No two or three stories are exactly the same and most assuredly there are differences in the African/Native-American and Palestinian narratives. Nevertheless, the similarities are too striking to ignore. These three groups are linked by the commonalities of their pain, dehumanization and betrayal.
The universal disempowerment playbook
In order for disenfranchisement to occur and then be maintained or sustained, the colonizer, enslaver, invader or the usurping power has to create and disseminate a story or ideological justification.
Ideological rationalizations are fermented through what is called a “mobilization of bias” during which those who appropriate power assert, impose, and legitimize cultural domination. Scholar Pierre Bourdieu referred to this as symbolic violence.
This concept of symbolic violence refers to the ability of a dominant group to impose its symbols upon others not through physical violence but through cultural domination, the control of ideas, images, standards, icons, etc.
This control becomes so pervasive (a kind of foregone conclusion, so to speak) that both dominant and disenfranchised group members internalize or accept these symbols as legitimate.
Let us think in terms of a system, any system. It could be our larger society, a school system, police force or a family. There are three types of “social factories” — each distinct and each critical — which impact on the way that organizations work.
— Social Factory No. 1: Dominant beliefs and values
— Social Factory No. 2: Systems (practices, procedures, rules, policies etc.)
— Social Factory No. 3: Individual’s behaviors and experiences within the system/institution
There is a continuous flow and interaction between all three sets of factors. The dominant beliefs infuse the system’s or institution’s policies, and these together determine how people in that system respond — what they expect, what they internalize, how they view things, how they act. Taken altogether, they maintain the power of the status quo.
The journey from subject to object
Disenfranchisement has many consequences. In addition to issues becoming non-issues, another consequence is that an individual or group is broken down from a subject to an object, from the ME of self-definition, to the IT that is named by others. The key to this dynamic is that disenfranchised groups become known not by what they call themselves but by what they are called by the occupier, slave owner or conqueror of the lands that they inhabit.
There are three tools or practices, if you will, as outlined by sociologist Lory Dance, which are used to bring about this objectification of human populations of color:
The ability of powerful entities to force someone or some group to act against their will: This level of power often involves physical force and observable conflict, i.e. the Native American Wars during the U.S.’ westward expansion; the “Bloody Summer” race riots in America, during 1917 that was meant to keep Black people in their place or the ongoing military aggression against those in Gaza.
The ability of powerful entities to create the rules of the game: and thereby becoming the architects of the dialogue. In other words, they get to put in place the parameters about what gets discussed as real issues. Additionally, at this echelon of control, a powerful entity constructs barriers that prevent a disempowered group from participating in a political process.
The ability of a powerful entity to shape individual and group consciousness through the control of ideals and information: this includes ideologies, myths, and so on: This conceptual framework allows those in power to legitimize its ideals, symbols and ideologies while delegitimizing or destroying those of disempowered groups.
When the weapons of the colonizer are more deadly; when those in power have a near stranglehold on those who shape public perceptions and perspectives (such as the media) and when the occupier holds the greatest resources of wealth — because they get to choose what has value and what does not – then one can readily see why the subjugation of certain populations has seemed so absolute in its execution.
The narratives of Native American, Black and Palestinian oppression
The aforementioned three practices can be clearly seen in the narratives of the Indigenous peoples of America, the African slave immigrant and the populace of Palestine.
The conflict between Native American removal and America’s founding ideals surfaced during bitter national debates. In a three-day speech, during the run-up to the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, to his fellow congressmen, New Jersey Senator Frelinghuysen asked, “If we abandon these aboriginal proprietors of our soil, how shall we justify it to our country? How shall we justify this trespass to ourselves?” But Michigan Territory Governor Lewis Cass provided a justification, one that used race to focus on the perceived nature of Native-Americans, rather than the morality of their removal.
Cass stated that “they have resisted every effort to meliorate their situation. There must then be an inherent difficulty, arising from the institutions, character and condition of the Indian themselves.” Thus, the stereotype of the savage native was forwarded to validate the extermination and eviction of the Native American from their lands.
In the case of the Cherokee, settlers invaded their land; they killed their people; they stole their property; they forced them out of their houses. Cherokees were pressed from all sides. The pressure on Cherokees, and all Eastern Native Americans, increased in 1828 when Andrew Jackson was elected president on a platform championing opportunity for the “common man.” Removing all Native Americans east of the Mississippi was central to his agenda.
In like manner, the ultimate defense of slavery was a racial defense that Blacks were inferior, and therefore they were ready-made slaves. God created them as slaves.
“Why all this rant about Negro equality,” asked John Campbell in his book Negro-Mania, “seeing that neither nature nor nature’s God ever established any such equality?” Josiah Nott, a southern doctor and disciple of Morton, firmly believed that Black people were a separate species, and used science to wage a vigorous defense of slavery.
As these ideas took hold, pro-slavery advocates argued that the enslavement of Black people did not violate the democratic spirit of America because Jefferson’s term “all men” did not scientifically include Black people.
This brings us to Palestinian people. Noam Chomsky has said that colonial powers have a special category for the peoples they dominate: un-human. So, great care has been taken to cast Palestinians as un-human, un-people and un-persons, unworthy of equal treatment or human consideration.
British and Israeli colonial and occupational powers and then the U.N. and U.S. were able to craft a biased perception of Palestinians. By setting the rules of the game, powerful entities began excluding Palestinians from political participation through various types of discrimination institutionalized in policies including the 1917 Balfour Declaration.
The 1917 Declaration was followed by the 1922 British Mandate over Palestine (pre-empting Palestinian solidarity, facilitating Jewish immigration, transferring Palestinian lands to Jewish settlers), the 1947 U.N. Resolution 181 Partitioning Palestine, Israeli policies after the 1967 Six-Day War resulting in the continuing military occupation of Palestinian lands.
Then by a pervasive controlling of ideals and information, Palestinians have become known not by the names they call themselves but by the “it-thing”-labels of the Israeli and U.S. power structures.
Although we are over the 300-year mark when it comes to the oppression of the peoples of color in America, we are closing in on the 100-year mark for Palestinians, since Balfour.
Conclusion
To be sure, every one of these three groups faces challenges and discriminations that cannot be explained away. The Palestinian, Native American and African-American is still be crushed by poverty, poor educational resources, as well as actual and symbolic violence. They are still, in the imaginations of the broader society, the terrorists, the thugs and savages that they have been made out to be.
Nevertheless, as we have begun to see a shift (not seismic by any means, but recognizable) in the public dialogue amongst scholars, public officials and the media concerning the genocide of the Native American and the enslavement of the African-American, we have yet to see a majority of those same voices declare that ethnic cleansing, land dispossession and apartheid against Palestinians are atrocities.
It can be concluded, however, that international attention on the plight of Palestine is more intense because it is occurring in a society and world that, unlike other times, has a 24-7 capacity to cover it — even if the will to do so is lacking in the mainstream media.
We are more than 55 years removed from the Montgomery Bus Boycott; we are 36 years removed from the conviction and imprisonment of Leonard Peltier and the awareness it brought to the forgotten challenges of Native American life and we are less than five months removed from the bombing and devastation of Gaza.
Against the backdrop of the passage of governmental laws and decrees; the manufactured prejudicial perceptions and the construction of a paradigm where one has to live in a constant state of crisis and conflict, the Palestinian, the African-American and the Native American has maintained an enduring humanity. They fight for pure waters and better tributaries; striving for the time when: justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.