The Oxford English Dictionary‘s defines the word racism as Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior: a programme to combat racism.  A man named Richard Henry Pratt in 1902 was railing against the evils of racial segregation.  I would like to take this opportunity to create my own ideas about the #TrumpRacisimPhenomenon.

It is written–

1. Segregating any class or race of people apart from the rest of the people kills the progress of the segregated people or makes their growth very slow.
   1. Is that why our inner city schools, grades and characteristics of our children are combined in one location are slightly different from all the rest?
2. Association of races and classes is necessary to destroy racism and classism
   1. Racism has not been destroyed because of the determination to not allow associations among races and classes, i.e.
      1. Democrat/Republican
      2. Black/White
      3. Christian/Muslim
      4. Yale University/Gateway Community College
      5. Apples/Trees/Strange Fruit

Although Pratt might have been the first person to inveigh against racism and its deleterious effects by name, he is much better-remembered for a very different coinage: Kill the Indian…save the man.

“A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one,” Pratt said. “In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”

1. Was this ideology the catalyst for the derogatory term, “He’s an oreo” meaning a man who is black on the outside and white on the inside. A black man who has learned to think and act as a “white” man.  I don’t agree that we have different thought processes, we have the same goals and desires for our lives and our children, some of us did not have the “Indian” removal process blanketing our lives and hence we may forever remain on the other side of the fence.

We’re still living with the after-effects of what Pratt thought and did. His story serves as a useful parable for why discussions of racism remain so deeply contentious even now. According to NPR writer Gene Demby.

“The history of the Carlisle Indian School is inexorably bound to its founder, Richard Henry Pratt, whose attitude toward Native Americans shaped virtually every dimension of it” according to the Dickinson chronicles.

2. If that be true, then all the hooha over the racist remarks from and around Donald Trump should be mute. He is acting 100% in his “man given rights minus the Indian”.  America do you not like fruits of your labor or are you hiding behind the fruit that has been slammed open for the world to see how rotten we still are.

 

References

http://chronicles.dickinson.edu/studentwork/indian/2_pratt.htm

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/01/05/260006815/the-ugly-fascinating-history-of-the-word-racism

Republic vs Democracy by MsConcerned