[News] Colonization and Massacres
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Fri Apr 18 13:54:09 EDT 2008
http://www.counterpunch.org/dunbar04162008.html
Apri1 16, 2008
From Jamestown to Virginia Tech
Colonization and Massacres
By ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ
What does it mean, if anything, that a student,
child of Korean immigrants, killed thirty
classmates and faculty at a Virginia university
while nearby celebrations of the onset of colonialism was taking place?
In April 2007, all the news seemed to be coming
from Virginia and was about mass murder,
occurring yesterday (400 years ago in Jamestown)
and today. I heard no commentary on the
coincidence of those bookends of colonialism.
Maybe I noticed because I was working on the
first chapter of a history of the United States
and had colonialism and massacres on my mind.
Jamestown famously was the first permanent
settlement that gave birth to the Commonwealth of
Virginia, the colonial epicenter of what became
the United States of America nearly two centuries
later, the colony that in turn gave the United
States its national capitol on the Potomac River
up the coast. A few years after Jamestown was
established, the more familiar and historically
revered Plymouth colony was planted by English
religious dissidents, but still under the
auspices of private investors with royal
licenses, accompanied by massacres of the
indigenous farmers, just as Jamestown was. This
was the beginning of British overseas
colonialism, which led to its eventually far more powerful spawn.
343 years after ragged mercenaries set foot on
Powhatan territory at Jamestown and began
massacring the indigenous farmers and stealing
their food crops, the United States invaded
Korea, a half-million troops strong, with 30,000
remaining more than a half century later.
The Virginia Tech killings were heralded as the
worst "mass killing," and "worst massacre," in the United States.
Descendants of massacred ancestors--indigenous
peoples, African Americans, Mexicanos,
Chinese--took exception to that designation.
But, we know what those headlines meant; they
meant the largest number of innocents killed by
one armed civilian, although even that's probably
not accurate either, so they really mean with
guns and in the last half-century or so, maybe
beginning in 1958 with nineteen-year-old Charles
Starkweather, and his even younger girlfriend
Caril Fugate, who killed eleven in Nebraska and Wyoming.
Then, in 1966, there was Charles Whitman up on
top of the University of Texas tower, sniping and
killing 13, wounding 31 others before being shot
by police. Twenty years later, the post office
killings began in the quiet town of Edmond,
Oklahoma, a few miles from where I grew up,
giving rise to a new term, "going postal." Other
workplace killings followed, with around 50
deaths up to now. More recently, school killings
have prevailed, some 22 incidents since 1989 in the U.S.
Having lived through all of them, I have been
interested in the mass response to each one, ever
since Starkweather, who was my age at the time.
Each mass killing is followed by an orgiastic
chorus of proclamations about a bubble of
normality punctured by a sole evildoer. Perhaps
the incidents play a role in U.S. society
somewhat as Dostoevsky had his character, the
"idiot," play as the member of the family who is
weird or evil so that the rest of the family can
be perceived or perceive themselves as "normal."
With all the anger and tension we experience and
observe daily, it's a wonder mass killings don't
happen more often, but maybe the mass killer
speaks for many and is a preventative.
The Dostoevskian "idiot" is a universal archetype
under the patriarchal western family and the
triad of family, church, and state. But, there's
more to it than that in the United States. This
can be seen from how we react. Some say we react
so massively because it's the 24-7 television and
internet that causes us to dwell on such events.
But, I recall the Starkweather crime spree from
my youth in rural Oklahoma with no television at
all and only local papers and local radio, and it
didn't even happen in Oklahoma.
Everyone knew about it, following the news of the
killers' evasion of the massive law enforcement
pursuit, fearing the killers' arrival at their homes.
At the same time the news repelled and terrified
me, I harbored curiosity about and perhaps
admiration for the teen killer and his
girlfriend. I was already successfully "the
idiot" in my family, as an invalid with chronic
asthma. Sickliness still was considered a
character flaw and a weakness in that post
frontier rural setting. As well, my childhood
bedtime stories were about heroic outlaws--Jesse
James, Billy the Kid, Pretty Boy Floyd, Belle
Starr, Bonnie and Clyde. They were heroes to many
who were inspired by their deeds. I can
understand how Cho might be secretly admired.
Cho stated in his suicide message, "I die like
Jesus Christ to inspire generations of the weak and defenseless people."
Then there's the factor of the continual
reincarnation of the Anglo-Scots outlaw, so
pervasive on the North American frontier, often
erroneously referred to as a "cowboy."
But, I think we have to go back to that yesterday
in another part of Virginia, Jamestown, the site
of the British queen's visit in April to
celebrate the first permanent English colony in
the western hemisphere; Vice-President Dick
Cheney, in his Jamestown speech commemorating the
400 year anniversary called the birthplace of the
United States. Indeed it is, a bloody birth at that.
When Cho went on his killing spree, there was a
great deal of news about the 400 year
commemoration, especially in Virginia, highly
publicized planning for which had been ongoing
for a year. Was Cho curious enough to do a search
on the internet about Jamestown? (Maybe the FBI
knows from studying Cho's hard drive, but they
most likely wouldn't "get it") Or maybe Cho just
looked at a book, or had taken a history course.
Perhaps he saw some pictures of drawings of the
Powhatan Indians who were killed by Captain John
Smith and his soldiers. Perhaps Cho saw a
reflection of his own features in those Powhatan
faces, and was reminded of what had happened to
his own people, the multiple massacres of Korean
civilians in the 1950s U.S. invasion and
occupation of his parents' homeland, the
occupation and humiliation continuing today. (I
recall stories from Native American vets
returning from Vietnam, how they could not bring
themselves to shoot when they could see the faces
of the people who looked like their relatives.)
Much was made in the press about Cho being Asian,
then specifically, Korean, surely touching on
those mystic chords of memory of "yellow peril"
and Asian wars "lost" by the United States, or
not "won" militarily. Yet, there was nothing
about the Korean War, 1950-1953, and the ongoing
U.S. military presence. Uncountable millions of
Korean civilians were killed in the war, many in
U.S. military massacres of refugees. Millions of
children were left without parents. Cho was not a
child of those Korean war orphans stolen by U.S.
religious groups, children who grew up in white,
middle-American communities not knowing their
real names or birth dates or families or villages.
Cho's parents had immigrated in 1992, when he was
eight years old, settling in a Virginia suburb of
Washington D.C., where they started a dry
cleaning business, sending Cho and his older
sister to the best schools. That may sound like
the "American Dream" realized, but only if one
has never taken notice of the toxic, backbreaking
work involved in a family owned and run
dry-cleaning operation, with the immigrant
parents working themselves to death so their
children might have a crack at that putrid dream
of consumerism. Cho and his sister were
beneficiaries of their parents' labor to pay for their elite educations.
In his video rant, Cho expressed hatred for the
"rich kids" who surrounded him. In U.S. society
we are not allowed to hate anyone or anything not
designated by the State as the enemy. We are
jumped on and accused of "playing the class card" or "playing the race card."
"The rich are not like you and me." "The poor
will always be with us." Get real and accept it
we are told. It's toxic thinking. Why should we
have to swallow and internalize our righteous
hatred of the rich? Hate, yes. The language can
be dressed up to it rage or outrage, but, hate is a concept underrated.
Everyone does it, but no one wants to admit it.
We are held back and diminished by the claim that
hating is bad for us, bad for everyone.
We are told that it's all right to hate the act
but not hate the person. We are allowed to hate
wealth or capitalism but not the purveyors. Even
in the post-modern intellectual world where
"agency" is bestowed upon the poor and oppressed
(they are responsible for their actions), the
rich remain an abstraction. It's a ridiculous
logic that keeps us hating and blaming ourselves
for not being rich and powerful, literally driving people crazy.
Who are the rich? We have to be careful about
that, living in a country that does not admit to
class relations, and class is subject to little
analysis. It's not a matter of income per se.
High income can certainly make a person
dilusional, and most U.S. citizens who live on
high fixed or hourly incomes due to circumstances
of a good trade union or a professional degree
have no idea that they aren't rich. In polls they
say they are in the top fifth of the income
ladder, and they aren't. A majority of U.S.
citizens don't want to tax the rich more, because
they think they will be rich one day. They won't.
The rich own not just a mortgaged house and a
car, maybe a boat or a cabin in the woods or a
beach house to boot; rather they own us. Even the
cash and luxury soaked entertainment and sports
stars are not the rich; they certainly deserve
contempt and disgust, but not hatred. Don't go
for scapegoats--Jews, Oprah, Martha Stewart, or
random kids on campus as Cho did. Hatred should
be reserved for those who own us, that is, those
who own the banks, the oil companies, the war
industry, the land (for corporate agriculture),
the private universities and prep schools, and
who own the foundations that dole out worthy
projects for the poor, for public
institutions-their opera, their ballet, their
symphony, that you are allowed to attend after
opening night, and they own the government. My
oldest brother, who like me grew up dirt poor in
rural Oklahoma, landless farmers and farm
workers, rebuts my arguments by saying that no poor man ever gave him a job.
That says it all. The rich own you and me.
In all the arguments about the crimes of the
Judeo-Christian-Muslim religions, rarely is their
greatest crime ever discussed--the leveling of
class, rich and poor are the same in god's sight.
What a handy ideology for the rich! The same with
U.S. democracy with its "equal opportunity" and
"level playing fields," absurd claims under
capitalism, but ones held dear, even by liberals.
When rampages such as Cho's occur, my first
thought is not why, rather why not more often.
What do we do with the anger, the rage? Violence
in the United States is usually associated with
the narrative of the frontier having hardened the
society, creating the killer, the "cowboy," all
that is bad, a direction taken away from the
rational Puritans and the wise Virginians who did
all they could to get along with the Indians.
But, that's a lie; the killing began at the
beginning and the purpose was to eradicate the
inhabitants of North America, to take their land,
and to replace them. There is no redemption in
exorcising the "cowboy" or firearms.
Such probing as this is said by some to justify
or rationalize individual violent behavior, and
in a way it does. But, the alternative, to name
it evil, is not helpful, nor is blaming guns,
freedom, lack of mental health counseling. Why
not seize the opportunity to explore what we have
in common with the culprit, explore his humanity,
rather than vilify him? Some say that any time or
effort spent trying to understand does a
disservice to the victims and their families.
That kind of thinking has strangled and
suppressed even studies of history, such as the
holocaust. Whose interest is served by shutting
down discussion of motives and circumstances,
and, particularly, history? One is not alleging
lack of criminal intent or behavior, but what
made it possible? Wouldn't this be an appropriate
moment to at least acknowledge the pathological
celebration of colonization in Virginia at the
time of the shootings, and the war and continuing
occupation of Korea as a possible cause for Cho's decision?
As a child during the Korean War, I sold Veterans
of Foreign Wars crepe paper roses. Several young
men in our rural farming community were drafted
and came home wounded or not quite right in the
mind. One of the boys who returned sat with my
brother and me and our cousins and told us about
Korea. He told us how, poor as we were, how lucky
we were in comparison with the Koreans.
"They're lucky to eat a spoonful of rice once a
day," he said. Then he told us about going
through a small village and seeing an old man die
of starvation right in front of him, and said a
tapeworm came out of his mouth. His story made us
feel lucky to be free Americans fighting
communism, proud of our country for helping
others. He later blew his brains out with a
shotgun, but he didn't take anyone with him. Maybe he had a conscience.
Video games portraying violence and casual
killing are blamed for leading young men like Cho
to act out in reality. But what about the virtual
real war that has saturated the brains of
everyone since the invasion of Afghanistan in
October 2001, and subsequent war in Iraq? From
age 17 to his death at 23, Cho, like the rest of
us, had a head full of pictures of licensed
killing and torture. His highly functional
sister, a Princeton graduate, works as a
contractor for the U.S. State Department's
management of the Iraq War. Which of the actions
of the two were more destructive?
This essay is excerpted from
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0742561305/counterpunchmaga>There
is a Gunman on Campus edited by Ben Agger and
Timothy W. Luke, from Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is a longtime activist,
university professor, and writer. In addition to
numerous scholarly books and articles she has
published two historical memoirs,
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1859841627/counterpunchmaga>Red
Dirt: Growing Up Okie (Verso, 1997), and
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0872863905/counterpunchmaga>Outlaw
Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 19601975 (City
Lights, 2002). She is a contributor to
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1904859844/counterpunchmaga>Red
State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance from
the Heartland, edited by Josh Frank and Jeffrey
St. Clair. She can be reached at:
<mailto:rdunbaro at pacbell.net>rdunbaro at pacbell.net
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
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