There is something in man’s DNA that encourages him to conquer and subjugate those he considers inferior. And anyone who doesn’t look like him, or share his beliefs is, by definition, inferior.
This questionable trait rose to new heights over the past 300 years. With Columbus’ discovery of the New World, countries built taller, faster ships and sailed the world discovering all manner of inferior cultures they could intimidate.
The Portuguese realized that there was an entire continent…an endless supply of black natives, who could be bought and sold as field slaves in the New World. A prosperous and creative enterprise evolved…the Triangle Trade…slaves, molasses & rum and more than 12 million souls were taken from their homes.
Juan Pizzaro, a Spanish conquistador, discovered the Incas, an advanced civilization nestled along the west coast of South America. Rather than appreciate their accomplishments he destroyed their culture and forced them to mine gold and silver for Spain’s royalty.
Hernan Cortez, another Spanish demi-god, did the same with the Aztec people in Mexico. Denigrate them…they’re heathens, brown savages who worship pagan Gods.
In southern Africa Cecil Rhodes quelled a native rebellion to establish Rhodesia and subjugate it for the British crown and his own aggrandizement. Violent revolution eventually threw off colonial shackles. Rhodesia became Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Again, and again…the Portuguese in Angola, the Belgians in Congo. Decades later, the Italians in Ethiopia, the Australians over the Aborigines and America’s illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Islands monarchy…all sharing the conviction that their whiteness and their Christianity made them superior.
The story repeats itself around the globe but nowhere is it more heinous than the slaughter of the American Indians. When the Mayflower landed, America was not a wilderness. It was populated by more than 12,000,000 people. (Some estimates put it closer to 50 million) There were more than 500 recognized tribes in North America, another 240 in Alaska, each with its own culture and traditions. While there were occasional flare-ups between tribes, it wasn’t until white Europeans arrived with their doctrinaire views that bloodshed began on a grand scale.
What started as a friendly Thanksgiving meal soon evolved into the French and Indian wars, the beginnings of westward expansion and Manifest Destiny…from sea to shining sea. The Indians lived off the land sharing it with the 30-60 million buffalo we would slaughter, along with the beavers and the deer. Pioneers spread across the land like locusts, pushing all else aside. They destroyed native lands, and their way of life. When we couldn’t make them like us, we moved them aside, not to be bothered with.
At the end of the Civil Wars, we told all those racially different, subjugated people that they were free and equal. We created fiction that haunts us still. While not indigenous, 4 million blacks suffered similar indignities. They began with the short straw…lack of education, lack of money, and lack of a general societal acceptance. If you were born white and taught that blacks were inferior there was little going on to avoid that perception.
Today we see success in all colors, in both sexes, in all fields of endeavor. We should have long ago concluded that bias on skin color is an idiocy of the past. For too many it remains an idiocy of the present.