And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: When reality clashes with Stereotypes E-mails, phone messages full of threats, invective against whale tribe http://web3.stlnet.com/postnet/news/wires.nsf/National/C9D22EB9E084643586256 77D00377EEB?OpenDocument Dave Wellman, a research sociologist at the University of California at Berkeley and author of ``Portraits of White Racism'' (Cambridge University Press), said he wasn't surprised by the violent reaction to the hunt. He had no hesitation in calling some of the reactions blatantly racist. ``When you start hearing language that it's time to hunt Indians again, you have to realize that's the language of genocide,'' Wellman said. A necessary presupposition is that Indians are subhuman, ``huntable'' like animals. ``You don't hear peoplesaying it's time to hunt white people when a couple of white men drag a black man behind a truck in Texas.'' Violent racism is almost never recognized as racism while it's happening; it's called something else, Wellman said. The Nazi campaign to exterminate Jews was called The Final Solution. The Indian wars of the 1800's were called Manifest Destiny or White Man's Burden or Winning the West. The Indians were savages,and whites were bringing Christianity to save them. Decades passed before portions of society realized what was done to the Indians was genocide. Racism is built in to the foundation of this country and it has never gone away, Wellman said. It simply doesn't get articulated during periods of quiet when there's no conflict. ``It's in moments like this when the racism comes out into the open. But it was always there.'' One of the most vocal and articulate opponents of the Makah hunt, Will Anderson of the Progressive Animal Welfare Society, agreed that racism has surfaced -- ``It's a reflection of a certain percentage of our society that we all know exist'' -- but he cautioned against labeling as racist all anger toward the hunt. ``People are in shock. They're in a stage of unfocused anger,'' he said. ``When there's such an emotional issue at stake, and so much work is at stake, it pushes people to the edge, and that's what we're seeing.'' Anderson said most of the organized protesters he knows have tried hard to separate the deed from the doer, have acknowledged the wrongs done to natives in the past. But the Makah Tribe, like any other political entity, ``and like the Constitution and state and federal laws, are fair targets for challenge.'' <<snipped>> Media-savvy anti-whaling activists, such as Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, have said all along the best strategy against the Makah hunt would be to let the world see the actual killing. Whatever people believed intellectually would be overpowered by the sheer drama of a public slaughter. <<snipped> Ted Kerasote, author of ``Bloodties: Nature, Culture and the Hunt'' (Random House), said the reaction to the Makah hunt reveals a particular hypocrisy in American culture. Many Americans publicly espouse diversity and multiculturalism, and even mouth support for the renaissance of indigenous cultures. But the moment a native community does something that ``doesn't fit into our preconceived notions of who we want aboriginals to be,'' we threaten our wrath -- the wrath of the majority. One way to show wrath is by using stereotypes as a weapon of ridicule or rebuke. References to scalping and loincloths and tomahawks have gone unchecked in many public forums. ``Certainly some of the negative reactions have been expressed in terms that reveal the speakers' or writer's stereotypes of Indians, which are the foundation of racism,'' said Alexandra Harmon, assistant professor at the UW American Indian Studies Center. ``There is an astonishing degree of insensitivity and ethnocentrism in one critic's claim that any culture that regains its pride by killing this way is displaying bloodthirsty savagery. ``Again and again in American history,'' said Harmon, ``non-Indian Americans have demanded that Indians act or live in some way other than Indians have chosen. The current Makah story is a lesson about how hard it is to recognize and resist that same ethnocentric impulse today.'' (c) 1999, The Seattle Times. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services. AP-NY-05-26-99 0611EDT Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
