Pocahontas to You Too

So we now get “prove it” to claims that we have Native American Blood...and get called names like Pocahontas or Injun Joe I suppose.

Like Elizabeth Warren I have a pile of evidence that I have native blood. And like a lot of partial Native Americans, they share a commonality.

1. Hidden heritage. Up until the 1950s Native Americans were legally discriminated against. It wasn’t until 1947 when I was born, that mixed race marriages (and colored race blood had to only be one drop) were no longer forbidden in many states. Discrimination against Native Americans extended even to the military, Code Talkers was one way they could serve, but many could not. Native Americans could not vote until 1920! So what did my family do, it hid the heritage; and passed for white. Hiding Native American blood is what everyone did.

2. Conflict in mixed marriages. My parents eloped just like Elizabeth Warrens because my mother’s family, white, didn’t like my father who was from “the other side of the tracks”...that is the way it was in 1944. So what happened to the children, silence is what happened. I was not told about my mixed blood until I was 58! I didn’t even know I was Cherokee with a murdered great great grandfather until I looked it up in Texas list of executions...and found my great great grandfather’s name. Hanging is a pretty pure evidence!

3. Ha...ha...ha syndrome...I tell the story and white friends just laugh...”right”....”so what”. The racism just flows out of them without thinking. I get the “big deal”, you are mostly white. All of that. It is just a big joke to them. Pocahontas???? 

4. Historical facts: There was a U.N. certified genocide in the Americas. Tens of millions were simply murdered for their land, culture was destroyed, game was killed and land was destroyed to wipe out an entire race of human beings. And all of it to spread democracy across the land. And who wants to admit to that? 

5. “Oh get a life”....this is the worst. I was a Stanford Indian...I wore the uniform, I battled on the football field for a great University as an “Indian”...and, at first, in the early 1970s, I was upset when the Indian racist mascot was abolished in favor of Cardinal. And then I found out I was part Native American and everything changed. But I still get from alums; “Once and Indian always an Indian”....

6. Prove it: Did you know that for European DNA there are so much of it that matching is easy in tests. African Americans and Native Americans not so easy since there were so few of them in the America’s relatively speaking...and many of the strands were killed off...fancy that! 

So it is not unusual to get no DNA proof, even though the old pictures you look at of your great great grandmother shows an Native American without question. Did you know that DNA proof is not a lock for Native Americans? Now you do.

7. Racism and Prejudice....the United States was established on it...and admitting it....means admitting to genocide...It took forcing Germans to go through concentration camps to get it in 1945...and concentration camps were right next to many Germany towns not just in Poland as we have been wrongly taught...THEY KNEW IT JUST LIKE YOU KNOW IT, but they didn’t dare admit it; not my fault right?

All you have to do is look at old newspapers from the gold rush era, and you get story after story of brutal attacks and murder of dozens of native Americans for stealing a cow. The ratio was about 1 dead white man to 1000 Native Californians. The population dropped for 150,000 in 1850 to about 20,000 in 1870, and not from disease by the way. 

Racism and prejudice still exists and nobody likes to talk about it..and Trump uses it for political advantage just like the son of a bitch Andrew Jackson whose portrait happened to be over Trump’s shoulder when he embarrassed the old war heroes yesterday with his venom. 

So Pocahontas to you too.

The Sea Change

Even in England the con continues.  This is the con.  After years of not having any control of the Congress, from 1933 to 1994, the Republicans were able to control the Congress.  They did it via the "tax cuts" are good for you and the Republicans astonishly are good for the poor.  That somehow, hocus pocus, rich entitled spoiled brats would care about the urban poor?
I remember the theory of trickle down that Reagan had sold to the country resulting in a recession that cost his Vice President a second term as President.  Clinton won, but he had to run on a more conservative mode, to overcome the Reagan Democrats who abandoned the Democratic party NOT BECAUSE OF ECONOMIC REASONS BUT BECAUSE THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY HAD OPENED ITS DOORS TO PEOPLE OF COLOR.

You cannot underestimate the impact of that.  The racist segregationists in the south went wholesale into the Republican Party astonishly...this was the party of the abolitionists remember.  And not only did this shift occur, Democrats began to elect people of color and women in large numbers further alienating old white men.  And also amazingly you tell the Reagan Democrat that and they don’t believe you…they are so illiterate politically they don’t even realize what happened…Race blinds them!

It's racial.  Period.  And its falling apart right now, as the older racist men die off, the Reagan Democrats are dying by the droves, the younger demographic have done a couple things....1.  Women are finally emerging with power.  The latest sexual harassment scandal is a change in the culture taking place in front of our eyes. 2.  The leadership of the Democratic Party is now racially diverse, the LEADERSHIP  are people of color and will not sell out.  Racists keep waiting for a return  of the "crackers" ; won't happen. 

What gives it legs is the fact that women have moved into positions of power enough (just enough they have a ways to go) to demand that predators be stopped in the workplace.  And, California and the urban states have become much more diverse.  And, in spite of discrimination in law, policing; etc., enough people of color (immigrants yes) are emerging that the good ole white boy network, who screwed  their secretary on the side, are being displaced rapidly.  The latest sexual discrimination/harassment  dust up is a big deal, it is behind some of the political change wave that we first noticed in Tuesday’s election.

You cannot stop it.  And THAT is why we are going to win.   And that is why Trump is doomed. 

Moreover,  to make it worse for the idiots (and they are idiots) , Republican  ties to big oil and coal are transparent, the whoring of their lives for a few pieces of silver does not get it with young people who know they will be stuck with the planet after the stupid Reagan Democrats finally die off..

And finally, Trump, with his billions is a poster child for the real rich elite in the Republican party who for years have conned the racist whites who were angry  that the Democratic Party finally did the right thing, into believing that they cared about poor whites...

They don't ....in fact they distain them.  In fact they hate them.    And  Trump doesn't hide it either.  And the laws they are tying to pass, even for the very uneducated, will hurt and the white fools will even figure that out.

I use fools with compassion.  I know a lot of the Reagan Democrats, or Obama Dem/Republicans (Democrats who changed because to Republicans because the President was .....dark!).

They are just doing what their fathers taught them...they have been racist since they were kids.

I know, I was one to some degree, then I went to college, roomed with an African American, made friends with many more people of all colors, and discovered that I was a person of color (Native American) and that fact had affected by family for years.  When that happened I vowed that diversity was what I would work for all of my life.  I had no choice… When you find out your great great grandfather is listed in Texas’ list of hangings, lynched for being married to a white woman, it wakes you up real fast. 

And that was sometimes not easy for a mixed race person from Redding California, whose parents had passed for white for years as a survival technique (Native Americans did not get jobs, they could not marry white women; technically my parents were illegally married).

My white friends scoff at this…they laugh that I am just being politically correct….

The politically correct bullshit is used to discredit efforts by people to do the right thing..to overcome racism you have to work at it, since it is so engrained in all of us, so discipline is needed.  And cons call this being politically correct, they sneer when they say it…

What they really are saying is “You are being uppity, be racist like we have always been…you took our Democratic Party away and gave it to “them” (people of color and women)…how dare you!

The pundits are correct is saying the modern Democratic Party no longer relates to older  white working class people; they don’t.   The Roosevelt wing (liberals) of the Party for year tried to have it both ways, sharing space with out and out racists from the south, until L.B.J. had enough, and passed the Civil Rights Bill.  That tore it, it ended Democratic Party hegemony in the Red States of the South FOREVER. 

And they voted for Donald Trump, who immediately started screwing them the second he got power…and will screw them with tax cuts for the rich and taking away health care for the middle class.

And they will vote for it…..but there are more of us than there are of them…and they are dying off fast. 

What happened Tuesday is a harbinger of things to come…we have to Vote…we have to not split up into left and center….we need to work together to end the racist right forever…else we will die… 

We have the votes you know….we do…and we need to destroy the Republican Party as it presently exists or it will destroy us….