United Native America

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

MY question is WHY has the Native American Indian experience in SEGREGATION and JIM CROW laws once again taken a Back seat to the African American experience. THIS is NOT a Debate solely for African Americans. Trent Lott's comments were insulting to ALL PEOPLE OF COLOR!!!!! that lived through the segregated south.

Indian Leaders throughout the southeastern United states were Victims of Segregation, miscegenation laws and Jim Crowism. When will the Native Leaders Speak UP about our plight in our "one room school houses," our inability to use "White Water Fountains," our continued invisible status as Ethnic Minorities in South Carolina and Indian America.

How when the Budget of SOUTH Carolina gets CUT (across the board) the Native Americans ARE NOT important enough to get served as Ethnic Minorities, BY the Minority Affairs Commission. THEY ARE NOT Mandated to serve us NOW, and if they get NO more money they will not serve us in the future, unless the prescribed mandate to serve us is accompanied BY MONEY FROM THIS STATE!

THAT WILL NEVER Happen, if all agancies are Getting CUT. Minority Affairs will also get CUT.

NOT ONLY Black Republicans and NAACP and Black Caucus should be speaking UP, asking for clarification of the remarks made by Trent Lott, WHAT ABOUT Native Leaders Coming OUT and demanding our rightful place in their history of segregation and OUR rightful place in the political arena...and OUR RIGHTFUL VOICE as Indian people that were victimized, marginalized and subjugated BY THEIR Segregation LAWS.

ARE WE ALWAYS TO REMAIN quiet, invisible, ignored and unserved!!! and subservient????? I THINK NOT

IT IS UP TO YOU all TO Speak OUT!!!!

Trent Lott's comments have brought about a plethora of condemnations from newspaper editors, pundits, and politicians who themselves are separated from the rest of America by both race and class. Racism is now America's national taboo, and no one can publicly make racist comments without being ostracized. The problem for our aristocracy is that Trent Lott meant what he said, and upper class America cannot claim Mr. Lott to be one of their own while simultaneously retaining an egalitarian façade. Neo conservatives and neo liberals both desperately want to escape their (our) racist heritage, but the more they sort, rank, and divide people, the more the race factor appears. Trent Lott is racially prejudiced, but this prejudice is one of many. The paramount difficulty for the new rising aristocracy, which is slowly weeding out people like Mr. Lott, is how to accomplish the coup d'etat without revealing their own vile prejudices. After all, aristocracy literally means "rule by the best" (as opposed to democracy-rule by the people), and if we start honestly discussing race in this country, then inevitably America's dirty little secret, and racism's parent, class segregation, is going to come to the forefront. Rule by a supposed best group of people necessarily implies the subjugation of a supposed lesser group of people. How can one group of people ethically govern another group of people when the former considers the latter to be inferior? Our aristocracy shrouds itself in the cloak of a "republic", but no one that I know today could prefix the before mentioned word with "democratic" and keep a straight face. Real democracies and democratic-republics do not have 98% re-election rates of incumbent politicians.

I think for our nation to prosper we must first admit to ourselves that as a nation we have NOT always done the right things for our people . Slavery was wrong. The Jim Crow South was wrong, and the racism on which it was based was and still is wrong. We need some type of admission of mutual culpability lest we perpetually live in the past. I say "mutual culpability" because we are all at least in some degree responsible. How can a person who was not even alive during slavery or segregation have sinned? -By not admitting the past sins of those before us.

I am a simple person and had no part in racial segregation whatsoever, but I am a product of it.

WHEN will Native American Indian People let others KNOW, what we have lived through. That is MY question? Or do we just want to be invisible....I believe that many of our misguided Indian Leaders want to assume our opposers Position....Lets DO IT TO SOMEONE ELSE SO THAT WE FEEL BETTER ABOUT OURSELVES!!!!!

I JUST DON"T agree with that perspective. Making people bring CARDS to a closed, by invitation only Family Gatherings is Ludicrist, ridiculous, and racist Most importantly, it is THEIR Game. (the Opossers Game). anonymous

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