they<\/em> want us divided.\u201d It\u2019s true: the wealthy have tremendous class solidarity, and besides counting their money, their favorite thing is for the poors to tear each other apart over who is oppressed more. <\/p>But to watch Howard Zinn lay out exactly how the Founding Fathers conspired to keep power for the wealthy and property holders, using poor white people as \u201ca buffer\u201d between women, enslaved Black people, and Indigenous people\u2014it\u2019s pretty impressive. Then, after \u201cThe Intimately Oppressed\u201d (a chapter on woman\u2019s societal standing from the 1600s-1850), he ends with \u201cIn the midst of these movements, there exploded, with the force of government and the authority of money, a quest for more land, an urge for national expansion.\u201d<\/p>
Then I open Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz to \u201cCult of the Covenant,\u201d with its first subheading reading \u201cmyth of the pristine wilderness\u201d and the quote \u201c\u2026later European settlers were unaware of the former cultivation and sculpting and manicuring of the landscape. Abandoned fields of corn turned to weeds and bushes. Settlers chopped down trees in New England until the landscape was nearly bare.\u201d<\/p>
What was lost, all in the name a few white guys who wanted to be Britain Without A King. <\/p>
What I\u2019ve Been Reading This Week:<\/strong><\/p>Same thing as I said on Wednesday, obviously, but newsletter structures are important. Today\u2019s chapter listing: <\/p>
A People\u2019s History of the United States <\/em>by Howard Zinn: \u201cTyranny is Tyranny,\u201d \u201cA Kind of Revolution,\u201d and \u201cThe Intimately Oppressed\u201d<\/p>Four Hundred Souls<\/em> edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain: Part Four (1739-1779) and Part Five (1779-1819)<\/p>An Indigenous People\u2019s History of the United States<\/em> by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: \u201cTwo: Culture of Conquest\u201d and \u201cThree: Cult of the Covenant\u201d<\/p>It should be apparent that I\u2019m still figuring out the best way to organize all my thoughts as I read three books. Timelines aren\u2019t 100% lining up yet. Zinn\u2019s considerably weightier tome starts later in history than both Kendi\/Blain and Dunbar-Ortiz. Worst of all, I\u2019m struggling for something else to say besides \u201cthis was a bad idea, how could anyone think this was good or right?\u201d<\/p>
One thing that\u2019s surprised me a bit is Dunbar-Ortiz\u2019s tracing of Christian origins of colonization. European settlers came over here \u201cfor gold, God, and country\u201d or whatever, and \u201cCulture of Conquest\u201d points out that Indigenous Americans were not the first group that Europeans had attempted to conquer and subjugate. The Crusades were a pretty brazen attempt at imperialism in the Middle East. The Scots-Irish had previously been brought in to forcibly settle what is now Northern Ireland after the British seized the land from Indigenous Irish. This made the Scots-Irish, with their Calvinist theology, primed and ready for settling the then-border at Appalachia. Four Hundred Souls<\/em> is starting to get into enslaved people adopting Christianity, and the growing differences between white and Black churches. It strikes me (not for the first time) that evangelical church doesn\u2019t teach you a lot of history, and even though I always suspected<\/em> churches were divided for racist reasons, I\u2019m \u201cwatching this develop with great interest,\u201d as my historian grandfather would say. <\/p>One last thing: it was jarring to finally read about Sally Hemings. I don\u2019t think I\u2019d ever actually read anything about her. Maybe it\u2019s facile to say I feel bad for her, but I sincerely, deep in my bones, feel the tragedy that \u201cHypocrite Virginia Man\u2019s Concubine\u201d is her legacy. She got a taste of high society life in Paris, and she and her brother tried their damndest to stay there, maybe get to freedom somehow\u2014but we know what happened. My already low opinion of George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson is getting lower. <\/p>
LINKS!<\/strong><\/p>Something to listen while you read? YouTube shows me this stuff sometimes, and it\u2019s the one time I\u2019m grateful to the algo. Never have I ever heard of YONLAPA, and this very good pop rock is bit happier and danceable than I usually go. Please enjoy\u2014shades of OK Go and Rooney. <\/p>
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