By Modesto P. Sa-onoy
The protests in America that was sparked by the violent arrest of a black man, Floyd George, had spread because of grievances related to race. The emerging cause from our Filipino view is that the blacks and the indigenous peoples of America that we erroneously call “Indians” are not treated similarly with the whites though I know from personal experience that the blacks were as much respected as the whites.
The American Indians are not from India but were so-called because Christopher Columbus made a mistake. He thought he had reached India and the natives he brought to Europe were Indians. Thus, the name stuck.
Prior to the settlement of America, the indigenous peoples were of different nations or tribes, scattered in this huge landmass. Today, the seven major tribes still organized as “nation” are the Cherokee (729,533 members), Navajo (298,197), Choctaw (158,374), Sioux (153,360), Chippewa (99,704), Apache (96,833), Blackfeet (85,750) and Iroquois, (80,822).
We know well the Cherokees, the Navajos, the Sioux, the Black Feet and the Iroquois because of western movies and novels featuring their fight against the “palefaces”.
The blacks in American are not natives but descendants of slaves captured in many countries in continental Africa and sold to the cotton and sugar plantation owners in America, mostly in the southern states.
The two minority groups – blacks and indigenous peoples – have different historical backgrounds but they have a common cause which is racial discrimination. This is ironic because of all countries in the world, America has the least of racial prejudices.
It is understandable that the Dakota and Ojibwe Indians see Columbus as a symbol of genocide because of the subjugation of the American Indians by the gun which is similar to our experience with the American soldiers during the early days of the American occupation of the Philippines. I think they called it something like “subjugating them with a Krag” (rifle). More Filipinos died in our war with the US than the Indians of America.
There is no official accounting of the human cost of that war. An estimated 20,000 Filipino combatants were killed, and more than 200,000 civilians perished due to combat, hunger, and disease.
We have more to be aggrieved but we won through peaceful means and proved to the Americans that we can forgive and move on without forgetting the past. No nation or people on earth is without blemish on its hands but we rose higher than the sins of the past. I believe because of that the Americans and other nations learned to respect us.
What is unacceptable is the inclusion of the Christian faith in the mob rule. U.S. Rep. Jim Hagedorn (R-MN) said last week that “The Democrat ‘Black Lives Matter’ Party, along with armies of rioters, are at war with our country, our beliefs and western culture.”
Hagedorn made the comments on Facebook, responding to calls from Shaun King, a leading voice in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, calling for the destruction of images and statues of a “white” Jesus and Mary His mother.
“Their radical movement is orchestrated and growing,” Hagedorn continued. “We must never let them take power. We must stand up and defend our country, our nation’s identity, our Judeo-Christian values and our American way of life.”
Shaun King, who claims to be half-black despite both parents on his birth certificate being listed as white, said that statues, murals, and stained-glass windows depicting Jesus as white should be taken down for being “form[s] of white supremacy,” meant to be “tools of oppression” and “racist propaganda”.
This ranting shows the protesters are more racists than their targets and would twist facts to attain their objectives. They are obsessed with the color of the skin as if to be white is intrinsically evil and to be black is naturally all holiness. He forgot to mention that millions of blacks in America are people of faith, intellect, integrity, and wealth because the system allows them to be better than many whites. Discrimination is not a matter of skin color but competing interests.
The mob behavior using the methods of the communists, the Nazis, the tyrants, anarchists, and the dictators do help their cause. No wonder many Americans who would have done much to correct the racial imbalance are being forced to a corner where the only recourse is to fight back.
