Countries can be a lot like rooms.
I once worked with a woman that used the expression "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree" at least once a day. She was usually talking to people with a parent in prison. Granted, she eventually lost that job for getting caught going to the bar down the street the minute it opened and not returning till time to clock out. She worked there 3 years. Her room had its own elephant.
While apples may not fall far---gravity, you know--that has little to do with anything. The apple and the tree are both dependent on their roots.
Everything has roots.
Countries call those roots history.
Our Elephant is hooked to our roots, but while it CAN be seen and is definitely felt, most of us don't want to talk about it. We would rather have a root canal without anesthesia. We think de-nile is a river in Egypt.
Now about the roots of our own history---and how they relate to the roots of all human history.
It starts with little groups, fighting over the best cave to survive the winter or the best tree to sleep in without getting eaten by predators or the best stream for water for not dying of dehydration or poisoning. It starts with one of those biological imperatives--the need to survive and procreate so our DNA continues.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/science/two-surprises-in-dna-of-boy-found-buried-in-siberia.html
Speed forward about 23,620 years--to about the year 1492 to the Age of colonialism and the time of Imperialism.
Colonialism is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another. One of the difficulties in defining colonialism is that it is hard to distinguish it from imperialism. Frequently the two concepts are treated as synonyms. Like colonialism, imperialism also involves political and economic control over a dependent territory. The etymology of the two terms, however, provides some clues about how they differ. The term colony comes from the Latin word colonus, meaning farmer. This root reminds us that the practice of colonialism involved the transfer of population to a new territory, where the arrivals lived as permanent settlers while maintaining political allegiance to their country of origin. Imperialism, on the other hand, comes from the Latin term imperium, meaning to command. Thus, the term imperialism draws attention to the way that one country exercises power over another, whether through settlement, sovereignty, or indirect mechanisms of control.
Imperialism was its own worst enemy, creating rebellions and independence movements by those whose lands have been taken over while the majority of the people are not of the group that is in power.. Imperialism is for profit, for control of resources. India rather recently won its independence from Great Britain--which never really colonized the extremely populated country. They sent military and leaders to control those already there--by force. Colonization, in which immigrants from the controlling country come over to make a new life thus displacing the population that is already there is not as common but did create the beginning, the roots of the United States of America. While Great Britain colonized the Atlantic Coast, France was more focused on the natural resources of what became Canada, and Spain focused heavily on the areas that later became Florida, Louisiana, Texas and the Southwest--and most of Central and South America. Russia had Alaska. In places where imperialism rather than colonialism controlled the relationship, you end up with a population that is mostly indigenous with some genetically mixed people--"brown people". Where colonialism occurred, you get some "brown people" and many people that look more like the place that colonized the area, and very few indigenous people--call it genocide, if you wish to approach honesty. But why colonize? Why did some nations focus on grabbing resources while others just kept sending out colonies?
Great Britain, without its colonies is a little Island. They loved shipping off their poor and criminal element with about the same proportion of military and leaders that the already populated places like India required to control the populace. That gave us Australia and eventually parts of Canada. That gave us the United states before the revolution.
And now we are approaching the Elephant.
In those countries that used imperialism and colonialism to gain money and resources and to get rid of their excess of poor people, it was inevitable that people began to judge themselves and each other based on how close to the appearance of the rulers they were. In India, a caste system, originally hooked to the Hindu religious beliefs and altered over time to use skin color and poverty as part of the levels was useful in maintaining control. It soon became nothing more than a stepped class system like the feudal lords had used for a thousand years. There was a reason that women using toxic metals like lead or powdering with arsenic so they could be particularly pale was seen as more important than good health. A berry-brown girl was never going to be anything more than a servant or farmer's wife.
And now, we are getting within touching distance of the Elephant, and while the blind men and the elephant is my very favorite metaphor for understanding different religions, this elephant is scary and ugly and angry and HUGE! And calling it out has killed many good people.
http://www.constitution.org/col/blind_men.htm
This country was originally colonized by people of the British islands, and later, as their ability to farm efficiently and effectively was challenged by William Penn, who brought in all those Palatine Germans (Pennsylvania Dutch), there were other European farmer-types from Europe.
There were people already here--Columbus, in his confusion and geographic dislocation called them Indians, they called themselves whatever their language used that meant "Us". In 1800 there were 4.3 million descendants of European immigrants in the United States (They started arriving in the early 1600's, while Columbus via Spain started exploring and occupying and decimating the area surrounding the Caribbean islands in 1492. There are currently 241.9 million of European ancestry in this country, although far from all came before 1776 and many are not from the British Isles or Palatine area.
Before 1492, Turtle Island, later to be called The Americas was estimated to have 10 million to 100 million indigenous people living there, with an estimated 1-5 million of those in the area that is now the United States. (NO Censuses, all estimates by historians) The native population now is 3.7 million in the USA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_Island_%28North_America%29
We also, long before the place was a country, when it was just a bunch of colonies and explorers, brought about a half a million African people as slaves--free labor. (this was less than 4% of the total number of Africans brought to the Americas and Caribbean islands.) There are currently 40.3 million African Americans by 2015 census. Some of those actually immigrated to this country from African Nations after the Civil War and some came for the Caribbean islands and South America. (less than 4% of total immigration occurring between the Civil War and the 1965 were of nonwhite and non-European descent--by law. Between 1965 (law change) and 2000 that number increased slightly, and since 2000 about 1.5 million sub-saharan African immigrants have come to the United States.
There have been Asian immigrants here in the US since at least the 1600's. Since Asia and our Pacific coast are both on the same ocean, it is likely that Asian sailors have been here as long or longer than Europeans. About the time of the 1849 gold rush, large numbers of Chinese immigrants came over to work the gold mines so they could send money back to their families and later to build the transcontinental railroad--for the same reason. While they were not officially enslaved, they were also not treated as equals to the European immigrants; were not paid as well and not treated well at all. They were, if not FREE labor, very cheap labor that was also excluded from the government processes that made us a republic. Between 1880 and 1965 Asian immigrants were not allowed to come to this country at all. There are currently over 15 million people of Asian descent in this country and Asia is the 2nd most likely place of origin of new immigrants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_immigration_to_the_United_States
January 1, 1892 The federal immigration station on Ellis Island opened on January 1, 1892 and was closed on November 12, 1954-- after 12 million immigrants were inspected and ok'd for entry into this country. The vast majority of immigrants through this gateway were from European countries.
http://genealogy.about.com/od/ports/p/ellis_island.htm?utm_term=history+ellis+island&utm_content=p1-main-1-title&utm_medium=sem&utm_source=gemini_s&utm_campaign=adid-bfdb03d6-0848-4f90-99ae-58f36cd281c1-0-ab_tsb_ocode-33073&ad=semD&an=gemini_s&am=broad&q=history+ellis+island&o=33073&qsrc=999&l=sem&askid=bfdb03d6-0848-4f90-99ae-58f36cd281c1-0-ab_tsb
Did people from other countries, non-white countries, never want to come to the United States?
Or were they not welcomed.
We were told we were a melting pot when I was a grade school student---everyone welcome, everyone equal--one big happy nation. By college, we were really more of a warm and chunky stew with many cultures and each welcome to keep their own religious beliefs and eating habits and communities--just one big, happy and diverse nation.
Currently, we are not even pretending to be happy. We don't want any more brown people coming in. We don't want people wearing head scarfs unless its windy. We don't want vegetarians. We don't want people that have philosophies instead of religions, and while we believe in one god, it has to be the right, one god. (If there is one, how is there a wrong one)
Don't get me wrong, while we were one big happy melting pot in grade school, there were no people of color in that school. There were some kids that might have been Indian (in the 60's there were no natives or we were all native American unless we just immigrated--the one German girl whose parents moved here--she was never really accepted, and due to the state I was in, everyone was part Indian by family lore--no matter how blonde haired and blue eyes, but just having an Italian last name or going to a Catholic Church was suspect. We were definitely still a colony of Great Britain.
So what is the elephant? Is it racism? Is it hate? Is it xenophobia? Is it just our roots? Is it we can't let go of the our own motherland, that world-class invader and raper of lands, Great Britain. We, the white-we, are by majority, descendants of anglo-saxons and they were always invaders and rapers of other lands.
Its tribal. (And everyone has tribal roots--not very civilized of us, but lets not quibble over words--tribes are based on protecting their own, enlarging their lands and resources and killing the competition.) Every migration, every war, every colony, every coupe---all just tribal.
And tribes aren't that distant. Israel had the 12 tribes less than 3000 years ago. Europe had Celts and Gauls and Goths and Vandals less than 2000 years ago, Asia had Jews, Kurds, Aryans, Druze, Huns, Turks, Hmong, Mongols, Africa has Ashanti, Bantu, Mandingo, Zulu, Yoruba, Maasai, America had Aztec, Cherokee, Lakota, Navajo, Australia had Murrawarri, Koori, Nyungar and there were so many more in each continent that the list could be endless.
But tribes, while they have roots and shared DNA, are no longer the basis of human governance. Unless we really are incapable of getting better than that, incapable of redefining our tribal roots, incapable of learning new ways to share and protect and educate and work together; then we are just acting in an instinctual way. Not like animals. With animals, there must actually be a threat. We do it for baubles and recognition, for right of place and self-esteem. We have spread our DNA so well that it is not we humans in danger anymore. But we are still trying to have our specific tribe's DNA dominate. It's like none of us even know what the words equality, justice, opportunity, compassion---mean. Just empty words unless they apply to everyone.
"Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me."
Maybe least is just our perception. There is no least in equal. We want someone to be less than we are since that means we are more. Maybe we need to stop looking for a hierarchy and start using the golden rule--for everyone, from everywhere, no matter what tribe. (I actually think that is what the above was round-aboutly and in Old English, saying)
Why do people ignore elephants in rooms or in countries? Is it just easier on us to ignore them. Do they represent something we are afraid of or something we need around to make us feel good about who we are. Either way, as long as we can't recognize it for what it is, it is a problem. The first step, in any recovery program is to recognize you have a problem. Maybe we just all need an Intervention or a 12 step program. But transparency, recognition of the problem and talking about it are always the first step to change.
The only way to get the elephant out is to knock down some walls.
It's past time to bring out the sledge hammers and start talking about that elephant.
This one is nobody's friend.
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