Red, white, and blues in the valley

Where I reside now in Alaska is like a lot of Alaska places:  there is diversity represented by a strong Asian presence, a strong Alaska Native presence, an African American presence, a Latino presence, and the ubiquitous Anglo presence of course.

In Southeast Alaska the Norwegian connection to fishing is a subtext you commonly run across, especially in the bars.

I am one of the few die hard Bernie Sanders supporters out here in “the valley”.  That’s Preconventional Bernie mind you:  my “A Future to Believe In” poster sits defiantly in my small apartment window.  My faded “Bernie 2016” bumper sticker on the dashboard facing out of the windshield of my truck.  

A progressive among conservatives and Donald Trump supporters. 

I’m not the only one.

Interestingly, Alaska Natives are typically republican and conservative.  I’d imagine many Native Alaskans support Mrs. Clinton in the 2016 national election.

It’s ironic at first glance that Native Alaskans embrace American conservatism, which is associated with a strong “law and order” and self-reliance as well as religious righteousness.  Several significant negative events in Native Alaskan post western exposure history are a direct result of western law and order practices, and religion:  The great deaths; boarding houses; missionaries.  Maybe ANCSA was the game changer…that which continued exploitation by minority.  

ANCSA, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, was passed in 1971 under republican president Nixon.  And Native Alaskans, led by many great leaders including Willie Hensley were able to get a reparations and claims package from the US government:  land; and money in the form of established native owned and operated corporations which pay dividends to shareholders to this day.  The corporations were supposed to be open to public trading twenty years after the corporations were established in 1971; before that the shares were limited to Native Alaskan’s born on or before Dec. 18, 1971. But savvy Native Alaskans somehow managed to keep the shares Native.  And the corporate dividend checks are a boon to Alaska Natives who were original recipients, or who have been grandfathered in.  While ANCSA didn’t provide business managers or startup capital at the time, many Alaska Natives thought it was the best deal they were going to get at the time:  it gave $962B (1971 dollars) to Native Alaskans, created 229 village corporations and 13 regional corporations; but also lost Native Alaskan claim to 300m acres of land, though they can still use the land…

Therefore, Native Alaskan interests are closely tied to corporate interests in natural resources and fisheries.  Corporate interests in US politics are closely tied to conservative, republican interests, which Mrs. Clinton makes no qualms abut representing. 

If they had won claim to the land they would actually own the oil…

Anyway.

Classically in the United States Anglos treat minorities terribly:  Asians, Native Americans; African Americans.  But they have the weight of the US government with them, which is a traditionally Anglo institution.  Kind of like journalism.

Anglos were once a minority in Alaska, described by one government agent in the 1860’s as “Their whole life is made up of fraud, deceit, lying, and thieving, and selling liquor to the Indians which they manufacture themselves”  (Lundberg, 2016)

Minority Anglos in Alaska sold liquor and tainted liquor to Alaska Natives, poisoned them with typhoid, bombarded them with warships because they could.  And they came for the gold.  And they came to get away.  And they came and came.

At least under the Organic Act Alaska came under the control of the US Federal government, which gave fairness a better chance.  But you have to understand, the US government is in favor of economic development and profit, which are engines of Anglo civilization.  And the officials appointed to govern the Alaska territory were no less corrupt then the one’s mentioned above (Lundberg, 2016).

Flash forward to 2016 and I a f progressive in the valley of the Matanuska-Susitna glacier.

Sarah Palin was once mayor of the town I live in.  She is now a caricature of a bible waiving “god and guns” conservative, and you know what?  That really sells out here.

A common site on the Palmer-Wasilla highway is a truck that has a large American flag on one side of its bed, and a large confederate flag on the other waiving furiously in the wind as the truck goes to and fro.  Near as I can tell there are three trucks that waive flags like that:  one has the confederate/American tandem; one has a flag that says “Don’t tread on me”; one just has an American flag.  

And the ubiquitous Donald Trump bumper sticker, more and more visible as we approach election day, 2016.

I’ve lived here six months now.  And I’m sure there are wonderful people here, as everywhere.  Nor does it mean if someone has a confederate flag or Donald Trump sticker that they are somehow worse than me.  

I’m no rose;  my shit stinks too.

Still, in this mix, when I go to a mechanic and he feels the need to tell me how Obama needs to be impeached, or I see someone with a megaphone and a placard saying the same on a corner in Palmer I’m wary.  Between that, the confederate flag, and the Donald Trump imagery I don’t feel that people who hold these ideals dear are going to be concerned how their actions affect others, especially minorities and those who have been historically negatively affected by the Anglo system.

What really gave me a moment of pause and got me to writing is this:  the man practicing his right to carry a sidearm coming from the liquor store with his case of beer.

He was a large sized Caucasian with a red hat.  His holster prominent on his hip, hand cannon in place.  He roamed through the store, I didn’t follow him.  In fact, really didn’t want to see a large white guy with weapon prominently displayed as I looked for my collard greens (the liquor store is attached to the main store).  I suppose it would have been easier if he were a uniformed law enforcement authority…

I purchased my goods, and there he was as I walked the lot to my car, in all his glory, case of beer in hand, strolling to his car with his side arm.  

I thought of the NRA saying that if more people were armed there would be less mass shootings in schools and such, though they don’t advocate for firearms where people drink certainly (Burke, 2016).  

I thought of the worldwide epidemic of killing of which the US is a prominent player.

I thought of the prominent role guns have in popular moves since the seventies (Actually the gun was a star in westerns for a time.  But then, probably with Clint Eastwood, a former western star, they made a “crossover” to mainstream movies as a prominent character); before this they were a sign of danger and bad guys in most mainstream movies.

But I digress…

Again:  am I righteous because I am a person of color?  No.  Because I acknowledge man’s cruelly to man am I somehow not a part of it?  No.

I am only your humble, progressive narrator.  A product of the times in Alaska.

Burke, C. (2016, June 19). NRA's LaPierre: Trump wrong; sholdn't ahve firearms in bars. Retrieved from NewsMaxc: http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/nra-wayne-lapierre-vulnerabilities-trump/2016/06/19/id/734586/

Lundberg, M. (2016, September 18). The 1884 Alaska Organic Act. Retrieved from ExploreNorth: An Explorers Guide to the North: http://explorenorth.com/library/yafeatures/bl-Alaska1884.htm

Am I prejudiced or just stupid?

While this article (http://www.rawstory.com/2016/08/does-low-intelligence-make-you-prejudiced/) claims to make a correlation between intelligence and racism, I disagree with the premise.  So we have a foul on the field:  

Prejudice, i.e. pre judging, and negative stereotyping are learned behaviors within a cultural system; in our case, the western Angle culture.  

When people spend a lot of time steeped in the culture by watching it, reading it, singing it, acting in it, and buying into the dream of it, they buy a cultural belief system that helps form their identities…just ask the Marlboro man.   Or the Vietnamese guys singing "Horse with No Name": in the movie Air America.

Or the person who patters their lifestyle on a character from a TV show or ad in some way.  We rely on these things to tell us what normal looks like in the social culture, for better or worse.   

If people of lower intelligence watch more TV or are more immersed in popular culture, then they are more susceptible to the cultural teachings that are currently popular.  

In the western world, Anglo culture is and always has been very popular.  

In some media that may be trying to change a little…as it attempted to change in the late sixties and seventies…only to be smothered by the new normal, pro-Anglophile, middle of the road, young republican culture of the eighties through today, but I digress…

Prejudice is systemic, not based on a person’s capacity to think so much as what they are given to think about, i.e., "what" they are taught to think.  It is Shakespeare, Bronte, Dickens, and King.  Not just television.  

Prejudice is a systemic cultural belief system.  

This is because "culture" is defined as "any learned behavior." 

America has an Anglo based culture, evidenced by manifest destiny and Anglo conformity in history (especially in melting pot theory).  Evidenced by the strong dose of English lit in our school curriculum, in our movies, and popular music (we called it the British invasion...but go back to Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan.,..).

The culture of Anglo conformity breeds supremacist mentalities (eugenics; slavery; calling other cultures "savage"), and ethnocentric beliefs.It is subtle and gross; it is Tarzan against the savages; it is "taking our country back" (from the people we took it from?).

According to many historic figures who studied power structures and economic systems in society, like Mill and Marx and Fromm, people in power control information; and how that information is presented.  American power has historically been in Anglo hands, or the hands of Anglo conformists:  what would they want to have taught to the masses I wonder?

Anglo power structure in America presents information and cultural beliefs in an Anglo-centric way.   It teaches people “how” to think, using media, literature, the arts, and “any learned behavior.”

Therefore racism and prejudice are cultural beliefs disseminated by people who have historically been in power, who are invested in being in power in America.  Racism and prejudice are not based on intelligence at all, but information control in soicety.

Cultural identity is the way people are taught to think of themselves and others; it is the way people are taught to form their sense of who they are as set forth by the power structure; it is the way people are shown how to relate to the world around them, by example, by story, by picture, by tradition. 

Cultural identity is the subtext of most literature, education, art, and media.   

Zinn documents the birth of western cultural racism as a part of colonial American  national identity well when he discusses early colonial America and the concept of "race" being used as a class tactic to protect the rich from the poor.

These cultural beliefs are hard to let go of because the people who benefit from information the power structure armed them with outnumber those who don't benefit.  So the become the vanguard of the cultural identity; the default protectors of the culture.  

In America this cultural identity, infused with prejudice feeds the strong belief in law and order as a justification of the cultural belief and identity system…not that law in and of itself is a bad thing.  

Anglo centric identity is taught to the point that the undeserved point of view does not exist, as it is not Anglo, and it is not represented well in literature and education; and when it is, it is a culture in need of rescuing by Anglo culture.  

The undeserved POV is allowed to be ignored by law, traditionally (as culture is transmitted) as evidenced by historic US Supreme Court decisions such as Plessy vs. Ferguson, Dredd Scott, and separate but equal and voter suppression laws.

The subtext of cultural superiority is ignored because no one wants to feel guilty about their seeming good fortune in the power structure...but the truth of things gnaws at some...

So you get extreme defensiveness at the mention of issues of racism and prejudice because it threatens some peoples very sense of identity; or makes them do the uncomfortable task of questioning from where their beliefs originated.

It is easier to believe the information the power structure puts out, and the way it is put out, because it seems like you are somehow blessed in the system; and let’s face it, in the system as is, many of you are beneficiaries of more benevolence than malevolence.

Cultural roots of racism have nothing to do with intelligence; or even how “good”or “bad” a person is; but people mistakenly think it has a lot to do with these things.  

Systemic prejudice and the belief system it teaches is born of a susceptibility to being taught 'what" to think as opposed to "how"; and an unwillingness to question who one is, and the system in which one finds oneself.   

People, of any intelligence, look at the stars on a clear night and have the equal capacity to ask these questions at least once in their lives I’m sure.

In truth, any human system would have to guard against this tendency toward majority culture conformity and supremacy: African, Asian, Native American, or Anglo.

Humility is an easy answer to the tendency toward superior cultural beliefs.  But humility and power don’t play well together. 

We need humility. 

Not the humility that the sharpers of the national culture--the meta powers tell Anglo conformists and Anglo descended people that they naturally have. That is false, and a means of control.  It leads some to believe that other cultures don't possess the positive attributes of humility they have; and feeds negative stereotyping of others.

Humility does not depend on intelligence.

But a humility born of empathy. Born of the knowledge that we are in this together, as a world culture.