Melvin & Jean: An American Story - Trailer

Melvin & Jean: An American Story - Trailer from Maia Wechsler on Vimeo.

Facebook censored and blocked me for a week for sharing "An Open Letter to People of Color" by Dakota Bracciale

Dakota Bracciale [author of the following letter]

October 1, 2015 · 

"An Open Letter to People of Color:

Please do not trust white people.

Every single one of us is racist, it's something we were born and raised into, we were and are consistently indoctrinated into white supremacy.
Indifference and apathy towards systemic racism and it's horrific results is not just more comfortable, it is incentivized; we are actively rewarded by white supremacy in it's many forms for ignoring people of color and their cries for injustice.
Our bones are riddled with it, it's everywhere.
We were taught the the history of our nation through textbooks written by white men with a vested interest in how the story was and is being told.
So we think that MLK Jr is the patron saint of polite black folks (to be invoked against the angry ones), peanut butter is the extent of black excellence, and according to the newest textbooks, slaves were just unpaid interns.
We were brought up being given medicine designed for us by white men, men who historically tortured black women and murdered black babies to found gynecology, men who performed surgeries on black people without any anesthesia and no precautions because it was believe that black people can not feel pain.
And you wonder why we do not sympathize when black children are gunned down by police?
Nothing stopped, the framework of systemic racism just keeps getting dressed differently, yesterday's fire hoses and attack dogs are today's cultural appropriation, tone policing and respectability politics.
We are the ones who committed genocide, stole this land, and now, generations later, think it's cool to dress up like the folks we massacred.
We're the ones making fun of people who can't speak "perfect" English, we're the ones who've come up with every single racial slur used in this country.
We're so much more concerned about you questioning us, telling us no or calling us out than we are what you're actually experiencing at our hands.
We will spent countless hours just poking at you, trolling you just to prove you're this less intellectual, overly emotional animal, to get you to fail a standard we set for you without ever clueing you in on it.
We are the ones who built this country on the blood, the bodies and the backs of people of color and then built Mt Rushmore, statues, monuments to white men.
We rigged the economy, the government and the schools, created the ghettos, set you up for failure and then we blame you for your not pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.
We are still making you defend yourselves, over and over ad infinitum. We make you defend your personhood, your autonomy, your agency, your decency, your humanity because when you keep minorities on the defensive, when you keep them explaining who they are and justifying their right to life - nothing real ever gets done.
Even though I'm queer, even though I'm trans, I still get to sit in the "Whites Only" section and I have heard what gets said and I'm begging you, please don't trust us."

by
Dakota Bracciale  

[source]

--

my two cents, which will likely be modified because i'm exhausted but i just wanted to start to get the word out while it's still fresh.  i think for now i'm just going to share the screen capture from facebook so you can see for yourself and i'll fill in the blanks shortly...

*what the hell kind of sense does that make?!  facebook offered me the option to "temporarily" unpublish the vegan hip hop movement so as to remove the "troubled" content that they already fucking removed?  nice try, facebook but fuck you!  


source

"The 4th of You Lie" by Jimmie Beason (Osage/Mvskoke)

Every year on the 4th of You Lie (July), patriotic Americans engage in
their multiple colored foray of pyromania by blowing up fireworks to
celebrate the birth of the United Snakes.

This is appropriate as it's a metaphor for Indigenous genocide. The fuse of
colonization was lit and exploded with Manifest Destiny and conquest
ripping through OUR freedom; a true Freedom that existed for thousands of
years before the European invasion of our continent.

Amerikkka's policies toward us have done nothing to help, only to destroy.
Treaties were made and signed with the "utmost honor" only to be broken. In
1492, it is estimated that 5 million Native people inhabited the Western
Hemisphere. By the 1800's our population was reduced to 600,000. At the end
of the 19th century--250,000.

Hardy patriots who support Amerikkka, claim this country to be the epitome
of "freedom."

But can a country that took the land and freedoms of Indigenous people
boast about "freedom" and how to attain it? Can a country that is built on
thievery, the enslavement of 11 million Africans, resource exploitation and
broken treaties be a beacon of hope?

It becomes apparent that any kind of Independence on the part of "brown"
people was not achieved, but merely turned into a gushing wound wrapped in
legislative band-aids by haughty European-Americans hoping to silence us.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, there our Native brothers and sisters who claim
they are fighting and dying for "freedom." Meanwhile, everyday the State
and Federal governments are seeking ways to continually restrict our status
as Indigenous people--diminishing our rights in our own lands.

It should be noted that everything about their so-called civilization has
nearly destroyed who we are. If we still maintain our ways, it is hanging
on by a thread and threatened to be cut by Christianity.

As a foreign occupying force, the United States retains no legitimacy as a
governing entity and neither do the States. The question is, in what ways
do we prove that? One way is to seriously question their institutions from
religious, to educational to legislative. Then hard work within the
community, creating our own agenda and ignoring their agenda. So on this
4th of July (You-Lie), resist the urge to light some fireworks, because
every explosion and shiny burst represents a Native life snuffed out by
Amerikkka's "independence."

CRACKING THE CODES: The System of Racial Inequity

The Event: How Racist Are You? with Jane Elliott (Channel 4) (FULL)

A form of violence

A form of violence from Justin Grevich on Vimeo.
"We felt that doing nothing in a period of repressive violence is itself a form of violence. That's really the part that I think is the hardest for people to understand. If you sit in your house, live your white life and go to your white job, and allow the country that you live in to murder people and to commit genocide, and you sit there and you don't do anything about it, that's violence." A quote by Naomi Jaffe on violence from the documentary, The Weather Underground

Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible

pt. 2

pt. 3

pt. 4

pt. 5

The Angry Eye - Brown Eye-Blue Eye Experiment

#iamnotacostume from Gregg Deal

#iamnotacostume from Gregg Deal on Vimeo.

WATCH "ETHNIC NOTIONS" ONLINE (re-post)

WATCH "ETHNIC NOTIONS" ONLINE
source

Troubled Trenton Takes on Colonialist Cambridge…Again | The Tab Cambridge

Troubled Trenton Takes on Colonialist Cambridge…Again | The Tab Cambridge


“I could understand if it were Nazi outfits but the appropriation of Native American headdresses has gone on for so long that it’s symbolic meaning has been totally re-appropriated." seriously?!

African Heritage of Central America (Costa Rica)

AFROMESTIZO



THE THIRD ROOT
African Heritage of Central America
By Kent C. Williams



©2001 - Kent C. Williams, Santa Rosa, California

---

Costa Rica

Afromestizos:

In September 1502 Columbus, continuing his voyage south from Honduras and Nicaragua, arrived in what is today Puerto Limon. Four years latter the Spanish Crown sent colonists to Costa Rica in an attempt to search for gold. They proved to be unsuccessful in their efforts and most did not return home alive. Again, in 1540 another unsuccessful expedition was sent out to conquer the country and again the Spanish failed. Finally, in 1561 Juan de Cavallon lead a successful colonization effort. Juan Vazquez de Coronado arrived the following year from Guatemala and established a permanent colony in the central highlands (meseta central). The town of Cartago was founded in 1563. It was not until 1736 that San Jose was founded, becoming Costa Rica’s capital in 1821.

The native American population of Costa Rica is less than 1% of the total population. It is concentrated in the eastern coastal areas country. Costa Ricans of identifiable black ancestry make up 3% (130,000) of the population and are also located along the eastern seaboard, as well as in the capital (San Jose). Other minorities in the country include Chinese, Jews and persons of Spanish, German and Italian ancestry. There is also a growing community of retired persons from the United States and Canada living in Costa Rica.

Costa Rica is the only country in Central America that has long promoted itself as a “white nation”. This has been done mainly by the Costa Rican government and through its tourist office. The figure usually given is that between 96% to 98% of the total population is of European Spanish ancestry. Most North American almanacs and encyclopedias show one of these figures or a combined figure of “97% whiteand mestizo”. The latter not giving the reader an indication as to what percentage of the population is “white” and what percentage mestizo.

Along with Argentina and Uruguay Costa Rica must rank as one of the most “European” of all countries in the Americas. The long standing political stability of Costa Rica, coupled with its strong promotion of tourism and North American investment, has encouraged this myth of Costa Rican “whiteness” among the Costa Ricans themselves as well as among outsiders. Many Costa Ricans see their country as an “island of whiteness” in the “ocean of color” that is Central America. The 200,000 Salvadorans and Nicaraguans that came to the country during the 1980’s have sadly faced both economic and racial discrimination from some persons who are often themselves in denial over their own racially mixed ancestry. A kind of “colonial mentality” that sees all that is “good” and “progressive” emanating from Europe and the United States remains a strong force in the minds of many Central Americans. Costa Rica is no exception to this.

Some researchers have stated that around 95% of the Costa Rican population has some native or African ancestry. Franklin Parker in his Central American Republics (1964) writes “In the highland basins about the capital a great majority of the persons are European in stock - wholly so in some instances, in others only preponderantly so with a trace of Indian or Negro also present”. Although it is true that some do not have any native or African ancestry, to claim that the population of Costa Rica is “98% white” is a misrepresentation of the facts.

Among Costa Rican mestizos it might only be a question of the degree of ones Afro-Amerindian ancestry. One figure I obtained stated that 49% of Costa Ricans were mestizo and 47% “white”. Perhaps the latter figure should more accurately have stated “near white” for few Costa Ricans descended from 16^th and 17^th century Spanish families are without some native or African lineage. The myth of Costa Rica being a “white country” is just that. Native Americans living in the Central Highlands of Costa Rica at the time of the conquest were either worked to death, died of disease or in the case of many native and African women, became common law wives and concubines of the Spanish men in the colony.

Most of the early settlers were farmers and ranchers from the northern areas of Spain (Galicia). Large plantations and haciendas did not develop here on the same scale as in the other provinces of Central America. When Juan Vasquez de Coronado arrived from Guatemala in 1562 he brought with him a small number of Spanish women. The fact that a few European women arrived in Costa Rica during the early years of the colony seems to have resulted in a larger percentage of the population being of “unmixed” European descent than in the other Central American provinces.

Today, many Costa Ricans are indeed a “lighter shade of brown” then is found among many mestizos in the neighboring republics. Proud of this fact, some Ticos tend to look down on their more racially mixed brothers and sisters in the other parts of Central America. The introduction of native American ancestry into the Costa Rican population continued throughout most of the 16th and 17th centuries. Along with the introduction of small numbers of black slaves from Panama, the gene pool of the nation became decidedly mixed.

During the early 18^th century the population of Costa Rica began to spread out, settlements were made throughout the meseta central as well as in the western coastal areas of the country. In the northwestern part of the country (Guanacaste province) a majority of the population is heavily mestizo. An African influence is found among the mestizo population in this part of the country. Historically and culturally this region has ties with Nicaragua. African slaves were brought to the northwestern (Nicoya peninsula) and southwestern parts of the country during colonial times to work on cattle ranches and cacao plantations. After the abolishment of slavery in 1823 some former slaves and their families moved from this region to the coastal Caribbean areas of the country. Their descendants live today among the native American and Afro-Antillean communities of the Limon province.

The descendants of Africans who were brought to Costa Rica during the colonial era (1562-1821) are today wholly assimilated into the mestizo majority. They do not identify with being of African heritage, nor are they identified as such. These Afromestizos are much like those found in other similarly related communities throughout the isthmus, their identities being based upon the communities in which they live and the pride they take in the lands of their birth.

Afro-Antilleans:

During the colonial period the Spanish did not settle along the eastern or Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. The meseta central or central highlands was the population center of the colony and today 60% of Costa Rica’s population is still concentrated here.

With an increase in coffee production towards the end of the 19^th century (coffee had been introduced in 1797) a more direct way out for shipments of the product was needed. In 1871 the Costa Rican government contracted an American company to build a railroad from San Jose to the coastal town of Puerto Limon. Much of the coastal area was uninhabited at this time. The railroad contractors brought in Jamaican laborers to build the railroad. It took nine years to lay the first 70 miles of track, but by 1890 the line had been built up the valley of the Rio Reventazon to Turrialba, and the next year the line was completed. Many of the Jamaicans stayed on in the country and settled in Puerto Limon and in small towns that were located along the rail line. Towns such as Guapiles, Siquirres developed large Afro-Antillean populations as well as smaller villages such as Canada, London, Boston, Bristol, Stratford that show the influence of the Creole English speaking Jamaicans who settled primarily along the rail line between Puerto Limon and Siquirres. Some went directly from railroad jobs to work on American owned banana plantations, others returned to Jamaica after the completion of the railroad.

One of the Americans in charge of the railroad project was Minor C. Keith. He imported rootstalks of banana plants from Panama and had them planted along the route of the new rail line. By 1878 the first bananas were exported from Costa Rica to New Orleans. In 1899 Keith consolidated his banana holdings in Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia with Boston Fruit Company to form the United Fruit Company. By 1909, Costa Rica had become the world’s leading banana producer. United Fruit hired thousands of black Jamaicans to work on its plantations.

The Afro-Antillean population of Costa Rica is concentrated in the province of Limon (240,000). The city of Puerto Limon (50,000) is the capital and largest community in the province. It is the center of Afro-Costa Rican culture in the country. In 1927 just over 57% of the province of Limon was of African descent, but by 1950 the percentage had fallen to 33%. It has remained at that percentage to this day. An increase in the settlement of Spanish speaking mestizos in the region was largely responsible for the decrease in the overall percentage of blacks living in the Limon province. Other blacks had also returned to Jamaica when Costa Rica instituted an anti-black immigration policy during the 1930’s and 40’s.

Puerto Limon’s big festival of the year is on Columbus Day (October 12^th) when the whole town parties to the sounds of raggae, calypso and salsa. Street parades, music, dancing and drinking go on for days and people come from all over the country to party with the Limonenses. Calypso music is also still popular, although since the 1970’s raggae has replaced calypso as Puerto Limon’s favorite kind of music. Such groups as New Revelation, Charro Limonense and Cahuita Calypso are still popular, singing in both Creole English and Spanish. A collection of their songs can be found on the excellent CD Calypso Costa Rica (1996).

Most blacks in Limon speak both Creole English and Spanish. Many younger Limonenses speak only Spanish. Afro-Antilleans in Limon province number around 80,000, with 50,000 or so others living in other parts of the country, mostly in San Jose and in the larger cities of the meseta central. Creole English is spoken not only in Puerto Limon and in the areas where the Afro-Antilleans settled to work, but also in small communities scattered along the Caribbean coast south of Puerto Limon towards the Panamanian border. Small towns such as Cahuita continue to show off their Creole culture in music, dancing, cooking, language and the use of medicinal plants reflecting an African heritage. The village of Puerto Viejo de Talamanca is inhabited by both Creoles and native Americans who live and work side by side.

During the building of the railroad and establishment United Fruit, Afro-Antilleans were favored by their American employers over Spanish speaking Costa Ricans. The English language helped give blacks an advantage in employment opportunities and for many years the black community lived isolated from their Hispanic neighbors. Economically they were also better off then the mestizo minority in Limon. Over time resentments began to build between mestizos and Afro-Antilleans.

American employers paid better wages then Costa Rican employers and some Afro-Antilleans, mainly because they were better educated, English speaking and possessed better job skills, saw themselves as somewhat “culturally superior” to the mestizo. The fact that many were British subjects and thought of themselves as part of the British Empire also contributed to this kind of thinking. By the 1920’s, blacks were a solid majority in Limon and the two groups lived very separate lives from each other.

During these years mestizos were also starting to be hired by American companies and soon mestizo workers were demanding “equal pay for equal work” from their American employers. They resented making less money then their black counterparts for doing the same kinds of jobs. These resentments were supported by the Costa Rican government and the growing tensions between the two communities resulted in the Costa Rican government passing a series of regulations restricting entrance visas from being issued to blacks wanting to work and live in Costa Rica. The government also regulated where blacks could work, in this case only in the Limon province. Citizenship and civil rights were denied to the black community. This openly racist policy on the part of the Costa Rican government is a low point in the post abolitionist history of Costa Rica.

The revolution of 1948/’49 resulted in the Afro-Antillean community of Costa Rica being given once again its full rights and citizenship. Since this time Afro-Antilleans have started a slow process of integration and assimilation into Costa Rican society. For example, instead of sending their children to their own English language schools, after 1948 Afro-Antilleans began sending their children to Spanish language schools. This has had a great impact on the younger generations of Afro-Antilleans. The community has also started to take a more active role in the politics of the nation. Afro-Antilleans have served in the legislative assembly and in presidential cabinets. By the 1960’s and 70’s Spanish had become the first language of many of them. The numbers of professionals in the community has also increased, and because many are also English speaking they have become important in the booming tourist industry centered in and around the capital.

Afro-Antilleans are still however mainly engaged in work on banana plantations, on the docks of Puerto Limon, on the railway and at a local oil refinery in the area. Many are also unskilled laborers and small scale farmers. The Limon province continues to remain Costa Rica’s poorest province and there is still much to be done to raise the standard of living in the region.

In 1977 a number of black professionals in the capital held a conference to promote a greater awareness of the culture and history of Afro-Antilleans in Costa Rican society. Many feared the loss of “West Indian” traditions and culture and were actively trying to preserve it. Most Afro-Antilleans speak Spanish in addition to English, but have not fully adopted Hispanic (mestizo) identities. The “economic elite” of the black community seems to be more concerned with the preservation of English and Antillean culture, they tend to see any discrimination directed against them as being economic and not “racially motivated”. Poorer blacks on the other hand tend to be far more concerned with day to day economic survival, and often see the adoption of Hispanic culture as a means to greater social and economic advancement as well as greater acceptance for themselves and their families. Perhaps a compromise between these two viewpoints will ultimately be what is adopted by the black community of the next century.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart-SeaWorld of Pain

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

wow!  this is exactly why i practice a decolonized/plant-based diet, oppose animal cruelty, but this is precisely why i stepped the fuck away from "animal whites!"

Why We Shouldn't Celebrate Thanksgiving | | AlterNet

Why We Shouldn't Celebrate Thanksgiving | | AlterNet

excerpt:

"Left/liberals who want to claim they are rejecting that European-supremacist and racist use of Thanksgiving and "redefining" the holiday in private clearly avoid the obvious: We don't define holidays individually -- the idea of a holiday is rooted in its collective, shared meaning. When the dominant culture defines a holiday in a certain fashion, one can't pretend to redefine it in private. One either accepts the dominant definition or resists it, publicly and privately."

8 things white people will never know about travel

(repost)

Carnaval de Barranquilla, Colombia. Photo by Otto Nassar

Ernest “Fly Brother” White II points out things a lot of travelers might never imagine as being part of their regular “travel experience.”

79digg

AS A BLACK AMERICAN MALE living for the past seven years in Latin America, I’ve had more than my share of the craziness that comes with Traveling While Black. And I know other travelers of color – be they Asian, Latino, or Martian – can feel me on the foolishness.

1. The hassle of being considered a potential terrorist, drug smuggler, and/or illegal immigrant by US customs and immigration officers.

You know how you get off a long flight, exhausted but glad to be home. And as soon as you get to the immigration booth, the officer starts giving you the third degree about where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing. Then the customs officer – and, depending on your point-of-entry, often someone just as brown as you are, with the hint of a foreign accent – starts asking you the same questions you were asked at immigration, then selects you for a “random” secondary screening. Three random secondary screenings in a row tend to make you question the randomness of the screenings.

2. The annoyance of “positive” stereotypes.

“You blacks have dance in the blood.” “If I could be anything else, I would be a black American because you guys can really screw.” “I just love blacks.”

Objectification and hyper-sexualization? We can do math, too!

3. The shock of seeing grotesque caricatures that have been banned in the United States for decades.

Blackface tar babies, mammies, pickaninnies, sambos, spear-chuckers – all can be seen as characters in folkloric festivals and for sale as dolls and trinkets at souvenir shops in Latin America. Of course, I’m imposing my own North American overly-PC cultural values on someone else’s culture when I grimace in disgust at this plantation-era coonery and get told to lighten up. No wonder the USA is the only major post-colonial society to have a black president. Or media mogul. Or Secretary of State. Or…

4. The indignation at being mistaken for a security guard, maid, drug dealer, or prostitute.

I’ve been sent back around to service elevators, been approached about how much a gram of cocaine costs, been approached about how much I would charge for the whole night, been asked if I would let some guys friends into VIP. I’ve had female friends who’ve been asked if the dogs they were walking were their employer’s, how much they would charge for the whole night, and blocked at their hotel lobby by overzealous security guards (who were just as brown-skinned – see #5).

5. The frustration of being ignored/hassled until it’s realized that you’re foreign, too.

I’ve been out at restaurants and nightclubs with white friends who were the exclusive center of attention, until the groupies finally noticed, “oh…you’re not Brazilian/Colombian/from here?” I don’t begrudge my white pals their fifteen minutes – it’s nice to bathe in the adulation garnered by being “exotic,” and my friends tend to be cool peeps – but you only see me when you hear English come out of my mouth? Boo.

And I hate to use my language as a weapon, but sometimes, I gotta let homies know to stand down, especially nightclub bouncers and the security staff at nice hotels.

6. The exasperation of having your background, nationality, and/or ‘Western-ness’ questioned.

Abroad, people seem to think that you can’t be a “real American” if you aren’t white: “But you don’t ‘look’ American. Really, where is your family from?” They won’t take what you say you are at face value (granted, for their own socio-historical reasons): “But you’re not black, you’re, like, caramel.”

On the other side, many people in North America and Europe seem to have a hard time grasping the concept that “Western” and “white” are not synonymous, and that Latin America is, in fact, Western. Yes, a great many Westerners are white, and the identifying characteristics of a Western country – i.e. Judeo-Christian spiritual leanings and an espousal of Greco-Roman political ideals – stem mainly from Europe. But why is Brazil not considered Western when it’s the world’s largest Catholic country? Is Peru not a democracy? And are people of color from the US any less Western because they aren’t white (hello, Asia)?

7. The rancor of having your qualifications and abilities ignored in light of your application photo.

“His CV is very good, but I’m not so sure about his picture.” This was told to a friend and colleague of mine – a white American guy – by the director at the Colombo-Americano bicultural center in Bogotá regarding my application for a teaching position. Apparently, mine didn’t represent the face of English.

Neither does this guy’s.

8. The sting of hearing, being called, or reading “nigger” in an academic paper.

Hip-hop and Hollywood movies are extremely popular outside of the USA. As such, the n-word has found its way into people’s lexicons, regardless of how little English they speak. In the Dominican Republic, some friends and I were greeted with “Hey, niggers” by a friendly, rap-loving teenager who had recognized us as American and thought that was an appropriate greeting.

In Colombia, as a university English professor, I encountered the word several times in academic papers written by students who didn’t have the historical context to know better. I read it in an official tourist guide, describing Afro-Colombian traditions and dance. I was asked by a woman there once, while responding to an oft-repeated query of my origins (see #6), why I “wanted to be a black nigger.” She knew better. And no, overseas, there really wasn’t a distinction between “nigger” and “nigga,” since the former is often pronounced like the latter depending on the local language, and the latter is rarely – if ever – written, unlike the former. But then this dropped.

*For non-black defenders of the term’s use, let me point out that not all black people are responsible for the word’s usage in music and film, so boo to the whole “well you guys use it” argument. To paraphrase John Ridley: when you get to go through slavery and Jim Crow, you get to use the word.

All that being said, I’ll never stop traveling. 

source

my feedback:

SOLID!! i seriously needed that because just last night my white british friend got mistaken for being australian because of his accent, whereas i got mistaken for being peruvian for being brown despite my u.s. english accent. i´m no doubt brown but from the u.s. and of african ancestory and as i type this i realize that there are people that do look like me in peru. however, this white woman from germany was just being simple/ignorant in my estimation and did seem perplexed when i told her i was from the u.s.

Yellow Man’s Burden: Ainu Subjugation and the Development of Racist Ideology in Japan

Yellow Man’s Burden:
Ainu Subjugation and the Development of Racist Ideology in Japan
Christopher Fields
Japanese Civilization
December 3, 2001

    In 1990, then Japanese Minister of Justice Seiroku Kajima made an analogy in a speech about how prostitution ruins a neighborhood, stating “It is like in America when blacks move into a neighborhood, and whites are forced to leave” (Chideya 46).  Such statements by Japanese officials are not uncommon, as even ex-prime minister Nakasone continuously shared his belief in the intellectual inferiority of American minorities while in office (Dube online).  The trajectory between Commodore Perry’s display of an enslaved African and Kajima’s comment is marked with the introduction and perpetuation of Western imperialist ideology into Japan.  By the late 19th century, those in America’s elite class had already adopted a racial ideology to rationalize the genocide of Native Americans and the subjugation of the “imported” Africans’ descendents, under the propagandistic guise of “progress” and “civilization versus savagery.”  As Social Darwinism became the trademark of “civilized” discourse within this racial ideology, the Japanese elite too found complicity with constructions of race through the colonization of Hokkaido and its Ainu people.  Therein, Ainu subjugation helped Japan petition Western powers for recognition as a “civilized state.”  While the Japanese had already adopted Chinese Confucian ideas of the barbarian and the civilized, the racialization of the Ainu people cemented justifications for their continued physical and psychological exploitation, being used as yardsticks for Japanese progress into Western ideals of civilization (Siddle 27-32).  Studies on the Ainu, both by Japanese and Western researchers, have even recently tended to appear only within the fields of anthropology and archaeology, with almost ubiquitous reference to them as a “dying race” (Siddle 6).  As with elite America today, such racial ideology persists in Japan as continued rationalization for state imperialism and societal exclusion.     It is important to note that an understanding of the foundations (or lack thereof) of racial theory necessitates an acknowledgement of power relations.  Modern genetics has recently confirmed the purely ideological nature of race.  It is therefore conceived of, in progressive academia, as a rationalizing social construct that sanctions assertions of a group’s social, physical and political superiority (Ackermann 14).  Siddle points out an elucidating statement from cultural commentator Robert Miles about the perpetuation of race:

There are no ‘races’ and therefore no ‘race relations’.  There is only a belief that there are such things, a belief that is used by some social groups to construct an Other (and therefore the Self) in thought as a prelude to exclusion and domination, and by other social groups to define Self (and so to construct an Other) as a means of resisting that exclusion.  (Miles 42)

However, the concept of race continues to sustain hegemony within both Japanese and American societies.  It could be argued that in Japan more so than America, the dialogue of race is even more overtly tied to nationalism (and by proxy imperialism) with the fetishization and mass adoption of Nihonjinron.
     The Ainu were not always a colonized people.  Dating back even before the first historical chronicles of Japan, The Ainu had already established sovereignty in the Ezo area (now Hokkaido) (Hudson 38, 206-208).  Indeed, the fairly recent reidentification of the Ainu nation is at the crux of Ainu assertions of not simply being a passively dominated group “in need of social welfare, but a ‘nation’ desirous of decolonization” (Siddle 171).  Therein, historical identification of Ainu nationhood is not trivial.  Up throughout the 12th century, Japanese chroniclers generalized those who were not assimilated into central Japanese rule into one category:  Emishi (sometimes Ebisu) and no ethnic distinctions were drawn  (Walker, 20).  Even though several attempts at “unification” (read: expansionism) up through the Tokugawa era endeavored to submit the Ainu to Japanese rule, the Ainu were able successfully to offer resistance up through the end of the tyrannical Nobunaga years (20-27).  The Japanese government then subdued its interest in the Ezo area into redeveloping trade relationships (46-47).
    Not until the Tokugawa government granted the Matsumae clan exclusive rights to trade with the Ainu, did official policy towards the Ainu begin to truly shift the balance in power. The motivations of this first exclusively sanctioned “Ainu-Wajin” relationship originated out of greed (what Matsumae Yoshihiro perceived to be Ezo’s “mountains of gold”) and ended in ever-evolving trade (and power) disparities (Walker 36).  The exclusive policy restricted Ainu trade potential by routing them through a single resource, but also inhibited cultural exchange between Ainu and Japanese while granting the Ainu token protections from other aggressive Japanese.  The tone of the edict-pseudo-benevolent prospectus-established the subsequent tone of Ainu discourse that continues to linger even today (37). The display of a concern for “practical” liberties may appear to conflict with central ideologies of cultural (and, soon after, ethnic) hierarchies, but they are truly one and the same as such paternalistic assumptions reflect assumed ideological power structures.  In reality, the Matsumae abused the Ainu (both physically and psychologically).  The Ainu practically lost all autonomy, lost all former land (being resettled), and lost all freedom (forced into labor)  (Siddle 46).  Many of the Ainu women were forced into sexual slavery, many of the men into physical slavery (Honda xx).  They fell ill to wajin diseases.  In 1807, the Edo officials estimated the census population of Ainu to be 26,256.  However, in 1853, that number dropped by 32% to 17,810   (Walker 182).  Disease, along with direct subjugation, helped the Japanese to define the Ainu as weak.
     When the Tokugawa era government became interested in developing a strong presence in Hokkaido as prompted by impending Russian threat and the need to open a port for trade demanded by Western treaty, the Matsumae had already established rule over the area (Siddle 39).  The perceived economic gains as expressed by period chroniclers such as widely read Honda Toshiaki catalyzed the changing views of Ainu (Hudson 31).  After the state eventually won Hokkaido after Shakushain’s War, the Ainu were forced into one-way assimilation into Japanese culture.  Being coerced from a hunter-gatherer culture into an agrarian one subsequently made it heavily dependent on trade with the rest of Japan (71-72).  In much the same way the American black was ascribed inferior traits for having been dominated, so did the Japanese sharpen their elitist attitudes towards the Ainu.  Within this context, a vicious circle develops wherein the subjugated are seen as inferior for being conquered-and their being inferior is reason enough for them to be conquered (without moral regret) (Siddle 9).  Indeed, the first official history of Hokkaido in 1918 states that the “responsibility of colonization of Hokkaido” was placed upon the Japanese because “no other superior race was in contact with the Ezo”  (Weiner 113).
    Ideas familiar to race in Japan developed prior to the introduction of Social Darwinism within the realm of Confucianist beliefs in barbarians and were heavily prevalent prior to and including the Tokugawa era.  Outsiders were deemed as polluted, in the Japanese mind, as those relegated to the buraku class (Siddle 27).  Even today, the term for outsider (gaijin) has a negative (and racialized) connotation in contrast with the “racially pure homogenous” Japanese (Dale 91-92).  However, the term barbarian applied equally among any “ethnicity,” and hence equally to Ainu as well as to Dutch.  However, the Dutch eventually became a gateway to Western thought, whereas the mere humanity of the Ainu became increasingly dismissed (Siddle 78).  Western racial theory helped to shape the course of this differentiation and provided the illusion of certainty that would leave Japan perpetually obsessed with racial identity.  It is not a coincidence that Japanese actively adopted this racist ideology as “the half century or more during which the Japanese initially turned to the West for education coincided almost exactly with the period when scientific racism dominated the natural and social sciences in Europe and the United States” (Dower, 204).
    Forced to contend with one-sided treaties and other Western perils that threatened the Japanese empire during the Meiji period, Japan believed that it needed to parallel Western culture in order to compete with it.  Wholesale adoption of Western learning began to take place among the elites and when Social Darwinism was introduced to Japan in 1878 (early Meiji period) by Edward Morse, it was quickly adopted as a method of distancing itself from other Asian nations in defense against Western hegemony (Laurent 486).  Despite their whitish skin, the Ainu became the perfect testing ground of this new racial theory.  By adopting its own oppressed minority, Japanese could, among other roles, play the paternal caregiver and hence display themselves to be a superior race worthy of the same “racial” respect as white Americans.
    Many of the pre-existing stereotypes of the Ainu people were incorporated into the new racial theory of Social Darwinism.  Prior to Ainu racialization, portraits of the Ainu oftentimes portrayed them as hairy, aggressive, non-human (Siddle 49).  It was commonly accepted by Japanese society that the Ainu were half-man and half-dog (42-44).  The Japanese often perverted Ainu into the pejorative Aino-meaning half-breed (84).  With the advent of Social Darwinism, these stereotypes were merely exacerbated.  The scope of research in this new field Ainu Studies was defined by these pre-existing stereotypes (86).  Siddle states:  “Within [the] framework of domination, scholars began refining their classification of Ainu inferiority”  (85).  Some of the studies on the intellectual inferiority of Ainu built off the old prejudices against Ainu counting systems.  The practice of stereotyping Ainu as incapable of mathematics characteristically began in the context of colonization and superiority wherein Wajin humiliated or beat any Ainu who would not agree to a counting of “begin, one, two, .. nine, ten, end” in trades of furs and fish.  This way, Wajin “could always get twelve items for the price of ten” (Arbuthnot “Political Background” online).  The stereotype that came to reaffirm this cruel practice soon became a part of Wajin common sense.  Studies in eugenics and serology soon followed wherein the perceived aggressiveness of the Ainu was attributed to the predominance in blood type O within the population as compared to Wajin majority of A and AB type.  Even studies on Ainu hygiene stemmed from the general belief that all Ainu had “unbearable body odor” (Siddle 84-87).  The popularity of such research (even up through the 1950s) is evident in any anthropological bibliography of Ainu studies.  Therein, one would almost certainly find studies such as “Anthropometrical facts concerning the Ainu, Japanese and mixed Ainu school children,” “Hair on the lower limbs of the Japanese and the Ainu” and (most tellingly) “A racial history of the Ainu and their population structure” (Gusinde 60).  By constantly reaffirming the “scientific validity” of racial theory, the Japanese confirmed their place on the top rungs of the racial hierarchy.
    Doubtless, the image of a lost “white race” conquered by an Asian nation immediately troubled “white” Westerners.  However, this troubled psycho-political perspective may have been integral to the Western induction of Japan from a “heathen” nation to a “civilized” one.  Before the Japanese began actively to appropriate Western racial thinking, the Japanese themselves stood to undergo the same, cold dismissive pseudo-scientific and politically dominating treatment that they themselves imposed upon the Ainu.  After all, the Japanese themselves occupied the middle rung of Western racial hierarchy, as those of the “yellow race” first transcribed by French diplomat Arthur de Gobineau in his work Essai sur l’Inegalite des Races Humaines and hence were fair territory in the game of domination and exploitation (Koshiro xi).  Postwar occupation sentiments of the Japanese as “docile, meek, little” only exacerbated conceptions that had almost been erased before the onset of the Russo-Japanese War  (Koshiro 67).  Nevertheless, as Japan emerged as an increasingly prominent imperialist power, it soon became clear that the Western world would have to redefine its racial categorizations.  For having assimilated Western culture, the Japanese slowly came to be considered modern.  Westerners needed to reckon this assimilation, as “in mind, body, speech, thought, ways, institutions, [and] mental initiative, [the Japanese were] the most un-Mongolian people in Asia” (Henning 160).  Indeed, Japan was considered to be more civilized and westernized than Russia.  “[Japan], though Oriental, stands for modern western civilization, and its success will mean … the occidentalization of the East.  The other, though European, stands for an absolutism that is Oriental, and its success will mean the perpetuation of ignorance and the reign of force” (144).
    To come to terms with the Japanese’ new status, Americans began to denote the similarities between Japanese and white Americans, more than their differences.  They sought to differentiate the Japanese from other Asians.  To mollify fully suspicions that their racial theory was not totally bunk, some even sought evidence that the Japanese were “somehow Christian and white” (139).  In order to understand completely the Japanese in the context of race, the Caucasoid Ainu had to be taken into account and dialogue on the “Ainu race” became a crucial element of Japanese racial categorization.  Many Western scholars who traveled to Japan were quick to collude with Japanese academics in caricaturing the Ainu as drunk, hairy, aggressive and almost non-human.  Race was such a prominent issue when addressing the Ainu that one American writer palliated “‘antipathy to water and utter ignorance of soap’ made it difficult to determine their skin color” (152).  In 1904, the Ainu were brought to Saint Louis to be a part of the World’s Fair Louisiana Purchase Exposition in an ethnological exhibit that displayed “more than thirty living groups of racial, ethnic and cultural types” (157).  This spawned an explosion of interest in Ainu studies in America.  Anthropology professor from the University of Chicago Frederick Starr who helped to bring the exhibition Ainus to Saint Louis wrote on the “physical characteristics of race” and acquiesced that “here we find a white race that has struggled and lost” (158).  Starr proposed that the Ainu were living proof that the “Caucasian race” was not biologically predestined to superiority.   However, Starr’s solution was dismissed by mainstream academia, which still sought to justify the Wajin-Ainu relationship in terms of its smooth color-gradation racial theory.  Another visiting professor to the exhibit, Paul Carus, concluded that if the Ainu were Caucasian, they would be a part of the Slavic branch of the Aryan race (158-159).  Also, the Japanese themselves were indeed reckoned, by some, to be of very similar “racial stock” as the inhabitants of England.  A Western theory emerged that the “Japanese race” was merely a composite of races:  “a fusion of Aino, Malay, Nigrito, Corean and Yamato.”  This intermixing of races was paralleled to the “racial” mixture underneath England’s heritage and stood to stand for the “best of all races.”  This way, both during the Russo-Japanese War and in observation of Wajin dominance over Ainu, it would be easy to restore faith in “Anglo-Saxon superiority” (159).  Nevertheless, Ainu subjugation contested western racial theory and American/British scholars and writers had to contort their own racial understandings in order to include this anomaly comfortably into their racial ideology.  This pre-Occupation speed bump in Western observance of racial theory caused Western scholars to think twice about the “yellow race.”
    Scientifically-sanctioned racial superiority influenced a continued fixation in Japan on racial theory and the Japanese’ own racial make-up.  Of course, around the burgeoning war period, especially after the Nanking Incident and before entry of the U.S. into WWII, this meant the re-eminence of Yamato bloodline exclusivity.  From this, we see that while the Japanese view of their own “racial heritage” and the Anglo-Saxon parallel offered by many Westerners may appear to be polar opposites, the two constructions of race serve the same purpose of justifying Japanese “racial superiority.”  Wartime Japanese identity is heavily influenced by an obsession with racial identity, as even evidenced in changes in the everyday WWII Japanese discourse of maintaining cultural and political solidarity in an expanding national empire.  Japanese social scientists used the word jinshu to denote the physical characteristics of race such as blood type, skin color, hair texture, etc.  Minzoku had a looser connotation, roughly equivalent to ethnos, which included such characteristics such as “common blood, culture, language, customs and religion” (Weiner 99).  Before the war period, social scientists were able to keep the two terms separate and in distinct contexts.  However, during wartime, the lines between the two meanings blurred, as concepts of nation and race became increasingly indistinguishable within the Japanese propaganda machine (98-99).  The new definition of minzoku came to represent “organic collectives … natural and spiritual communities which shared a common destiny” (Dower 267).  Put more bluntly, racial parameters were made more conspicuous in exclusions to true symbolic Japanese citizenship.  Such processes are not unique to Japan. Social theorist Robert Ackerman remarks: “The ‘citizen’ is not only defined against those who would be aliens or traitors and work against national goals; the citizen is also presented as a national ideal, a move that generates a latent logic of internal racism within every national formation” (Ackerman 125-126).  The idea of a nation-race solidified in such wartime titles as minzoku no osa (head of the people) for the Emperor.  An establishment of the criteria for “Japaneseness” emerged from the idea of a racialized minzoku in the form of Nihonjinron and in partnership with terms such as kokusui (national essence) and kokuminshugi (civic nationalism) was critical to the rise in nationalism in Japan (Weiner 102).
    Blood became essential in the definition of this “imagined Japanese community” (Yoshino 199).  Yoshino emphasizes that the idea of “Japanese blood” is also a social construction (202).  Indeed, the creation of a Japanese bloodline can be viewed as a pivot from the racialization of the Ainu.  In connection with the new definitions of race, the presence of the “other” (such as the Ainu, but also Koreans, burakumin to some extent, etc.) helped to sustain ideas of “indigenous purity” (Dale 52). Within the dialogue of Japanese blood, scholars even began to reinforce the tone of genetic determinism that was once strictly Eurocentric domain, wherein even prominent, well-educated scholars proclaimed that Japan’s “destiny as the ‘leading race’ in the world was divinely as well as genetically preordained” (Dower 221).  The logical consequences of adopting an ideology of Japanese genetic determinism and Ainu subjugation would be that the weak Ainu would quickly vanish (Siddle 106).  Therein, measures to the preserve the racial purity of the “Japanese” would even include the promotion of taboos against miscegenation, as “Ainu subjugation and inequality were in effect matters of blood” (112).
    This imagined blood community continues to shape societal definitions of exclusion and inclusion in present-day Japanese identity.  When Nakasone remarked in 1986 that Japan has no racial minorities, many “Japanese” agreed and have continued to perpetuate the myth that, even into today, living in a purportedly “homogenous society,” Japanese do not deal with racism (Macintyre par. 7).  This is simply not true.  The racism of many Japanese officials has not only (in the name of modernization) colluded with American white racism, but has also created its own dialogue of race at the exclusion of “the outsider” in Japan-who is more than often of a “conquered [but ignored] race.”  In making such statements, Nakasone would have to be equating the Japanese nation with Yamato bloodline in the tradition of the nation-race ideology of Nihonjinron.  The logical default on racially defined societal exclusivity, parallel to passive wartime regurgitations of theories on Aryan supremacy, is by nature racist.  Nakasone’s statement enraged the Ainu community and prompted them to elicit full recognition as Japanese members of society by the Japanese government (par. 7).  The idea of the forgotten Ainu is undoubtedly linked to the “dying race” theories that were prevalent at the thrust of Social Darwinism’s popularity in Japan.  In the 1880s, progressive Japanese social commentators such as Kita Masaaka remarked that the synonymity between “Ainu” and preconceptions of a “primitive, hairy, simpleton dying race” aggressively worked against Ainu assimilation into mainstream Japanese society (Siddle 111-112).  The same ideas are still integral to Japanese identity and compose the social forces of resistance to Ainu acceptance.
    Ainu identity, as hinted to by Miles, was influenced by its relationship with Wajin.  The efforts of Ainu to assimilate into Japanese culture could easily be mistaken for stories of resistance and assimilation of American “blacks” into “white culture.”  In both, one notices the creation of culturally distinctive elements and, by some, the abandon of those cultural distinctions for acceptance into “mainstream society.”  New Ainu rituals developed as psychological resistance to Wajin domination.  Despite popular Wajin myths to the contrary, the Ainu prided themselves on their complex accounting system of base-20 (which developed distinctly from Japanese base-10 mathematical methods) (Siddle 48).  More importantly, during the recent years of Ainu activism, the racial categorization of Ainu became an agent of pride within the Ainu community and was transformed into “[a] means of positive identification and empowerment” (Siddle 171).  The Ainu are publicly reclaiming their own identity and are attempting to do so outside of the prism of Ainu-Wajin relationships, but Siddle remarks that present-day scholars display little interest in recording the present Ainu movements attempt to “fuse culture and politics in a new discourse of ethnicity” (Siddle 7).
    However, current issues of cultural preservation are still intricately tangled and constantly positioned within and against the dominant narrative of “Ainu as dying race.”  Today, many Ainu are monolingual Japanese as a result of the discomfort of being associated with the “dying race” (Ostler par. 14 online).  Issues of autonomy and assimilation are very complex, and are even issues that arise in choosing narratives of Japanese pre-history:  whether or not to simply perceive the Jomon narrative of a dispersive group of Japanese tribes or to demand a distinctive presence in the Japanese narrative.  However, the dominant narrative promotes the idea of a “broader yet fundamentally unitary Japanese cultural complex” which serves to “rob Ainu culture of both its autonomy and its historicity, reducing Ainu cultural practices to the level of traditional local customs that elsewhere throughout the country have somehow survived into the modern age” (Levin 2 online).  The strides towards becoming accepted into Japanese society have in a way been served up as an excuse to erase Ainu culture “for the sake of modernity.”
     Western racial ideology juxtaposed the Japanese between the potential of the permanent Western status of inferiority and the desire to be accepted as a “modern” state.  With the Ainu exhibition in the Saint Louis World’s Fair, the Japanese had an opportunity to topple racist ideology in support of Prof. Starr’s conclusions.  However, the adopted racial ideology only developed into ideas of Japanese superiority and eventually, in the shock of post-war defeat, a return to status quo support of white racism.  All of these perturbations of racism in Japan sprung off of the backs of Ainu subjugation, which were continuously defined within the realm of racist rationale.  The residues of Ainu racialization continue to affect definitions of Japanese inclusion and exclusion and social problems resultant from Ainu assimilation left yet to be reconciled.
 

Works Cited

Ackerman, Robert. Heterogeneities:  Race, Gender, Class, Nation, and State. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996.Arbuthnot, Michael. Worlds in Collision:  A Look at the Impact of Modern Legislation on the Ainu Culture of Japan. 1 Dec. 2001 <http://www.teamatlantis.com/yucatan_test/research_ainu_culture.html>.
Chideya, Farai. Don’t Believe the Hype:  Fighting Cultural Misinformation about African-Americans. New York: Penguine Books, 1995.
Dale, Peter. The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986.
Dower, John. War Without Mercy:  Race and Power in the Pacific War. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.
Dikötter, Frank, ed. The Construction of Racial Identities in China and Japan:  Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997.
Gusinde, Martin, and Chiye Sano. An Annoted Bibliography of Ainu Studies by Japanese Scholars. Nagoya: Nanzan University, 1962.
Henning, Joseph. Outposts of Civilization:  Race, Religion, and the Formative Years of American-Japanese Relations. New York: New York University Press, 2000.
Hudson, Mark. Ruins of Identity:  Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999.
Koshiro, Yukiko. Trans-Pacific Racisms and the U.S. Occupation of Japan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
Laurent, John. “Varieties of Social Darwinism in Australia, Japan, and Hawaii, 1883-1921.” Darwin’s Laboratory. Eds. Macleod, Roy, and Philip Rehbock. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994. 474-510.
Levin, Mark. Essential Commodities and Racial Justice:  Using Constitutional Protection of Japan’s Indigenous Ainu People to Inform Understandings of the United States and Japan. 4 Apr. 2001. New York University. 1 Dec. 2001 <http://www.nyu.edu/pubs/jilp/main/issues/33/pdf/33o.pdf>.
Macintyre, Donald. Meeting the First Inhabitants:  Despite Years of Prejudice, Japan's Aboriginal Ainu are Beginning to Reclaim their Unique Identity. 30 Nov. 2001
<http://www.time.com/time/asia/features/ontheroad/japan.sapporo.ainu.html>.
Miles, Robert. Race after ‘Race Relations’. London: Rutledge, 1993.
Ostler, Nicholas. Editorial Review: Matsumura - Studies in EL 3. 1 Dec 2001 <http://www.ogmios.org/91.htm>.
Siddle, Richard. Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan.  London: Rutledge, 1996.
Today in Asian History: September 22. Ed. Clayton Dube. UCLA Center East Asian Studies 1 Dec. 2001 .
Walker, Brett. The Conquest of Ainu Lands:  Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590-1800. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
Weiner, Michael. “The Invention of Identity:  Race and Nation in Pre-War Japan.” Dikötter 96-117.
Yoshino, Kosaku. “The Discourse on Blood and Racial Identity in Contemporary Japan.” Dikötter 199-211.

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