Many people annually get as stuffed as their turkeys in celebration of the Thanksgiving holiday. Thanksgiving is a quintessentially American holiday, so much so that it is not just a holiday, but really is (as the etymology implies) one of our Holy Days, almost universally celebrated by Americans. In its sacredness, families get together to (unintentionally?) celebrate one genocide (against Native Americans) by committing another (against turkeys). Can we celebrate in good faith and conscience?On Thanksgiving Day, we give thanks. We give thanks for being the invader, the exploiter, the dominator, the greedy, the gluttonous, the colonizer, the thief, indeed the genocidaire, rather than on the other side of imperialism’s zero-sum murderous game. As Mark Twain points out in his War Prayer, wishing and being thankful for one’s own success and victory is, at the very same time, wishing and being thankful for another’s defeat and destruction. Do we want to make these kinds of wishes and give these kinds of thanks?The Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran declared that “it is the honor of the murdered that they are not the murderers”. Perhaps, but it is a very difficult honor to uphold. Native Americans, at least those who have survived the over 500 year genocidal project, are the poorest ethnic group in the richest country of the world. Each year, a group of Native Americans gather at Plymouth Rock on Thanksgiving Day to mourn and fast in honor of their people and in memory of what is lost. What do we want to be honored for? What honors are Americans thankful for?It was once earnestly asked by Native Americans, “Why do you take by force what you can have by love?” Christopher Columbus reports in his personal diary that when he arrived in the Americas he was amazed. The Arawaks, with curiosity and joy, came to greet the people coming off the ships from Europe. The Arawaks (whom Columbus mistakenly thought were Indians) were a peaceful people, by all accounts, willing to share anything they had, offering both emotional kindness and their physical objects. Columbus describes how remarkable these people were. So innocent of weapons and violence, Arawak people would initially reach out their hands to feel the strange, shiny objects called swords. The Arawaks would only “work” for a few hours a day, “spending” the rest of their time relaxing, socializing, and creating their culture in the ways that people most enjoy. Columbus also tells of how the Arawaks had no “shame”, being able to walk around naked or make love whenever they pleased. With the tiny amount of gold on their island, they fashioned jewelry to adorn themselves. As with many other pre-contact indigenous groups, the Arawaks essentially lived in Utopia. Can Americans be thankful for living in a utopian society? Are we thankful for having destroyed one? Should we be grateful for having so many deadly weapons? For being so greedy for gold, both actual and metaphorical?As Kevin Danaher of Global Exchange is fond of pointing out, Columbus could have done one of a few different things after encountering the Arawaks of whom he was so impressed: (1) Columbus could have quit his travels and lived the rest of his days amongst this remarkable people. In fact, millions of people today spend thousands of dollars and their precious couple of weeks of vacation trying to experience modern conditions resembling these ancient ones. (2) Columbus could also have continued on his journeys, exploring other islands, encountering new peoples, and searching for India and elsewhere with which to trade. While doing so, he could have expanded and developed his writings, perhaps doing valuable ethnographic and comparative sociological research. (3) Another possibility is that Columbus could have rushed back to Europe, declaring the wonders of Arawak society and urging that the best minds of Europe go to visit and study the Arawaks. As a result of doing so, Europeans could have incorporated aspects of Arawak society into their own, if not emulating it altogether. Are we proud of and thankful for our hubris and ethnocentrism?Of course, Columbus did none of these. Apparently, there was a fourth possibility. With grave implications, Columbus wrote in his diary that with fifty men he could enslave the entire population and capture all their gold. This was no empty boast. The “savage” Arawaks were enslaved, many were tortured, their labor exploited, and their wealth stolen and shipped off to Europe. During this process of imperialist superexploitation, men had their hands chopped off, women had their breasts sliced and their pregnant bellies cut open, babies were thrown into the air, sometimes crashing to the ground and other times being impaled on those strange, shiny swords, presumably all in the name of Christianity, Civilization, and, eventually, Capitalism. The Arawaks were literally exploited to death and they are now extinct, all of them having been killed off through virulent brutality, overwork, and disease. Are Americans thankful they weren’t Arawaks? Are we thankful for not being the dehumanized “Other”?The Pilgrims later came to America to escape religious persecution from the British, apparently in order to commit ethnic and religious persecution against the Native Americans and, later on, others. And this they did, and we in fact continue to do, effectively and mercilessly. At the time of the first Thanksgiving in the 1620s, it was also the dawn of another type of genocide. 1619 marks the first year that human beings were brutally “imported” from Africa to become slaves in America, if they happened to survive the cruel capture and horrific Atlantic crossing. So while Africans were being heartlessly torn away from their homes and families, viciously enslaved and dehumanized, tortured and killed, Native Americans were being attacked and annihilated. By the time that President Lincoln re-invented and instituted the Thanksgiving Day tradition in the early 1860s, the US was fighting its civil war. The US Civil War may have been fought over slavery (and labor more generally), though it was certainly not fought for the slaves (or for laborers). Sadly, […]

The views expressed inside this editorial aren’t necessarily the views of AllHipHop.com or its employees. With each day the drama around TSA body scans takes on new twists and turns. Earlier this week I penned an article pointing out the hypocrisy displayed by many who are seemingly up in arms about their ‘junk being touched‘ during pat downs or pictures of their privates from the scans being posted on the internet. It was just two or three months ago many of these same people were insisting that Muslims be searched from head to toe. They wanted religious garb removed and searched. They wanted people profiled. They wanted no stone unturned in the pursuit of safety and our fight against terror. I found the whole thing laughable and those who were complaining a bit self centered. We’re looking at folks, both men and women who are sagging in all the wrong places shouting on local newscasts that TSA agents better not post their private parts on the Internet. Your looking and saying..Are you kidding me?   Yeah right? Maybe if the machines actually kept and stored pictures. They don’t. But seriously folks.. please just stop. This is not about grandma and grandpa having their body parts on youtube. And trust, nobody’s trying to sexualize you on a pat down. That’s the distraction from a much  deeper story. To see this nationwide turn around where everyone is willing to forgo safety concerns to maintain their vanity had a foul stench that was hard to pin down. Something about this ‘outraged’ reeked of an orchestrated campaign, similar to the ones we saw last summer when folks were up in arms about healthcare. Y’all remember those days when this new crop of activists would show up at townhalls and disrupt them. At first it seemed genuine and spontaneous but after seeing them for a while you came to realize there was a pattern to them.  For starters it wasnt as many as you’d thought. Folks would spread themselves out in a room to create the illusion of having large numbers. Second many of the folks were actually pretty well off and not in any sort of financial jeopardy as they suggested. I know one of the protests I went to in nearby Danville, organizer oblivious to the fact I’m a journalist, handed me their cards. Two of the loudest people there were executives at healthcare facilities. They had a financial interest in keeping the drama kicking. Not to digress, But I bring all this up because I recall how so many of us were initially taken back and fooled. Many of us got caught up and believed that some sort of large-scale mass revolt against healthcare was occurring. It wasnt. What we witnessed was a well-funded highly organized stealth campaign. This current call to action against the TSA (transportation security agency) seems to be the same thing. What really underscored this for me was hearing something said in passing on one of the local newscasts. It’s too bad there was no follow-up, but it was revealed that there’s a push to Fire the TSA and replace them with ‘professional’ private security firms..Say what you will, but this is another step at corporate dominance. It’s a push to privatize everything.  Just like the so-called healthcare protestors.  They wanted to get rid of the p#### option.  Here we have the government-run TSA and a push to put the operation under private, corporate control. The one leading this charge is Republican Congressman John Mica out of Florida. For those who don’t know Mica is a ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He will head that committee when the new congress convenes in January and the Republicans  take charge. Mica has made the usual GOP talking points. He asserts the TSA is a bloated bureaucracy and needs to be streamlined. Sounds kind of funny when you take into account that Mica was one the chief co-sponsors of the Airport Security Federalization Act of 2001 that help put the TSA on the map in the aftermath of 9-11. Congressman John Mica When then President George Bush was insisting that we give him blank checks to fight the war on terror, Mica was right there supporting him. If folks recall it was seen as being ‘unpatriotic’ to not support any and all moves to make our airports safe. The TSA which is under the jurisdiction of Homeland Security was pointed out to be a key frontline agency to help combat the war on terror. Mica was a supporter. When it was time to cut budgets and pare down so called bloated agencies, Mica introduced bills that cut welfare and student loans etc. he was up in arms about the TSA. But nowadays he’s running around saying we need to get rid of the TSA because the lines are too long??? Weren’t people like Mca telling us from day one after 9-11 to show up for our flights 2 hours a head of time so we could be safetly checked in?? Also folks should keep in mind there’s call for travelers to opt out of getting full body scans this Wednesday. The plan as stated is to slow down the lines and make folks call for sweeping changes with the TSA. So now we have high ranking congressman smashing on a government  agency that he help star and generously fund complaining the lines are too long and we would be better off with private security guards. Mica has already written letters to 100 airport heads urging them to get rid of the TSA.. He’s already gotten the Orlando airport which is in his district to get rid of the TSA. Really? What private firms would that be you ask? Well according to a recent ABC news article, over the past 13 years, Mica has  received almost $81,000 in campaign donations from political action committees and executives connected to some of the private contractors already at 16 U.S. airports. Once again its […]

Kanye West went in…watch this and comment. Anybody can get it. Even Taylor Swift. Here is the partial rant. And now we are mere surfaces of the energy they are projecting on us. Everybody needs a villain, don’t we? We need to blame someone at all times. For me to be considered a racist for stating a blatant truth, an obvious truth, but the nuances of my words, because I am very particular with my words, and the emotion I felt at that time wasn’t worded exactly right — but everybody came and said ‘Oh my God!” — I’m talking about five years ago, not a year ago, I’m talking about five years ago, I’m talking about Katrina — and everybody said, “Oh my God, Kanye, I love you so much, I hated you until you said that. But now I see you’re speaking for me. I always thought you were an a###### but now you said something that represents me, but the whole time, whole time I’m thinking in my mind I was thinking that’s not exactly what I wanted to say, I was emotional, that was not exactly the way I wanted to say, I was emotional, that was not exactly the way I wanted to word it, but I wrote it, I rode it, just as Taylor never came to my defense in any interview, and rode the waves and rode it and rode it, that’s the way I rode the waves of the Bush comment. I rode it. It’s not about popular opinion. It’s about when you look in your heart, and know what’s right and what’s wrong. When you look in your heart, look at what the media did, look at how they exploited him, they said that he said it was his lowest moment and as a mass, as America, we took that as a fact, and if you look at the interview he said that was one of his lowest moments and he said it about ten different things! But because the popularity of me, they exploited that, to make you watch the interview and make you feel that he was stupider than ever, to think that a rapper’s comment could be his lowest moment. That’s not what he f###### said! That’s not what he f###### said! That’s not what he said! He said it was one of his lowest moments. But it shows you — the way they try to villainize, the way they tried to do that. Everything would have been okay, if they hadn’t played the audio that day … ” [Source]