Thanksgiving- Racist Holiday
 

REGARDLESS of what you here may think of me on a personal level, I was wondering what you think of this. I thought about it more after seeing Carlos Mencia joking about it, and actually got called an idiot for saying this on another forum, and noone agreed. But basically, the pilgrims were thanking their gods for animals that weren't their's, for the trees they chopped for shelter that weren't theirs, and the crops that grew plentiful on land that they stole. I realize that today, the holiday is seen as being thankful for what you have and a time to be with family and all (though I thought that was Xmas and that should be year-round without the excuse of some corny holiday anyways, but whatever), but the historical part is still considered a large part of it and can't be just ignored. Our decorations and such even celebrate these people, who really don't deserve it. I'll quote from elsewhere:

"While many Americans enjoy turkey dinners with their families today, a
group of local American Indians, some of whom clashed with police during a
protest two years ago, were slated to speak out against what they say is a
racist holiday. "The stories of the first Thanksgiving are total lies,"
said Wampanoag tribe member Moonanum James of Chatham. "Everyone didn't sit
down at the table, have dinner and then live happily ever after. It was the
beginning of the theft of our land and the beginning of a massive genocide."
James and hundreds of other American Indians and supporters were slated to
descend upon the statue of Massasoit on Cole's Hill near Plymouth's
waterfront at noon today to observe the 30th annual National Day of
Mourning."

Am I really blowing this out of proportion, by saying this holiday is racist? Just looking for opinions.

Yes you are.

To start off with, I'm not from the US, so my knowledge of this will be pretty patchy.

The whole genocide issue is both sensitive and terrible, so I certainly wouldn't argue with people who have problems with celebrations relating to such an event. As far as I know, the genocides took place a long time after the first settlers (whose success Thanksgiving celebrates) arrived and set up camp - so you should be able to make quite a clear historical separation between the two events. Were any of the original settlers personally involved in the genocides? As far as I know, they weren't.

Also, I disagree that using the trees, animals and crops which they encountered constituted stealing on the part of the settlers. The natives believed that you couldn't own land or animals, while the settlers believed that you could. Use of the natural resources may have been some kind of insult to the culture of the natives, yet not using them would have been just as much of an insult to the culture of the settlers.

Maybe the celebration is racist, I would expect that the same label could be applied to a lot of celebrations all over the world. That would depend on how you interpret the word 'racist'. Its certainly a good word to use if you want to get people's attention and make them think a bit...

*Agrees with alejo on this*

This question's for the US contingent. How much did the history of Native Americans feature in your history curriculum at school. I studied it for maybe 2 weeks, do they go into more detail in the US and what aspects did they cover?

Yes we cover it for quite some time. Also, Thanksgiving isn't about the success of the pilgrims, but mainly about the cooperation of the Indians and the pilgrims at that time. The "genocide" (if you want to call it that, I guess you could) started at a later time, mainly the trail of tears, etc, which happened during Johnson's presidency (I'm pretty sure). During colonial times, while some areas didn't get along with the Indians, specifically the south, areas like Pennsylvania fared quite well with the Indians, even buying land from them instead of just taking it as most did.

Well first of all, race is a social construct. Theres nothing inherent about a race. So racist itself is a social term and therefore could blow in the wind depending on who says it.

Much like christmas, I don't think anyone gives a fat **** about the actual tradition of the holiday, for most people its a day we're forced to eat with people we share genetic codes with, and wear that stupid sewater we got last christmas to make them think we liked it.

I've never heard of anyone sitting around their thanksgiving table saying "Jesus, thank you for killing all the indians." No one is thankful there was a genocide. And I don't think the holiday is a celebration of it.

Do I think Native Americans are out of line, no. I mean, a genocide was committed, and I think that if they are going to remind people of it (which they should because otherwise people would forget) this is the time since we vaugely recollect that this is when the pilgrams broke bread with the indians. But I don't think we should call for a removeale of the holiday, or blame current white people for it.

When the settlers came, they didn't allow women to vote or own land, kids were owned like property, and they burned people because they thought they were witches. We are clearly not the same people.

I live in Ma, and have my whole life, Im here in the middle of it, we learned a great multitude about the instances. Now they don't teach second graders about it because its kind of hard to explain "genocide" to an eight year old, but by the time you hit high school you know the real dirt that went on.

Is it racist? No. Can people see it that way? Yes. Ill gladly tolerate Native Americans observing a national day of morning, but I've had quite enough of hippy white teens telling me for each bite of turkey I relish in the blood of an indigenous people. Shave your legs and take a bath you ****ing fruit loop. I've killed no one.

I just shortened it to all you needed to say.

well...im in grade 10 in canada.....between the last 2 years of social studies....60% of what ive learned is about the Natives.....but thats Canada..........and it all changes next year becaus tehn we learn about WW1 and WW2

Thanksgiving!?!racist!?!What the.....?i think the american peoples tend to be racists themselves (although not all are).You may as well say that Halloween is Satan's holiday if youre gonna go that far,i mean damn i'am cherokee descendant and i'm not offended by white people eating turkey.EAT YER DAMN TURKEY!!The thing that i get offended by is whats known as The Trail of Tears(relocating of the tribes to reservations in the midwest that so many died from exposure or got ****en gangreen)not many care about that and that's what offends me.Stop trivializing the Holiday and quit yer bitchin.You seem to want to bitch about something-how bout something important.If you dont like the Holiday-dont celebrate it,or boycott it.im sure people could really give a rats ass,and go about eating stuffing while youre outside picketting.

Hey re re, the pilgrims only had 1 god, and they were thanking the Native Americans for helping them out, who were there, btw.



So get a life, instead of ripping on holidays.

(this was adressed to the maker of this thread.)

ok alejo youre very uninformed. this happened way before any presidencies or there being any presidents. way before. and it was a genocide, there was no friendly meeting between pilgrims and indians and it should not be celebrated by watching football and eating turkey, and then going shopping for deals the next day. face it, accept it. its very ****ing twisted.

To make an educated decision about this you need to be well...educated.

Whether or not the pilgrims actually sat down and ate with the Natives well...honestly I don't know whether that happened or not. What I do know is that the pilrgrims DID learn from the Natives. How to bury fish to improve the soil etc... and thats part of the tradition. But the real tradition comes from one thing...and thats thankfullness. After the Pilgrims' first winter, they gave a kind of sad thanks to God for the fact that (some of them) had survived the winter. They thanked God for the fact that there was food to eat and land to live on and the chance for a new beginning. If that's racism then I'm guilty. Were the Natives hurt? Of course. Any 9 year old can tell you that. But was the Pilgrim settlement really the beginning of the problem? I'd say no. The holiday I have a problem with as being racist is columbus day, which is frankly ridiculous and offensive and a friend of mine who is full blooded Native American Indian (unfortunately I've never learned what tribe) takes every opportunity to protest it she can. As soon as I'm old enough, I will join her in those protests.

But thanksgiving??? Of all things, the thing we should NEVER encourage less of is giving thanks. America is one of the worst, if not THE worst, cultures for taking our blessings for granted. Our problems and injustices we (as the descendants of the colonists) commited against the Native American peoples is only minimally connected to Thanksgiving and should be dealt with in real-time. Really problems demand REAL solutions, not bitching and moaning about something like Thanksgiving. (though columbus day really gets me fired up)

and then they ****ing killed them. *******.

man, i was so cool four years ago.

actually, i still am pretty cool.

so you joined a MUSIC forum, why???

Why did you dig up a 4yr old thread? Pointlessss.

Agreed.

its the best ****ing holiday in the states. preceeded by the second biggest drinking day of the year. And FDR, in his genius, sandwiched a friday in there to guilt businesses into a 4 day weekend.

It's not racist in the way that celebrating the 12th Of July in Northern Ireland is, and it dosn't celebrate the destruction of Native Americans, it celebrates the founding of the colonies,which are seperate things.

Well I mean... my family tradition is to chant a thanks to the settlers for killing all of the Native Americans, then desecrate an authentic skull from the time of the Pilgrims by pissing in it. I guess I could see where some might view this as slightly racist.

Really though, that's a dumb idea. There's only one thing more idiotic than saying that Thanksgiving is a racist holiday. And that's digging up a 4 year old thread about it on a music forum, for your first post no less.

I don't know what happens on the 12th, the Orange show off their true colors??

It's not a racist holiday. It's agricultural in origin, it's not so much founding of the colonies, as it is a harvest feast. The Isrealites had something similar in the Feasts of Booths. And being religious that is probably why the Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving.

i'd say it's more imperialistic than racist. racist is this button word designed to stir the Irish up in people, it's well out of context here. i suppose imperialistic isn't nearly incendiary enough to make it work.

...the irish people?

If the Native Americans are offended by it then I guess it would be racist

Unionists celebrate the destruction of Irish independence and the imposition of the penal laws upon Catholics, as well as the Cromwellian massacres of Catholics.

yay, this idea again. if you have to explain yourself in more than a sentence it's probably not racist enough to offend anyone enough to warrant a whole thread.

What are you saying!? the Pilgrims, unbeknownst to the American Indians, were celebrating the fact they were part of British imperialism and disguised it as a harvest festival? I thought calling Thanksgiving racist was super-nonsensical but calling it Imperialistic, really?

Forgive me for not knowing, you have to understand, the story of the Irish Catholics suffering persecution is erased from the annals of post-modern contempary popular history. I didn't know about the Cromwellian massacre of Catholics, either. I knew about the persecution of Catholics in Elzibethan England, but Catholicism did survive in some places in England, the further you were away from London the safer you were.

Dont really celebrate anything on thanksgiving,I just eat turkey and chill with my family.

*facepalm*

I ate a turkey sandwich today for lunch.

It was pretty fucking racist.

Squanto taught us how to farm. He was a nice guy. Why can't you be nice? Meanie