Democrats, slavery, Irish, and Indians

[wetibbe]

The evidently inevitable discussion about whether race indicates certain beliefs and certain predispositions, a discussion I find distasteful and essentially a counterproductive waste of time.

It is counter productive and also a waste of time. All too many people don't even know what I am talking about and can't , in any event, interpret and assimilate my message.

[ilbegone]

I get exactly what you are talking about.

There is living memory in my house of being on the receiving end of 1950's white exclusion of minorities. The same person has also had bad experiences with Mexican nationals for not being fully culturally Mexican.

Does that person judge all whites and all browns by those experiences?

No.

Is that person sympathetic of illegals from Latin America and American brown supremacist agenda?

No.

Is there a victimization complex on some who are described as minorities?

Yes.

Is this complex universal with every person of the minority "persuasion"?

No.

Within the Nation of Mexico among Mexican citizens as a part of the Mexican national consciousness is there a cultural inferiority complex with an endless litany of rote victimization claims, many concerning the United States - and by extension, white Americans?

Yes.

Do all past and present Mexican nationals and descendants of Mexican nationals ascribe to victimization theory?

No.

Are there white Americans, at least one who has posted here, who would (or have at least expressed a general desire to) come to my house to evict from the nation a life long, American born citizen with the spurious charge of being an "Anchor baby"?

Yes. And I promise a lesson for any who presume to do so.

I agree that migration in larger numbers than assimilation can handle is harmful and that such policy allowing the problem needs to be changed, however:

The only difference between white supremacists and racists of any other race is that they work different corners of the same street.

It's time to get past the blind concept of racial notions and deal with the problem of racism from all races from the Mexica movement to Mecha to the Black Panthers to the Aryan Nations and much more, from wherever it derives. Racism is an equal opportunity disease, doesn't much care which race by which it is expressed.

Illegal immigration is not about race, and if anyone on the anti-illegal side makes it so they lose precisely because it's not 1956 anymore.

It's that simple.

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Don't you think it's time that minorities stop using the expression "My people"? Just that expression is taken so differently depending on who is saying it.

[ilbegone]

Originally Posted by Jeanfromfillmore

Don't you think it's time that minorities stop using the expression "My people"? Just that expression is taken so differently depending on who is saying it.

Yes, everyone from the National Socialist Movement to the National Council of La Raza to the Rainbow Coalition needs to knock off the "My people / Mi gente" race obsession.

[ilbegone]

There are several directions I would like to go with this.

One is to better understand the historical functions of the democrat and republican parties. While the democrat party in the south was pro slavery and anti civil rights (It also seems to me as a generalization that the south was/is somewhat hostile to Catholics and Jews), it seems that in the northern cities the democrat party was ran by political machines which catered to immigrants in order to gather and maintain power (exchanging benefits for votes while turning embezzlement into an art form and enriching themselves with inside deals).

It also seems that 19th century political affiliation in the north had much to do with religion, protestants and Jews tended to be republican and Catholics tended to be democrat.

And what happened to the southern Anglican / Episcopalians of the late 18th and early 19th centuries who had so many differences with northern Puritans - differences which eventually became part of the Civil War? It seems to me that the south is now mainly Baptist and Pentecostal today. And there is still considerable difference between the north and south in many ways.

I'd also like to delve into the differences between Anglo American expansion and Spanish conquest which made the subsequently independent nations either successful or failures, not least the treatment of Indian populations - and that is not to suggest that the was one more or less humane than the other. What were the true causes of the 1660's King Phillip's war and did that, along with French and British wartime proclivity to use Indians as frontier surrogates contribute to American regard of Indians during the 19th century? And how about Indian empires continually at war with one another and nomadic bands of Indians constantly scrapping over territory? Witness the Aztec and Inca expansions or the Comanche from Wyoming pushing Apaches out of Texas as small examples of ongoing inter-tribal warfare and extermination between the polar zones.

And how does the failure of the attempt to turn Wisconsin into a German Province contrast or compare with the temporarily successful 1970's La Raza Unida takeover of Crystal City and Zavala County, Texas (engineered by Jose Angel Gutierrez)? The "Cristal Experiment", as racist ethnics studies professor Armando Navarro calls it, is the the current model for ethnic nationalist takeover of government, and it essentially turned Zavala county into a socialist, taxpayer funded ethnic commune. Or did it merely turn one racist pecking order upside down into another racist pecking order? The first thing Gutierrez did was fire or force out white employees of the two local governments and the school system and sought to pack law enforcement and the courts with "his people".

This all interests me and is relevant to the true understanding of how today is yesterday unfolded and the future yet unrevealed.

Otherwise, all we have is the old arguments buried in selective half truths that all whites have ever done in the Americas is to racially oppress others or that all Latinos are culturally backwards, congenital criminals - essentially everyone white and everyone brown is one or the other of two very evil persons, past and present.

Racists need racial hatred.

[wetibbe]

Man is a product of heredity and environment.

Before 1950, Before the IRA, before Hitler and the Aryans, before Stalin and Bolsheviks and Marxists, before WW1, before the Civil War, Napoleon Bonaparte, before The Reformation, before the Pilgrims and Plymouth rock, before Columbus, before Christianity, before Moses, before the Vikings, before Genghis Khan and the China Dynasties, before Japan and the Ninjas, before Moors in Spain, before the Ecuadorean headshrinkers, before then there were indigenous homo sapiens waring, plundering, killing, invading territories, stealing women, goods, assets...........

Before there were Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons.

[ilbegone]

I have been looking into the Irish in America centering around Five Points in New York, (the setting of the film Gangs of New York which seems to have the agenda of turning a multifaceted history into modern judgment of American nativists discriminating against immigrants, think of turning a complex Einstein equation into the old second grade counting man with the digits of his hands representing 1s, 10s, and 100s.The film is considered as a documentary by many straw clutching Latino activists and their followers).

While there are general parallels with the current influx from south of the border, there are some differences too.

This is, again, simplified and condensed to my understanding.

The Irish Potato famine was a terrible thing indeed - people did starve to death and die from diseases on a massive scale, and many were too weak or didn't have seed potatoes to plant when the potato fungus spent itself. - and those people were already impoverished due to overpopulation and land rent rising to meet the demand before the famine. Some British landlords were more humane than others and attempted to feed their tenants during the crisis, but it became more economical to offer to pay for passage to Canada and the United States.

From descriptions of Irish who survived the voyage disembarking in the new world, I am reminded of pictures of newly freed WWII concentration camp inmates. The largest parallel I can draw to Mexico concerning migration to America is the senseless killing and other hardships placed on Mexicans during the Revolution, with Chihuahuan (the area I'm most familiar with revolutionary history) civilians placed in an impossibly terrible situation towards the end. Starvation does not seem to be a problem in Mexico during the last 60 years, the motivation seems to be for money and a version of materialism.

Wages were low and living conditions in five points were terrible, but there is quite a bit of evidence that many managed to save money and send remittances to relatives in Ireland, some of which financed further movement.

Political power in five points was derived from Patronage. Saloon keepers and grocers were the most well known (and could persuade in many ways, including holding back on needed items if the customer didn't have the "proper" views but promising jobs if elected) and when elected to political positions had their supporters hired into city jobs, such as the fire department, Police, and city maintenance. City employment was a vital stepping stone for political advancement. Except for very few examples, those of the Irish who were successful with politics were born in the US or were brought too young to remember Ireland.

To be hired into city service required delivering the vote of either a tenement or maybe an entire block. They had to be street fighters who were also used to back down political opposition at the polls and otherwise. Lots of political gang fights.

City officials would intercede in criminal charges concerning their faithful, and on occasion put out a form of public assistance to loyal voters.

Again, a lot of this seems to boil down to religion. Protestants tended to be Whigs (a "liberal" leftover from the Puritan part of England), Catholics tended to be Democrat, very loosely an heir to Colonial and English civil war Tories (reactionary conservatives) ("liberal" and "conservative" might have somewhat different meanings in 19th century America, as they did in 19th century Mexico where "Conservative might have been "royalist" and "liberal" might have meant "anti-royalist").

The 1842 riot seems to have been over tiff about protestant monopoly of education, which painted Catholicism in an unfavorable light.

In fact, in what is again a 17th century leftover from the English Civil war concerning Puritan England and Pro Catholic English King Charles I, Irish immigration was seen by quite a few Americans as a Vatican plot to undermine the US government and impose Catholicism in America. As well, there were long simmering resentments of the English protestant subjugation of Ireland. Immigrant Germans and immigrant Jews of Five Points (or German immigrants at large in America attempting to resist assimilation) didn't seem to inspire the friction that is evident between descendents of English settlers and Irish immigrants - this was a centuries old inherited religious fight originating in the British isles carried over to 19th century America, not at all about modern white Americans discrimination (hyped or not) against Mexican migrants and their descendants as Gangs of New York indirectly implies.

I believe by the 1850's descendants of Irish immigrants completely took over Tammany Hall and wielded the political machine with impunity. Once again, faithful soldiers were rewarded with steady public jobs and were expected to violently support the puppeteers to political ends ("vote right or get a busted head" and physically driving off opposition), those who voted "right" were tossed some carrots, ballot boxes were stuffed ("what do I care when I count the votes"), and the machine used the police and courts to reward supporters and punish opposition. The puppeteers themselves grew wealthy by embezzlement and inside deals.

And the machine was of the Democrat party, the party of 19th century slavery and pre-1960 segregation.