Within just a few generations, the continents of the Americas were virtually emptied of their native inhabitants – some academics estimate that approximately 20 million people may have died in the years following the European invasion – up to 95% of the population of the Americas.
No medieval force, no matter how bloodthirsty, could have achieved such enormous levels of genocide. Instead, Europeans were aided by a deadly secret weapon they weren't even aware they were carrying: Smallpox. (Guns Germs & Steel: Variables. Smallpox 2005)
The estimates range from 80% to the 95% cited above, but in either case it was a breathtakingly huge number of people who lost their lives in the Americas. Civilizations collapsed. Trade routes were reduced to wildlife paths. Cities were abandoned and reclaimed by the forest. Burial mounds and sacred land were forgotten. That stone from my childhood was only one of countless artifacts left behind. The situation this created made it even easier for European colonizers to claim land. For the natives who remained, this was the beginning of sorrows. Over the following centuries efforts would be made to relocate them to less valuable land, and to absorb them into Western culture through concerted 'education' efforts. One advocate of such ethnocide put it like this:
A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man. (Pratt)
On August 20, 1619, “20 and odd” Angolans, kidnapped by the Portuguese, arrive in the British colony of Virginia and are then bought by English colonists. The arrival of the enslaved Africans in the New World marks a beginning of two and a half centuries of slavery in North America. (First Enslaved Africans Arrive in Jamestown Colony 2019)
The most comprehensive analysis of shipping records over the course of the slave trade is the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, edited by professors David Eltis and David Richardson. (While the editors are careful to say that all of their figures are estimates, I believe that they are the best estimates that we have, the proverbial “gold standard” in the field of the study of the slave trade.) Between 1525 and 1866, in the entire history of the slave trade to the New World, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. 10.7 million survived the dreaded Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America.And how many of these 10.7 million Africans were shipped directly to North America? Only about 388,000. That’s right: a tiny percentage. (Gates, 2013)
Of the 9.5 million people captured in Africa and brought to the New World between the 16th and 19th century, nearly 4 million landed in Rio, 10 times more than all those sent to the United States. (Bourcier, 2012)
"It was as if my very presence in the White House had triggered a deep-seated panic, a sense that the natural order had been disrupted," Obama writes. "Which is exactly what Donald Trump understood when he started peddling assertions that I had not been born in the United States and was thus an illegitimate president. For millions of Americans spooked by a Black man in the White House, he promised an elixir for their racial anxiety." (Merica, Liptak, Zeleny, Wright, & Buck, 2020)
Founded on exploitation, the United States of America and most of the so-called 'New World' are soaked in the blood of generations of oppressed people. White supremacy culture is so much the default in our institutions that often not only the white people but also people of color can't see it. It's compared to the water that a fish swims in, or the unseen air we breathe, and I think rightly so. This situation extends into every facet of our shared existence, including religion. My own Unitarian Universalist Association, as progressive a denomination as you'll find anywhere, is bears responsibility.
In 1989, a report titled “We Have No Problem… Again,” from the Black Concerns Working Group, [39] included the following words:
That the white majority refusal to acknowledge and accept the firsthand knowledge that people of color, indigenous and other marginalized groups face within our frames is maddening to those who experience it over and over among us.
These words still resonate three decades later. This lack of regard and respect is what leads to an evolution from accusations of “racial bias” to “racism” to “white supremacy culture.”
In spite of the promise of our movement, we still need to address the bias and oppression within our systems to build resilience in our living tradition for the times we are in and strengthen it for future generations. Making these changes will allow us to stay relevant. Addressing these issues will allow us to live into the theology we profess. Furthermore, if we are committed to this work as central to our faith, we will create the conditions in which all who are attracted to the theological premises of our faith can thrive. (Unitarian Universalist Association, 2020)
This isn't a matter of guilt, although there's plenty to be had. I've never kept an enslaved person, or driven an indigenous person out of their home. So far as I've been able to trace, none of my direct ancestors did either. Yet, they and I have benefited from a system that favors white men over everyone else. Though my hands are not red with blood, and I am not guilty of the crimes that founded modern society, I do have my part of the responsibility to work for change. The same goes for us all.
All our righteousness is as filthy rags, and so long as we don't come to terms with that, the iniquities of our history will only continue to buffet us and sweep us away into chaos and recrimination.
