We live in an upside down, Orwellian world. For example, racists not only avoid
the racist label, but charge advocates of equality, with racism. People, who are
capable of independent thought, should be questioning their hypocrisy.
Some Minnesota friends were recently called "loudmouthed
racist partisans" by a Minnesota Indian newspaper. A Montana group,
masquerading as a human rights group, just put out a "report" saying,
"Taken at face value, the anti-Indian [see my Feb. 2000 Editorial on our
web site] movement is a systematic effort to deny legally established rights to
a group of people who are identified on the basis of their shared culture,
history, religion and tradition. That makes it racist by definition."
Now
when you start inventing new definitions for words, you should at least think
about them for a few minutes. By
this definition of "racist," Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela
were two of this century's greatest racists. They are both noted for their
"systematic efforts to deny legally established rights to a group of
people...." As wrong as it was, white people had legal rights to
preferential treatment, and these two great men fought against those
preferences. (If you want to argue that various groups of white people do not
share one "culture, history, religion and tradition," then you would
have to admit that the various Native American Indian tribes don't share a
common "culture, history, religion and tradition," either.) Of course,
this is all absurd. The key question is whether the laws being questioned are
themselves racist.
How do real dictionaries define key words?
(from the American Heritage Dictionary, except as noted)
Indian (Webster 1983) - of the American aboriginal races.
Tribe - A unit of social organization consisting of a number of families, clans, or other groups who share a common ancestry, culture, and leadership.
Reservation - A tract of land set apart by the federal government for a special purpose, especially one for the use of a Native American people.
Government - The act or process of governing, especially the control and administration of public policy in a political unit.
Racism - Discrimination or prejudice based on race.
Racist - characterized by racism.
Based on these dictionary definitions, it is obvious that Federal Indian policy, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian tribal governments, Indian reservations and their supporters discriminate based on race and, therefore, are racist by definition. A nationally known news program recently asked me how we respond to charges of racism. Why don't they ask the supporters of Federal Indian policy this question? It is time for us to respond clearly and simply that we are the ones who are fighting racism; it is the supporters of Federal Indian policy who are racist by definition. These radical racists can't even honestly say our Pledge of Allegiance because instead of a Republic of "one nation" they believe we should be hundreds of separate "nations" based on race.