How to Un-Steal a Continent

13 July 2016

Since the social ontology of whiteness is ethically unsound from a historical point of view, we need a political justification for our actions that does not begin "I am white, so therefore I am entitled to these actions that are off limits to everyone else: ..." The speciesist critique might add that the political justification for our arguments also cannot begin "I am a human, so therefore I am entitled to these forms of domination over non-human forms of life..." It is important to note here that the feminist or antiracist feminist critique here would not necessarily be to say that we can't have a political justification for our acts which begin "I am a male, so...," but rather, that we must root all forms of domination from our private, social, public, and political (which ideally are one in the same!) selves. 

I am not writing to suggest that colonization is the only historically relevant fact to say that the moral grounds of whiteness are unsound; I am suggesting that if our political justification for our actions does not respond to colonization, then we are participating in the act of forgetting white supremacy. 

Who loses out from that act of forgetting? Who benefits? 

The fact that it still needs to be said that whiteness is not an ethically sound source of authority is part of the issue.

To me, the question "What would it mean to socially mitigate white privilege in the US?" is equivalent to the question "What would it look like to seriously un-steal the continent, the economy, the education system, the political system, our religious systems, and "the criminal justice system?" We cannot undo history, but we can continually grapple with it in a way that gives us an ethically sound control of our future. 

The fact that there were people living on this continent for tens of thousands of years before colonizers and settlers came to this continent coupled with the fact that we have drastically low levels of representation of Native Americans in "American political institutions" means that the only way you can say that this representation was taken away from Natives are (listed in increasing amounts of colorblindness):

1) Natives did not have education and politicality/political modes of being prior to the arrival of whites to the continent

2) White representation was formed in socio-educational and political institutions without an act of violence

3) Said violence was justified because of white supremacy 

I think that all three claims are logically untenable and that if there are people here whose roots on this continent extend back for tens of thousands of years, their voices should take priority in forming our social and political institutions. This is not a radical claim; this derives political authority in something outside the promise of violence (i.e., duration and lived tenure on this continent) in a way that responds to the historically ethical unsoundness in the foundation of whiteness on this continent.