didn't just have slaves - they fought for slavery. Fought to keep the black man enslaved. Right?
Black Bear Who Shake His Behind, you are no longer part of Cherokee people.
The article says the Cherokee nation sided with the Confederacy. LOTS of Indians sided with the Confederacy. I've NEVER seen anyone give them any shit for this. Why not? Why don't the Cherokee, for example, inherit some Red Guilt?
The Cherokee didn't just have slaves - they fought for slavery. Fought to keep the black man enslaved. Right?
But the really interesting part of the article is the issue of ethnic sovereignty.
The Cherokee Nation acted this week after its Supreme Court upheld the results of a 2007 special vote to amend the Cherokee constitution and remove the slaves’ descendants and other non-Indians from tribal rolls. The 300,000-member tribe is the biggest in Oklahoma, although many of its members live elsewhere.
[...]
But more than 76 percent of Cherokee voters approved the amendment stripping the descendants of their citizenship. Tribal leaders who backed the amendment, including then-Principal Chief Chad Smith, said the vote was about the fundamental right of every government to determine its citizens, not about racial exclusion.
Wow, that's what I've been saying here for years vis-a-vis the rest of the human race.
Smith has supported the results of the 2007 voter-approved amendment.
“I’ve consistently supported the Cherokee Nation’s right to determine their own national identity,” he said Friday. “Cherokees say this: We don’t care what you look like, as long as you’ve got Cherokee blood. It’s about identity and self-governance.”
Baker hasn’t explicitly said he supports the amendment and the expulsion of the freedmen, but he issued a statement saying, “I respect the decision of the Cherokee people and believe fully in our right to self-govern.”
After Cherokee Supreme Court upheld the 2007 vote on Aug. 22, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development temporarily froze $33 million in funds while it studies the issue. Federal lawmakers who believe the amendment violated the freedmen’s civil rights had lobbied federal agencies to cut funding to the tribe.
Joe Crittenden, who is serving as acting principal chief until the new election is held, said the tribe, which has a $600 million budget, has enough money to carry it for “a few months” without cutting HUD-related services or jobs.
So, am I to gather that the Reds have rights superior to those of Whites? Reds can decide the composition of their own communities, but Whites cannot? Reds, who are subsidized by White (and Black, Brown, Yellow, etc.) tax monies, have rights to community that self-funded Whites (and Black, Brown, Yellow, etc.) do not?
"What really happened is, one way of life replaced another."
More like one life replaced another.
Not attacking the Americans. I suspect that there is competition and selection among cultures just as there is in the natural world. I don;t see much value in keeping a poorly adapted life form around and I don;t see much reason to protect a maladapted culture.
And even in a virus or bacteria is a superb living machine better suited to earthly life than me - I think people should reserve the right to fight it to the death of one or the other species.
Survival and thriving are things to strive for. I don;t see how you can do it if you agree to not harm any other person or living thing.
Life expectancy is arguably the ultimate arbiter for a population's quality of life, and for Amerindians, life expectancy when Columbus arrived was in the low 30s.
Many people from less civilized cultures also probably enjoyed longer life expectancies when enslaved by more advanced cultures.
Does that mean the Gaul or Germanic man resisting Roman advances was foolish or immoral for refusing to be conquered or become enslaved?
Would the HBDers here rather live 100 years under a potential future higher tech USSA police state or 60 yrs in the hayday of post WWII California?
"I suspect that there is competition and selection among cultures just as there is in the natural world. I don;t see much value in keeping a poorly adapted life form around and I don;t see much reason to protect a maladapted culture."
Like most iSteve contributors you have some ideal culture in mind when making statements like this. It is very possible for a maladapted yet aggressive culture to have a huge negative affect on a well-adapted culture that doesn't realize how nightmarishly evil a group of thugs can be.
The real problem lies in even recognizing that one is under attack when conventional weapons aren't in use. What's generally maladaptive about white culture, for instance, is a failure to appreciate just how much less successful/adapted peoples prefer to resent and blame you for their problems. You'd have to be a bit paranoid to be on the defensive when everything's been going right for you and yours say b/c of your attitude and work ethic.
The messed up, ornery and downright pathological can and do find ways to exist from generation to generation. Survival of the fittest does not necessarily mean that some version of a people with families like those in 50's sitcoms will prevail.
You're such a babe-in-the-woods. Good luck with that.
Do blacks with "one drop" of Cherokee blood have problems?
Robert Hume
I was under the impression that the two oldest skeletons found in North America were white.
One was in the Pacific northwest, while the other was in Mexico.
goatweed
Anonymous said...
Black Bear Who Shake His Behind, you are no longer part of Cherokee people.
Anonymous, I love you.
Jacob Roberson
In only the rarest of circumstances under the most extreme of conditions have nomadic hunter-gatherers been victorious over agrarian societies. They always lose - always. The only difference in the United States (and Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and major parts of Latin America) is that it happened in historic rather than prehistoric times.
Would the HBDers here rather live 100 years under a potential future higher tech USSA police state or 60 yrs in the hayday of post WWII California?
Put another way, why do HBDers whine about contemporary PC-based anti-white and anti-male western societies? Technology and medical care are improving and prolonging life with each decade!
All leftist PC-inspired upheavals since 1965 are obviously a net benefit for white males because their life expectancy rose to 75.5yrs in 2005 is 75.5 yrs compared to lass than 68 yrs in 1965 (exactly 68yrs in 1970).
You REALLY have to squint to see what's happening to Whites now as "basically" what happened to Reds then. No, the Reds were not the world's dominant civilization, attracting the surplus population of the world with their wealth and technological power, and destroying themselves with their own paralyzation and inability to even consider their own interests. It's also absurd to think that we'll be allowed to live on reservations.
I mean simply by being dispossessed. I dispute the naive suicide thesis for the contemporary White situation. The Reds were dominated by groups better adapted to civilization. Similarly I think the destruction and "paralyzation" is largely the result of being dominated by those better adapted to "civilization" i.e. control of centralized sovereignty. James Bowery, who you're familiar with, has made arguments along these lines.
It wil be interesting to see how the Black/Indian thing shakes out in Massachusetts when casino gambling is approved in this legislative session. The Wampanoag tribe are in line for a casino, and they have a substantial number of mixed race members. Martha's Vineyard, where Obama vacations and home of the "Inkwell" beaches, is home to the only Wampanoag reservation.
How can the Cherokee nation violate its treaty with the US after the Civil War without the government intervening?
NPR ran a teaser this morning. The hard-hitting journalists of their premiere news show, All Things Considered, are going to put on their big boy pants and get out their butterknives. Tonight (Mon 9/19/11), ATC is going to tackle the Cherokee membership drive.
The theme of the segment is Racism. Exciting; who will win the grievance sweepstakes? How many "Who? Whom?" aspects of the story can these doubleplusgoodthinkers evade?
Based on past performance, they have a good shot at a shutout. Go team!
The Sioux "had the whole continent to themselves"? The Iroquois "had the whole continent to themselves"?
I don't remember the Indian nations getting along that well. Could you give us an internet reference? I do remember the Siouxan chiefs traveling to Washington DC and returning home again in perfect safety in the 1880-1890 timeframe but to my knowledge they never did it before then. Certainly not in the pre-white 1600 time frame. But perhaps there is some recent archaeological evidence of which I am unaware.
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