Letter-Op-Ed by Clifford Jackson
Thomas Jefferson said “ I tremble for my country! When I reflect our God is a just God and his justice will not remain silent forever. “ Anyone reading this statement knows that Jefferson was talking about the crimes that he and his fellow so-called founding fathers were committing. Namely the enslavement of more people than any other country by the time of the civil war as well as the murder, rape and genocide of the indigenous people.
He was also pointing out how his famous “Louisiana Purchase “ was predicated on slaughtering indigenous people living there at that time. This statement by Jefferson as well as the many crimes that he committed brings home how evil American History is. His crime points to the fact that this is NOT a nation of immigrants. Jefferson and many others were settler colonialist that wreaked havoc everywhere they went in the western hemisphere.
John F. Kennedys book “ a nation of immigrants “ is a fairytale description of how immigrants have always come to this shore and enriched this nation. The United States was founded on a principle of settler colonialism. What that means is is that the white anglo saxons from Europe invaded and killed the native Americans and robbed them of their land.
The so-called immigrants from Scotland, Ireland, German and the Dutch Netherlands became an extension of that invading force and were also settler colonialist not immigrants. For these groups to be immigrants they would have to have been integrated into a land occupied by native Americans and settled here peacefully. Instead these groups as well as others became a part of state militias in almost every state that was in existence and helped to drive off and killed the indigenous population. This was glaring for the Irish and Ulster Scots who when they immigrated here in the 1840s through the 1860s were part of racist gangs that were employed by the state to slaughter native Americans especially with the United States moving west across the “ Great Plains.“
They were indoctrinated into Anglo Saxon racism and in essence became white!. This offset the blatant discrimination that Irish immigrants dealt with and allowed them to be integrated into whiteness. The same thing applied to Italians who faced similar discrimination but being integrated into Anglo Saxon racism and anti black values integrated them into America.
One of many examples of this racism and evil indoctrination was the “ New Orleans Massacre “ in 1866 where more than 40 freed black men were slaughtered and 130 were injured by whites many of them Irish who had become a part of the newly formed klan because they resented the fact that these black people had the audacity to demonstrate against racism. This was exhibited across the country where Scottish, German, ulster Scottish, and Irish were a part of state militias in every area of the country that Native American land was taken. Leading to the “trail of tears” attempted genocide of the choctaws, Chickasaw, creek, and Seminole Indians.
Not just the state militias of Georgia, Mississippi and Florida where these so called immigrants were killing indigenous populations but in New York where the racism and violence especially from those who were Irish was at its apex. New York was the leading slave holding state in the north. Where the financing and insuring of the slave trade and the banks that financed it were concentrated. Where the racism was also at highest and Irish and Italian so called immigrants were indoctrinated into the racism and violence that would become a part of their history for decades into the future.
The Irish gangs that were prevalent at that time especially in New York in their hatred for Lincoln’s conscription act brutalized and killed hundreds of black people in the Bronx and burned the colored orphan asylum to the ground. The enclaves and violence of South Boston and the ferocious hate that many south Boston Irish had for black people and for the federal enforcement of busing. and the goal of integration are the progeny of this racist history of America that the history books prefabricate and try to convey this false narrative of an “American quilt.”
The late Dr. Donna Perone who was Italian and a 1968 graduate of Mamaroneck high school was an exception. Her multiple accreditations as a counselor at South Boston high school and co-chair of the committee to promote diversity, inclusion and integration fought the racist evil of the south Boston Irish in the mid 1970’s battling the KKK who had come to support those racist forces attempting to prevent the integration of South Boston High school.
Mayor Eric Adam’s ignorance was glaring when at the st Patrick’s day parade recently talking about how immigrants have helped create the greatness of nyc in particular citing the Irish impact on New York City, ignoring the violence of the NYPD for generations as well as this racist history of Irish and other groups towards black people and people of color specifically in NYC. This history explains in part how most white communities are lily white and how the systemic racism and economic and physical violence have kept these communities lily white.
Bensonhurst Brooklyn, Simi Valley, Cicero Illinois, Long Island, Westchester county, Sandy Utah are all now or at one time white enclaves that were not based upon the hard Work myth of this nations white immigrants . But based upon the history I just delineated that is only the tip of the iceberg of White pathological violence that has created so many problems.
Dr. King was the most hated man in America “ bearing the cross” like Jesus of Nazareth. That hatred mainly was coming from these same so called immigrants. The hatred that Dr. king faced when he protested the racist and barbaric conditions and housing discrimination in 1966 in Chicago, Cicero and Skokie Illinois were comprised of German, Scottish and Irish immigrants throwing rocks and attacking protesters with baseball bats. Where Dr. king said “ the hatred of my sick white brothers here in Illinois is worse than Mississippi.”
I think we all need to understand that this level of white violence and entitlement has been with us from the nations inception. Much of what we have been taught about the greatness of American history is based upon a lie.
What we are seeing in terms of the so-called border crisis, crime, the racial reckoning of the last several years, housing and the “not in my backyard“ mantra of these racially homogeneous communities stem from the white privilege and concomitant violence that has been a part of that history. Many black brown and even some poor whites have fought against this sense of entitlement and rapine of white America.
The code terms ”victimization,“ “race hustlers,“ “good people,“ “good families.“ “race card,” “bleeding hearts”’are all an expression of the pathological racist foundation of the power and privilege of white America and why the chickens are coming home to roost with the death, misery and Opioid crisis that has become a daily occurrence in this sick society. All of these malaises we are seeing in this depraved culture that Thomas Jefferson understood from its inception.
