May 28, 1830

The Equal Justice Initiative informs me about an important event that happened on this very date in 1830:

On this day in 1830, President Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, forcing Indigenous people who had lived in the region for centuries to migrate west in brutal and dangerous conditions. To overcome racial inequality, we must confront our history. https://t.co/jmxsbO2zup

— Equal Justice Initiative (@eji_org) May 28, 2021

We must confront our history.

That's exactly what the GOP's "leaders" do not want us to do.  At the federal and state levels, they are on a mission to stop teaching and discussing our history that involves atrocious treatment of non-whites.  Their catchphrase is about "critical race theory," even if the GOP base has no idea what that really means.

The following is an unedited re-post from January 2019:

*************************************************

Remember this factoid?

Between 1500 and 1800 roughly two and a half million Europeans moved to the Americas; they carried twelve million Africans by force; and as many as fifty million Native Americans died, chiefly of disease.

The genocide and then the ethnic cleansing did not end just because it was now the 19th century!

Enter trump in his previous incarnation: andrew jackson, who "extended the powers of the presidency," writes Jill Lepore.

"The man we have made our President has made himself our despot, and the Constitution now lies in a heap of ruins at his feet," declared a senator from Rhode Island.  "When the way to his object lies through the Constitution, the Constitution has not the strength of a cobweb to restrain him from breaking through it."

Jackson set his sights on Indian removal.  He wanted to forcibly move Native Americans from east of the Mississippi to the West.

The Cherokees had forever been fighting to remain on their lands.

We beg leave to observe, and to remind you, that the Cherokees are not foreigners, but original inhabitants of America; and that they now inhabit and stand on the soil of their own territory.

And then a most unfortunate thing happened: "Gold was discovered on Cherokee land."

The US Supreme Court and its Chief Justice, John Marshall, ruled in favor of the Cherokees.  andrew jackson "decided to ignore the Supreme Court."  The Trail of Tears was the result.

We often refer to slavery as America's original sin.  As sinful as that was, the destruction of the lives and histories of the original inhabitants of this land is an even older story.  As much as the aftereffects of slavery and white supremacy have never gone away, the shameful and atrocious treatment of Native Americans continues.  Especially now with version 2.0 of andrew jackson: trump.

President Donald Trump started off the week by mocking one of the worst Native American massacres in US history in order to score some political points. By Friday, a group of young white teenagers were following his footsteps by taunting Native American elders at the Indigenous Peoples March in Washington, DC — on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, no less.
In videos shared widely on YouTube and Twitter, a young man wearing a self-assured smirk and a red “Make America Great Again” stands inches away from a native elder who is beating a drum. Different angles of the incident show a group of a few dozen young people, mostly boys, in the background, jumping up and down and jeering in unison at the group of elders present for the day’s march. In some shots, the teens appear to be shouting “build that wall, build that wall.”

The native elder, Nathan Phillips, is also a Vietnam vet--the war that President Bone Spurs dodged well.

“I heard them saying ‘build that wall, build that wall,’ ” Phillips said while wiping away tears. “This is indigenous land. You’re not supposed to have walls here. We never did for a millennia. We never had a prison. We always took care of our elders, took care of our children, always provided for them, taught them right from wrong. I wish I could see that energy … put that energy to making this country really, really great.”

Yet another Indian elder shedding tears is not going to influence the thinking of 63 million racists!