Two controversial issues - Genocide & Holocaust
falsely presented as a History of Race Related Violence and Aggression in the U.S.

Concepts Contributing to Fostering hate in the African-American Community

6/9/09
The concepts presented here are all to often put forth in a mode of informative and helpful in understanding how African-Americans could feel depressed and the possible reasons behind it.  For example, reference Priscilla Dass-Brailsford's "A Practical Approach to Trauma: Empowering Interventions" where she presents these two concepts as fact.  When Jerry Brown commented on the Oakland riot of 1/8/09, he reiterated the relationship of past African-American oppression and the feelings the rioters expressed.

As a Domestic Violence Prevention Advocate, I find these two concepts to be:

• divisive
• hateful
• inaccurate
• cause harm to the African-American well being
• limits a therapists' ability to better address African-American depression

The following is the detail to back it up.  Note that I am not disputing numbers, but the inaccurate and slanted content of the concepts.

The Native American Genocide:

The slide as a whole is the mantra used by Ward Churchill over the last 15 years (refer to his book "A Little Matter of Genocide", 1997, pp 4).  The mantra is factually false because:

1. One of the bases for Ward’s mantra is reference to Thomas Brown’s work.  In response to Ward’s work, Thomas Brown wrote an essay using the phrase “nearly every element of Churchill’s story is a total invention”.  For a counter argument and Brown’s reply you might reference the TeachersForDemocracy.org page.
2. The "Investigative Committee of the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct" at the University of Colorado at Boulder concluded that Ward Churchill’s claims were falsified.
3. Colorado University  regents fired Ward Churchill, a tenured professor, for publishing falsified historical information directly reflected in this slide.
4. There are sufficient sources like Gunther Lewy’s article that dispute the genocide notion of the Indians.

With so much facts and so many historians disputing the Genocide notion of Indians, it seems unreasonable to present this concept as if it is generally accepted in the academic community.

The African Holocaust:

This concept is constructed to imply America (not the “Americas” or "New World") is totally responsible for the "middle crossing" deaths and slave trade.  This is distorted for the following reasons:

1. The use of the word “Holocaust” to describe the “middle crossing” or the African slave trade during the 1500s to 1800s is not supported by the United Nations.
2. Since you list only America on the slide, it implies that America was responsible for the slave trade in total.  But in fact The Transatlantic Slave Trade to what is now America constituted 5 to 7% of the total trade.  The rest went to the Caribbean Islands, Brazil, and other South American countries, as well as 5% to Europe.
3. Slavery existed throughout the world long before, during, and after Columbus.  In 1086, 10% of the population in England were slaves.  In 1841, 8 to 9 million slaves were in India.  Between 650 and 1905, 18 million Africans were delivered into the Islamic trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean slave trades.  Even before and after Columbus, the American Indians had their own slaves - capturing Indians from other tribes and turning them into slaves was part of their "way of life".

Thus the concept is inaccurate in its perception.  If the concept's intent is to show that slavery existed, there would be no debate.  But, it is distorted to imply that America was, at the time, the only country having slaves in the world, when in fact slavery was the norm for all countries.

The harmful effects on African-Americans:

Presenting the African Holocaust concept is hateful of America.  It adds no value to a message concerning African-American oppression.  But it does generate divisiveness between African-Americans and America because:

1. In spite of racism and past slavery in America, America is the best place in the world to live for a Black person.
   1. France is much more racist than America – of their 570 member parliament, there is but 1 Black member.  In America, we have a black president.
   2. England is racist: “Professor Modood said migrants often fare better in the United States than the UK”
   3. Africa is no place anyone would wish to live – black or white.  It is the poorest region in the world, 15% - 20% have AIDs,  in the Congo over the last 10 years 5 million have died from war, starvation, or disease; Africa is full of corruption, there is real Genocide (Rwanda, Darfur, Zimbawe), UNICEF estimates that 200,000 children from Africa’s West Coast are sold into slavery each year (I find this number hard to believe, but any number above zero is disgusting).
   4. Africans want to migrate to America.  In the last 25 years, 800,000 Africans  migrated to America – these obviously do not have an ancestry of American slavery.
2. Slavery was never universally accepted in the British Colonies or America.
   1. 90 years before the Declaration of Independence, the Quakers in Pennsylvania signed an anti-slavery resolution.
   2. 20 years before the Declaration of Independence, Vermont abolished slavery
   3. 12 years before the Civil War, Congress prohibits slavery in the Pacific Northwest.
   4. Just before the Civil War, Only 5% of the white population in the South owned slaves.
   5. Immediately after the Civil War, the 13th amendment prohibited slavery, freeing 4 million slaves.
3. America is the only nation in the world to have fought a war to abolish slavery. This fact speaks volumes about how concerned America was about the slavery issue.
   1. The Union lost 360,000 soldiers, the Confederate lost about 260,000
   2. This is the highest percentage of casualties for the number in the military of any other war.
   3. Other than World War II, we lost more in the Civil War than all of our other wars combined.

Who is the Better Therapist?

The main point of all of this is the question concerning us in the Domestic Violence  prevention and treatment community: Considering the experiment of two teachers, each given a class of average students, one teacher told the class is above average, the other below, the end of semester grades reflected what the teachers were told.  Now, given two therapists, which do you think can do better counseling to an African-American suffering from depression:

1. The biased therapist who buys into your slide that America has a disgusting slavery history, and African-Americans are victims of American slavery and racism, or
2. The optimistic therapist who knows America had a disgusting history of slavery and racism, but it was the norm.  But, in this century, America is not perfect, but America is the best place in the world for a black person to live. If a black person is going to have a chance in the world to be their best, America is it.  We even have a black president.

How to help the African-American community

Anyone in a position of interacting with the African-American community have the opportunity to provide optimism and hope instead of a down-trodden racist message. The January 1, 2009 Oakland killing of an African-American by a Police Officer who mistakenly drew his pistol instead of his stun-gun, should not have sparked the outrage in the community that it has. All the violence and hate talk is felt justified because of messages given to the African-American community like the Holocaust concept.

 As a Domestic Violence Prevention Advocate, I wish people would consider not presenting these two damaging concepts because they don't help their message on African-American feelings of oppression but adds to the African-American perception of living in an oppressive country and thus fostering hate of America.

As the great philosopher Rodney King said, "Can't we all just get along?"

Paul Sharpe
Domestic Violence Prevention Advocate and amateur historian.