What does that mean, exactly, in the context of 1840s America?
Unless we are narrowly defining ‘white’ to mean non-Catholic or non-Irish or something (which was probably done…) the only other races you’d be likely to see in the bulk of the U.S. were Native Americans and African Americans, most of whom were slaves. Okay, there was the freshly-acquired territory from Mexico which had a Hispanic contingent, but I’m not sure that’s germane to the Oregon settlers’ quest…
So people lighting out for Oregon were seeking… a free labor environment that all the Indians had been chased off of?
Sounds pretty boilerplate for its time.
Nesrie
3234
So I think you’re trying to over simplify this, but I am not sure why.
Oregon didn’t allow blacks to move into the state until the mid-twenties. Even during the time when slavery was legal in the USA, there were still free blacks. Not every black person in the country was a slave… even then.
I was specifically referring to the comment about Oregon settlers in the mid-19th century, where seeking an ‘all-white’ environment seems to me not atypical unless you belong to a Southern state and depend on enslaved nonwhites for your economy. I did not intend to address the broader historical trend of racism in Oregon into the 20th century.
Nesrie
3236
Well they were… like part of that Utopia search was an all white Utopia search. What’s unique about Oregon is it’s documented, like written down. .Other settlements probably had similar goals but this state was settled largely with the intention of keeping those others out. He’s not… wrong.
I still love Oregon Trail games though. I wish they would make a refresh version of it.
Fair enough. I will certainly defer to you on matters of Oregon history.
Meanwhile, Jamelle Bouie’s piece on the coal baron in West Virginia:
What unites these candidates, or rather what makes them appealing to Republican voters, is their vicious disdain for common morality, an attitude they signal with racism and nativism. Stewart flew Confederate flags and rallied for Confederate monuments. Arpaio’s whole brand rests on racist hatred of Hispanic immigrants. Trump is, well, Trump. And Blankenship’s polling surge is concurrent with his attacks on Mitch McConnell, which center on the Senate majority leader’s wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.
Yeah, what Nesrie is saying matches what another native Oregonian taught me. The settlers of old didn’t allow free blacks. They didn’t allow slavery. They tried to push out Jews and Catholics (such was their restrictive definition of “white”). They tried to push out Chinese and Japanese settlers a little later in the 19th century. They simply didn’t want to lay eyes on anyone that wasn’t as white as they were. It’s not like the other states were bastions of racial bonhomie, but non-whites were not a part of the vision of the Utopia the early settlers wanted to build, to their shame.
silhouette’s Atlantic article is a good brief source to learn more. So is this Gizmodo article:
(I know, Gizmodo is not exactly a scholarly historical record, but I thought it was decently well sourced and written. I can let you know if I find other good sources.)
This is kind of key – the definition of “whiteness” has fluctuated across the centuries here in the US. Jews weren’t “white”, they were Jewish. Irish were Celtic, which was not the same thing as “white”.
In the 1840s, the Irish famine was in full effect and the US was being flooded by refugees fleeing the hunger caused by the potato blight. In certain European areas, (the Baden principality of what is now Germany, for instance), destitute families were given a choice: they could go to (and probably die in) debtor’s prison, or the local government would pay for a one-way ticket to the New World.
So the US absorbed boatloads of Irish and German refugees, many of whom were considered inferior races.
The Irish were a white race, but they were Celtic whites, as opposed to Anglo or Saxon whites, and thus inferior. And they were Catholic, which also made them less-white. Depending on who you talked to, the Irish would be slightly less-human or slightly more-human than the Italians, who were also “lesser white”. Both were always more human than Africans, of course, and thus above legal slavery.
The true “white” race in the 1840s was Saxon and Protestant.
The KKK was and still is a distinctly “Christian” organization. Protestants are the founders and the ones who used their churches as recruitment centers. If you catch a KKK, I’d bet 95% + claim to be wholesome Christian Americans. Make me puke.
The Nazis were Christian too, despite initially wanting to create a brand new religion from scratch.
My point is, people were a-okay with Nazis and the KKK, until they started wanting not to be Christian. Only then did people become offended.
Man contacts undercover agent posing as a hitman on a White Supremacist to have his neighbor killed, lynched with a flaming cross to be posted in the front yard.
I guess it’s time for tolling bells in Charlottesville. A second man was convicted for the parking garage beating and…
As someone who knows little about criminal law, can someone explain why they didn’t go after him for attempted murder or something more “serious” than “firing a weapon within 1,000 feet of a school property?”
Because the prosecutor wanted a sure conviction. From the video, it could be argued that he was aiming at an empty spot, was scared of the counter-protesters, etc. Firing a gun near school property allows no wiggle room.
Thanks. I guess I can kind of understand. I hope he does the full term, but of course I’m doubting it.
Sadly, I could still imagine wiggle room. I.e. personal safety from attack trumps school safety or something.
RichVR
3249
If you were writing fiction and you put this in, your editor would put a big red ex through it and note: Too absurd. Fix it.
In their defense, when you’ve been bombed into oblivion, you’re drafting 14 year old boys and old men into your home defense force, and the armies of Russia, the U.S., and England are converging on your capital, it’s kinda hard to ‘keep fucking going.’
I’m not a fan of Hitler but I think I would give him an A for effort, all things considered…
If insread he was a black women he would be jailed for 20 years.
