by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Reviewed by Steve Halpern
There have been many books that attempted to demystify the history we were taught in school. One was James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me. Then there was Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States. Recently Jon Jeter wrote his Class War in America.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz continued this tradition with her book Not a Nation of Immigrants. I also read her book An Indigenous People's History of the United States.
In her new book Ortiz destroys one myth we were raised with. This is the idea that the United States is a nation of immigrants. That argument has obvious problems because Native Americans have lived in this part of the world for thousands of years. Few people would argue that the millions of Native Americans came here as immigrants.
However this argument has several other problems. First, slave traders forced African Americans to come here from Africa under unimaginably horrendous conditions. Many Europeans came here as indentured servants or slaves. Of the first settlers to what became the United States, they weren't immigrants, but settlers.
Dunbar-Ortiz demystified much of this with her analysis of the lives we know as Christopher Columbus and Alexander Hamilton. It may come as s surprise to most people, but during his life, the person we have called Christopher Columbus, never used that name. The Spanish called him Cristóbal Colón. We don't know what his Italian name was.
Colón—Columbus
Why did people feel the need to anglicize his name? Colón (Columbus) never set foot in what is now considered the United States. However, the educational system teaches us that Columbus "discovered America." This argument ignores the fact that hundreds of Native American nations lived in North and South America for thousands of years.
The argument of the so-called "discovery" of America by Columbus has other problems. This was not just a discovery by Europeans, but the beginning of a genocidal war against Native Americans that lasted hundreds of years. From the beginning, this war was about extracting vast amounts of wealth from the land and labor of people who lived here.
People who lived here felt uncomfortable using the name Colón for someone they argued "discovered America." The United States was an English speaking country. The Knights of Columbus popularized his name. At that time, the United States was a largely Protestant country. Since most members of the Knights of Columbus were Irish, their promotion of the name Columbus legitimized the Catholic religion.
Another reason for promoting the myth of Colón (Columbus) was that he was white. By arguing that "Columbus discovered America" we ignore the African and Native American populations and influences to this country. The hot war against Native Americans that lasted for over 100 years in the United States isn't something most people think about.
We are aware of aspects of the long history of slavery and discrimination against African Americans. However, the educational system portrays this history as separated from our present reality. According to this portrayal, there is no need to correct the crimes committed against Black people throughout the history of this country.
The falsification of the life of Alexander Hamilton
Dunbar-Ortiz also destroys the myth of Alexander Hamilton portrayed in a recent play by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Miranda says that he identified with Hamilton, arguing that they were both immigrants. The problem with this argument is that Miranda's father was born in Puerto Rico which is a colony of the United States.
Hamilton was born on the British controlled island of Nevis. So, when Hamilton arrived in New York City he was a British subject, like all residents of NYC at that time. While the play Hamilton portrays his life as someone who supported abolition of slavery, Dunbar-Ortiz gives the evidence that Hamilton was a supporter and profiteer of slavery.
The goals of those who promote the myths of both Hamilton and Colón (Columbus) were about the simplistic idea that the United States has a rich, glorious, and Eurocentric history. This mythology ignores the African, Native American, and working class history of this country.
James Baldwin and the Price of the Ticket
Dunbar-Ortiz quoted James Baldwin who wrote about the so-called "immigrant" experience. Baldwin argued that there was a "price of the ticket" for the Europeans who came to the United States. He continued arguing that "White people are not white; part of the price of the ticket is to delude themselves into believing that they are." By identifying that people of European descent were "white" they debased Black people and Native Americans.
In turn, Baldwin argued that white people "debased and defamed themselves." "No one was white before he/she came to America." Dunbar-Ortiz elaborated that "European immigrants were Irish, German, Italian, Jewish, English, French, Swiss, Norwegian" etc.
This idea of identifying as "white" had real consequences for all working people throughout the history of this country. While I believe that Dunbar-Ortiz' book is well worth reading, there is one limitation. There is no doubt that the United States has a persistent racist history. However, this country is also divided into the capitalist and working classes. Those classes have antagonistic interests.
In this country, people who have power have consistently worked to exacerbate the divisions between white, Black, and Native American workers. They also promote the devision between men and women. Today, the new Presidential Administration of Donald Trump is working to exacerbate the divisions between workers born in this country and those who were born elsewhere. Trump continues the policies of Democratic and Republican Party Presidents who have consistently deported millions of immigrants.
In the past, the government adopted the Fugitive Slave Act that required all state governments to apprehend escaped slaves. When the Union Army defeated the slave owners in the Civil War, the government effectively abolished that law. However, with the defeat of radical reconstruction the federal government, in effect, gave political power to the Ku Klux Klan, and Black people effectively lost all citizenship rights. Today the Trump Administration claims it will escalate the racist policies aimed at denying immigrants many of the same rights Black people had been denied during the Jim Crow era.
The history of Chinese immigration
Before the construction of the transcontinental railroad, it took two to three months to travel from New York to California. At that time the easiest way to make that journey was by ship going around the entire continent of South America. After the construction of this railroad it took six days to make this same journey. This tremendous advance in transportation allowed for the beginning of the massive development of California and the West Coast.
Thousands of Chinese workers participated in the construction of this rail line. In order for that to happen, these workers needed to routinely work in seemingly impossible conditions. One of the most challenging obstacles was to blast through about a dozen granite mountains to make way for tunnels.
Chinese laborers invented the method used to accomplish this task. They wove large baskets capable of carrying the weight of two workers. Chinese workers lowered these baskets to the level of the tunnels. Then the workers in those baskets used a sledge hammer and a steel pipe to bore a hole into the granite. They placed dynamite in those holes and then frantically worked to escape the effects of the blast. This was how the transcontinental railroad became a reality.
Ghosts of Gold Mountain by Gordon H. Chang
While Chinese workers did essential work in building the railroad, Chinese people also indirectly financed this rail-line. During the 1800s one of the most lucrative ways to make money in the United States was in the Chinese opium trade. The Chinese government made this trade illegal. However, the British organized the Opium Wars to force opium on the Chinese people.
Many of the Chinese who came here, left China to escape the horror of the Taiping Rebellion that was sparked by the opium wars. Some of the financing of the transcontinental railroad came from the profits U.S. capitalists took from the opium trade in China.
After the completion of this rail line, there were racist pogroms against the Chinese community. The U.S. government then adopted the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 that prohibited Chinese workers from entering the United States. So, when we look at the idea of the United States being a "nation of immigrants," we can make another argument. This is how there is a long history of the United States government's long and tenacious war against both immigrants, as well as the indigenous people of this part of the world.
So, Dunbar-Ortiz effectively destroyed the myth that the United States is a nation of immigrants. The first European residents of this part of the world engaged in genocidal wars to remove the native people from their homeland. The wealth of this country also came from the enslavement and systematic discrimination of Black people. Today, workers born in other countries create huge amounts of wealth, while the government is obsessed with throwing them out of the country, or stripping them of any rights they might have.
I believe this history gives us a clear path to work for a profoundly better future world. We need to break through all the barriers that splintered the working class in the past. Ultimately the overwhelming majority of humanity is a part of the international working class. When we begin to understand this, we can begin to unleash a force that the capitalists of the world will be powerless to restrain.
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