The American Trail Of Tears

[PoliTalker]

The idea for this thread came after listening to this hour-long podcast at

Ben Franklin's World

I know most of the time when people are wanting political discussion and a sort of instant political gratification, there isn't a strong urge to read or listen to any links that eat up a lot of time, so don't worry if you don't feel like listening to the whole podcast. I'll fill you in on what I found interesting. I'd like to hear your take on it whether or not you decide to listen to the podcast. Naturally, if you do decide to take the time to listen to it, we can have a more informed conversation.

Host and historian Liz Covart produces these podcasts every week, and I find them fascinating. Each week, she interviews an author about a history book they've written. This episode she interviews Nicholas Guyatt, a British author who studied the racial dilemma in America from an outsider's perspective. His book is called: Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation.

He notes that the perception of solving the race problem was different from the European perspective than it was in America. Anti-abolitionists in Europe were free to say slavery was wrong because they didn't have a lot of slavery in Europe when America was born. They never had to face the question of what to do with the newly freed slaves. But it was different in America because we had slavery from the beginning and that presented a huge problem. If we abolished slavery, what is to be done with the newly freed black people?

It is a challenge we wrestled with and never really solved, but not for the lack of trying. It was mirrored by the challenge of trying to force white 'civilized' ways on Native Americans.

How do you integrate culturally different disadvantaged people into modern white European style society?

One of the ideas was that you set them up in another place, provide knowledge of how to have an advanced life, and let them work it out themselves. A sort of 'benevolent segregation,' if you will. This is based on the assumption that the subjects of this idea would WANT to do this, which was not usually the case.

Some abolitionists envisioned that former slaves would be happiest back in Africa. Many were actually deported or went willingly. America created our own colony in West Africa for this purpose. That is how the nation of Liberia came about. Eventually, Liberia had enough of the influence of the USA and declared independence just as America had done from England. So it seems the 'send 'em back to Africa' idea is nothing new. We already tried it between 1822 and 1861.

It was also thought that Native Americans would be better off if they simply had their own place where they could sort of 'catch up' to American 'civilization' and not have the awkward struggle over who belongs where. The idea to relocate Native Americans west of the Mississippi so that whites could have one space and Native Americans could modernize in another before integrating was born of benevolence and not wanting to simply wipe them out, but lost any semblance of compassion when they disagreed and were then forced to go along with the idea. Native Americans were surreptitiously and brutally marched out west. Many died along the way or shortly thereafter. They never regained the same lives they had before white American intervention.

The so-called Trail Of Tears was a tragically failed attempt at something that was originally conceived as a compassionate idea.

The conclusion stands in stark clarity. Segregation might seem like a good idea, but it isn't when it is forced. Segregation worked fine as long as it was whites in Europe, Blacks in Africa and Native Americans in America. Europeans really had no right to come and take America from Native Americans. It was done by force. American Whites had no right to enslave African Blacks. That, too, was done by force. The results of all these forced changes were disastrous, and we are still living with the aftermath as we speak.

That's why I found this podcast so interesting. Even though this all happened hundreds of years ago, it set up the struggles and racial issues we still have not resolved today.