Well, I'm suggesting that this country has never been the wonderful,
loving nation we have been taught to believe.
The America according to Norman Rockefeller never existed outside his
charming paintings. Small Town America was a false veneer covering
mean spirited, small minded and self-serving people. The friendly
police officer who met my aunt at the end of the trolley line and
walked her home, was the same officer who beat the young Black boy
senseless and caused him such brain damage that he was never able to
work. There is no Great American Tradition. Our nation was built on
the backs of immigrants, many of whom were indentured or serving in
bondage. We imported Chinese laborers and when we no longer needed
their cheap labor to build our railroads, we left them to fend for
themselves, neither helping them to return home, or allowing them to
become citizens. Of course you know all the stories. How then can we
talk about our Great American Tradition? We will not become a real
nation until we can admit to our cruel way we built our nation, and
then set a course to do a better job.
Carl Jarvis
On 9/29/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
But it wasn't America back then. That name was given to it in honor of some
european explorer. It may have ben the same geographical location, but it
wasn't culturally and historically America.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2015 6:20 PM
To: blind-democracy
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Mother and Apple Pie aren't all that
American, either
My point is that we only go back to our own conquest of America, painting
our pretty pictures of our Glorious Land from those days forward. But the
America before our People came crashing and bashing their way across from
Sea to Shining Sea, were People with different values. They also beat back
even earlier Americans, who had also carved their homes from the
Wilderness.
Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Hilary Clinton and all the Machine Politicians
need to revisit their American History.
Carl Jarvis
On 9/29/15, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Christians versus Muslims versus Atheists versus Agnostics...
None of it is American. Apple Pie, Peanut Butter and Jam Sandwiches,
Soda Pop and Big Macs. None of it is American.
Try instead, The Great Spirit, Maize, Tobacco, Roast Bison and Elk
Steaks. Now we're getting closer to America. Black hair, Copper
Skin, Deer Skin Clothing, Bear Skin Rugs. And fish for the taking
from the clear, sparkling streams. America, the Land of Plenty.
America, a Time before Time mattered. A Land of People satisfying
their human needs rather than slaving to enrich the gold and silver of
the White Man from over the Great Waters.
America, a Land of People. A Land void of the likes of Donald Trump
and Ben Carson and Hilary Clinton.
Carl Jarvis
On 9/29/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org) Home > What Trump and
Carson Get Wrong: Islam Is as American as Apple Pie
________________________________________
What Trump and Carson Get Wrong: Islam Is as American as Apple Pie By
Joshua Holland [1] / The Nation [2] September 28, 2015
Not content with alienating single women, Latinos and the LGBT
community, the two front-runners for the Republican nomination
indulged in some naked Islamophobia this past week.
Donald Trump told an audience member at one of his events that he'd
"look into" either expelling America's Muslim population, or the
existence of Jihadi training camps on US soil, depending on how
charitably one viewed the exchange.
Then Ben Carson appeared on Meet The Press, where he told Chuck Todd
that Islam was inconsistent with the Constitution and said that he
"would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation."
This kind of bigotry won't hurt these candidates in the primary. A
YouGov poll earlier this year found that only one in five
Americans-and one in seven Republicans-held a positive view of Islam.
And according to Public Policy polling, only half of Iowa Republicans
"think the religion of Islam should even be legal in the United
States." Ben Carson reportedly saw his donations spike after his
interview with Todd.
But this kind of callous disregard for a minority that's faced
serious discrimination-and no small amount of violence-should hurt.
The candidates reinforced a central tenet-perhaps the central
tenet-of anti-Muslim
bigotry:
That Islam is an inherently foreign religion that's incompatible with
US citizenship. This view is common among shouty people who protest
outside mosques and politicians who push those Constitutionally
sketchy bans on "Sharia law."
In that sense, claims that Barack Obama is a crypto-Muslim are really
a proxy for the belief that he was born in Kenya and is ineligble to
be president. A poll earlier this month found that 66 percent of
Trump's supporters said Obama is a Muslim and 61 percent thought he
was born overseas. (Perhaps we shouldn't give Trump, an avowed
"birther", the benefit of the doubt in his exchange with that guy in
the audience.) It's a belief based on the kind of widely debunked
"history" peddled by David Barton, a popular figure on the tea party
circuit who claims that the United States is a "Christian nation"
founded by men whose theology resembled Mike Huckabee's.
But while Muslims are a small minority, Islam is just as American as
Christianity. It's true that a significant share of Muslims living in
the U.S. today were born abroad, but it's also true that from the
very beginning, Islam has always been part of the social fabric of
this country.
In fact, it's possible that Muslims got here before the first
Christians.
According to the PBS special, some historians believe that Muslims
first arrived in the Americas in the early 14th century, after being
expelled from Spain. Others say that Christopher Columbus referred to
a book written by Portuguese Muslims who had navigated to the "New
World" in the 12th century during his 1492 voyage.
Those are controversial claims. But it's clear that Muslims arrived
here in significant numbers in the 16th century, along with
large-scale European colonization. Some came voluntarily, but many
more were brought here forcibly to work as slaves.
According to the Encyclopedia of Religion in the South, 10-15 percent
of all slaves were Muslims, many of whom were "literate and highly
educated,"
and
"kept the spirit of Islam burning even while enslaved."
Several Muslims fought for America's independence with distinction
under George Washington. Greg Considine, a sociologist at Rice
University, wrote for the Huffington Post that one soldier believed
to have been a Muslim, Peter Buckminster, "etched his name into
American history at the Battle of Bunker Hill by firing the shot
which killed Great Britain's Major General John Pitcairn."
Muslim-Americans fought in the War of 1812, in the Civil War and in
every major conflict since.
From the 1870s until 1924, when the United States severely restricted
most non-white immigration, new arrivals from the Middle East-mostly
from Syria and Lebanon-swelled the Muslim population. Their
descendants have been Americans for many generations.
Thirty years later, when the US once again opened its doors to new
immigrants, a new wave of Muslim immigrants arrived here from Africa,
Asia and the Middle East.
At around that time, the rise of the African-American Muslim
Nationalist Movement led to huge numbers of new converts. According
to Gallup, 35 percent of Muslims in America today are black-the
largest group within the most ethnically diverse faith in the United
States.
Estimates vary widely, but there are somewhere between one and six
million muslims in the United States. According to a 2004 survey by
Zogby International, they tend to "have a favorable outlook on life
in America, and wish to be a part of the mainstream." Almost six in
10 hold at least an undergraduate degree, making them the most
educated faith group in this country. Many work in professional
fields. America's Muslim community is believed to be the wealthiest
in the world. They have high rates of civic participation, and
there's no evidence that they embrace extremism at a higher rate than
Christians or Jews.
According to Gallup, Muslim women are among the most educated in the
country, and work outside the home at a slightly higher rate than
American women as a whole. One in three have a professional job. The
gender pay-gap among American Muslims is smaller that that of any
other group.
The Pew report prompted Bret Stephens and Joseph Rago to write in The
Wall Street Journal that "America's Muslims tend to be role models
both as Americans and as Muslims." But to varying degrees, they have
always faced discrimination and persecution at the hands of America's
Christian majority.
Muslim slaves were often forced to practice their religion in secrecy.
Many
were forcibly converted to Christianity. In his book, The Crescent
Obscured:
The United States and the Muslim World, 1776-1815, historian Robert
Allison notes that some anti-Federalists at the Constitutional
Convention of 1787 didn't want to include religious liberty in the
Bill of Rights because it would protect the Islamic faith-an argument
echoed today by people like Ben Carson, or Representative Jodi Hice
(R-Georgia), who wrote that Islam "is a complete geo-political
structure and, as such, does not deserve First Amendment protection."
Sadly, Islamophobia isn't just a problem on the right. In the Yougov
poll cited above, 43 percent of Democrats said they held an
unfavorable view of Islam, and Pew found that "a majority of Muslims
say a friend or family member has suffered discrimination since the
September 11 attacks."
Casual
Islamophobia is often tolerated in a way that bigotry toward other
minorities is not.
It's time for this to stop. After 400 years in the Americas, and
having helped build and defend this country, we need to accept that
American Muslims are just as American-and just as loyal-as anyone else.
Joshua Holland is Senior Digital Producer at BillMoyers.com [3], and
host of Politics and Reality Radio [4]. He's the author of The 15
Biggest Lies About the Economy [5]. Drop him an email [6] or follow
him on Twitter [7].
Share on Facebook Share
Share on Twitter Tweet
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [8]
[9]
________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/belief/alternet-comics-brian-mcfadden-martin-
shkreli
s-free-market-pharmacy
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/joshua-holland
[2] http://www.thenation.com
[3] http://billmoyers.com
[4] http://alternetradio.podbean.com
[5] http://www.powells.com/partner/32513/biblio/9780470643921
[6] mailto: joshua.holland@xxxxxxxxxxxx [7]
http://twitter.com/JoshuaHol [8]
mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on What Trump and Carson
Get Wrong: Islam Is as American as Apple Pie [9]
http://www.alternet.org/ [10] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org) Home > What Trump and
Carson Get Wrong: Islam Is as American as Apple Pie
What Trump and Carson Get Wrong: Islam Is as American as Apple Pie By
Joshua Holland [1] / The Nation [2] September 28, 2015 Not content
with alienating single women, Latinos and the LGBT community, the two
front-runners for the Republican nomination indulged in some naked
Islamophobia this past week.
Donald Trump told an audience member at one of his events that he'd
"look into" either expelling America's Muslim population, or the
existence of Jihadi training camps on US soil, depending on how
charitably one viewed the exchange.
Then Ben Carson appeared on Meet The Press, where he told Chuck Todd
that Islam was inconsistent with the Constitution and said that he
"would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation."
This kind of bigotry won't hurt these candidates in the primary. A
YouGov poll earlier this year found that only one in five
Americans-and one in seven Republicans-held a positive view of Islam.
And according to Public Policy polling, only half of Iowa Republicans
"think the religion of Islam should even be legal in the United
States." Ben Carson reportedly saw his donations spike after his
interview with Todd.
But this kind of callous disregard for a minority that's faced
serious discrimination-and no small amount of violence-should hurt.
The candidates reinforced a central tenet-perhaps the central
tenet-of anti-Muslim
bigotry:
That Islam is an inherently foreign religion that's incompatible with
US citizenship. This view is common among shouty people who protest
outside mosques and politicians who push those Constitutionally
sketchy bans on "Sharia law."
In that sense, claims that Barack Obama is a crypto-Muslim are really
a proxy for the belief that he was born in Kenya and is ineligble to
be president. A poll earlier this month found that 66 percent of
Trump's supporters said Obama is a Muslim and 61 percent thought he
was born overseas. (Perhaps we shouldn't give Trump, an avowed
"birther", the benefit of the doubt in his exchange with that guy in
the audience.) It's a belief based on the kind of widely debunked
"history" peddled by David Barton, a popular figure on the tea party
circuit who claims that the United States is a "Christian nation"
founded by men whose theology resembled Mike Huckabee's.
But while Muslims are a small minority, Islam is just as American as
Christianity. It's true that a significant share of Muslims living in
the U.S. today were born abroad, but it's also true that from the
very beginning, Islam has always been part of the social fabric of
this country.
In fact, it's possible that Muslims got here before the first
Christians.
According to the PBS special, some historians believe that Muslims
first arrived in the Americas in the early 14th century, after being
expelled from Spain. Others say that Christopher Columbus referred to
a book written by Portuguese Muslims who had navigated to the "New
World" in the 12th century during his 1492 voyage.
Those are controversial claims. But it's clear that Muslims arrived
here in significant numbers in the 16th century, along with
large-scale European colonization. Some came voluntarily, but many
more were brought here forcibly to work as slaves.
According to the Encyclopedia of Religion in the South, 10-15 percent
of all slaves were Muslims, many of whom were "literate and highly
educated,"
and
"kept the spirit of Islam burning even while enslaved."
Several Muslims fought for America's independence with distinction
under George Washington. Greg Considine, a sociologist at Rice
University, wrote for the Huffington Post that one soldier believed
to have been a Muslim, Peter Buckminster, "etched his name into
American history at the Battle of Bunker Hill by firing the shot
which killed Great Britain's Major General John Pitcairn."
Muslim-Americans fought in the War of 1812, in the Civil War and in
every major conflict since.
From the 1870s until 1924, when the United States severely restricted
most non-white immigration, new arrivals from the Middle East-mostly
from Syria and Lebanon-swelled the Muslim population. Their
descendants have been Americans for many generations.
Thirty years later, when the US once again opened its doors to new
immigrants, a new wave of Muslim immigrants arrived here from Africa,
Asia and the Middle East.
At around that time, the rise of the African-American Muslim
Nationalist Movement led to huge numbers of new converts. According
to Gallup, 35 percent of Muslims in America today are black-the
largest group within the most ethnically diverse faith in the United
States.
Estimates vary widely, but there are somewhere between one and six
million muslims in the United States. According to a 2004 survey by
Zogby International, they tend to "have a favorable outlook on life
in America, and wish to be a part of the mainstream." Almost six in
10 hold at least an undergraduate degree, making them the most
educated faith group in this country. Many work in professional
fields. America's Muslim community is believed to be the wealthiest
in the world. They have high rates of civic participation, and
there's no evidence that they embrace extremism at a higher rate than
Christians or Jews.
According to Gallup, Muslim women are among the most educated in the
country, and work outside the home at a slightly higher rate than
American women as a whole. One in three have a professional job. The
gender pay-gap among American Muslims is smaller that that of any
other group.
The Pew report prompted Bret Stephens and Joseph Rago to write in The
Wall Street Journal that "America's Muslims tend to be role models
both as Americans and as Muslims." But to varying degrees, they have
always faced discrimination and persecution at the hands of America's
Christian majority.
Muslim slaves were often forced to practice their religion in secrecy.
Many
were forcibly converted to Christianity. In his book, The Crescent
Obscured:
The United States and the Muslim World, 1776-1815, historian Robert
Allison notes that some anti-Federalists at the Constitutional
Convention of 1787 didn't want to include religious liberty in the
Bill of Rights because it would protect the Islamic faith-an argument
echoed today by people like Ben Carson, or Representative Jodi Hice
(R-Georgia), who wrote that Islam "is a complete geo-political
structure and, as such, does not deserve First Amendment protection."
Sadly, Islamophobia isn't just a problem on the right. In the Yougov
poll cited above, 43 percent of Democrats said they held an
unfavorable view of Islam, and Pew found that "a majority of Muslims
say a friend or family member has suffered discrimination since the
September 11 attacks."
Casual
Islamophobia is often tolerated in a way that bigotry toward other
minorities is not.
It's time for this to stop. After 400 years in the Americas, and
having helped build and defend this country, we need to accept that
American Muslims are just as American-and just as loyal-as anyone else.
Joshua Holland is Senior Digital Producer at BillMoyers.com [3], and
host of Politics and Reality Radio [4]. He's the author of The 15
Biggest Lies About the Economy [5]. Drop him an email [6] or follow
him on Twitter [7].
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [8]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[9]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/belief/alternet-comics-brian-mcfadden-martin-
shkreli
s-free-market-pharmacy
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/joshua-holland
[2] http://www.thenation.com
[3] http://billmoyers.com
[4] http://alternetradio.podbean.com
[5] http://www.powells.com/partner/32513/biblio/9780470643921
[6] mailto: joshua.holland@xxxxxxxxxxxx [7]
http://twitter.com/JoshuaHol [8]
mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on What Trump and Carson
Get Wrong: Islam Is as American as Apple Pie [9]
http://www.alternet.org/ [10] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B