I’ve probably told this story once or twice, but I’ll tell it again for good measure. Back in 1980 I was a student at S.U.N.Y. New Paltz and during the course of that year I had the opportunity to hear Stokely Carmichael speak on campus. He shared the stage with a Palestinian activist – sadly, I do not recall who that person was. In any case, a goodly portion of their talk centered on Israel/Palestine and the Palestinian liberation struggle.
There were several middle-aged people in the audience that day who challenged the speakers on Israel/Palestine. I can’t say that I recall the exact wording of some of the challenges, but one question they put forward – not an uncommon one at that time – was that with over a dozen Arab countries in the region, why isn’t there room for one Jewish state? This and their other questions were not going over well in the room, which was packed with students. At one point one of the middle aged men referenced the holocaust, and Stokely’s response went something like this:
“When you said ‘holocaust’, I thought you meant MY holocaust. But now I know you were talking about the Indians.”
First impressions
I was a leftist back then, pretty much as radical as I am today, though less knowledgeable (if you can believe it). When I heard Stokely say this, I felt I knew where he was going with it, but I thought it was kind of hyperbolic and incendiary. At some point, though, in the decades that followed, I came to understand what he meant. His people did experience a holocaust, as did first peoples in America. But instead of ending, the black holocaust has shape-shifted, adapted, and transitioned into the current reality – one where Black Americans have less than one quarter the wealth of white Americans on average, where Black mortality and morbidity rates are higher than whites, and so on.
What’s more, white people have never atoned or particularly regretted the holocaust perpetrated on African-Americans. There has been no de-Nazification, no reparations. New ways to extend the legacy of chattel slavery keep being innovated, like the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade, subjecting those who can become pregnant to forced gestation, one of the central pillars of American slavery.
The holocaust against first peoples is too similar to the Nazi mother of all crimes to be denied. For the longest time, it was minimized, justified as part of a civilizing mission, etc. But in the end, millions were here … and then they weren’t.
Increasingly hard lesson to learn
Of course, now we’re seeing Republican-driven legislation to bar any discussion in school of either holocaust (and to some extent, even the Nazi holocaust) for fear of making white kids uncomfortable. It seems like the overriding objective of this policy is to return education to where it was when I attended grade school. The teachers in my grammar school didn’t talk about anything that would make white people uncomfortable – that was their entire audience, I should add. New Hartford School District (New York state) is more diverse today, but back in the sixties it was white as a sheet.
Most of my learning about race took place outside of the confines of school, in any case. And at 63, I’m still learning. I think one of the most effectively educational pieces of media I have seen on this topic is The Underground Railroad – not because it is a factual account, but because it so effectively uses the tools of video storytelling to reproduce for white audiences some element of the terror that black Americans have been subjected to. It hits you like a boat paddle upside the head, frankly, and that’s what we need to shake us out of our stupor and acknowledge that this was a holocaust, pure and simple.
Stokely was right, man. It took me decades to get there, but better late than never, right?
The shit storm is usually a smokescreen, a bit of grimy flash powder to distract most of us from what the administration is actually doing and to excite that grisly some of us who get off on targeting dark people. When the president hammers hard on his core themes, you know he’s worried about something. I’m expecting a major attack on Muslims soon – maybe Somali refugees, since they conveniently pull together the various attributes that make for great racist demagoguery: Islam, marked immigration status, dark skin, head scarfs, non-Norwegian sounding names, strange language, etc. He has already singled them out more than once as President, I believe, and certainly during the 2016 campaign.
The two Koreas have taken some tentative steps to de-escalation, and I for one am glad to see that. In fact, I wish they would just bury the hatchet and tell us to take a hike, frankly. But it’s the kind of detente that can easily be upended by a volatile president, and Korea is one of those issues over which even the craziest commander-in-chief can find willing allies in Congress. Israel/Palestine is another. Trump’s policy on Jerusalem is appalling, but it also happens to be the same policy Congress long ago approved and a previous president (Clinton) signed into law. This is a symbolic issue domestically and a very substantive issue internationally; I am guessing that most Americans have no idea what the implications of this policy are, no notion of how large the municipality now called Jerusalem has grown over the past three decades. Underwriting Israel’s unilateral annexation of this city essentially eliminates any chance of a two-state solution, period. Some of my countrymen know this; many more do not, or simply do not care.
The Jerusalem announcement basically lights a fuse that’s been rolled out and set for decades. As Trump pointed out, Congress has voted for this more than once, passing resolutions in support of the shift by large bipartisan margins. In terms of the fundamentals, it’s a minor step, but as a symbolic gesture, it has the potential for disaster. I’m certain it is already being used as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda, ISIS, Al-Shabab, and what have you. Another tremendous gift to jihadists the world over. Trump may as well take out full-page ads for them, plaster billboards all around the Muslim world, and flood Facebook with pop-ups – Al Baghdadi wants you!
Probably the most prominent feature of a discouraging week was the fallout over 
What’s ugly about this is that the man who ordered the killing of more than 2,000 Palestinians in Gaza last year, including many children, and destroyed much of what was left of Gaza’s already distressed infrastructure, that man has been rewarded by the voters in Israel. A government whose Foreign Minister has advocated beheading Israeli Arabs, expelling them, etc. – that government appears to be sailing back into power, triumphant. It’s hard to argue that Israelis, in general, are not fully in favor of what was done last summer – terror bombing UN schools, destroying neighborhoods, hitting hospitals with high explosives, and so on. That’s pretty ugly, and disappointing, as the few Israelis I know are not supporters of blowing people up at random.
No fear, right? We won’t see Netanyahu in the dock, because if he lands there, our leaders would be right behind him for their crucial support of his atrocities. The ICC may sound like a good idea, but make no mistake: it’s not for powerful countries; it is for defeated leaders from the developing world who have gotten on the wrong side of the United States in one way or another. You might see a Milosevic or a Sri Lankan general facing justice, but never the George Bushes, Dick Cheneys, Don Rumsfelds, Barack Obamas, Tony Blairs, or BiBi Netanyahus of the world. I know I’ve said it before, but it’s mere victor’s justice, and therefore no justice at all.