Note: On De-colonising the American Mind (Part 1)

    The earliest appearance in English, of the word colony, according to the OED, was 1548, in the context of distant territories under the political control of a parent state. The word has roots in Latin that appear to generate branches that twine together. One sense of coloni is a farmer, one who tills the land. Cultivate, culture are related. The word colonel is perhaps related: The one leading the column of soldiers; the one in charge of the invaders who will seize the land; the one who will be in charge of the plantation. There is also a somewhat mystical connection suggested by archaeology and the architecture of ancient Roman colonies. The center of the colony was laid out in a grid, with a column at its center. The pillar represented the colonists; the capital (head) was the symbol of the power of the remote ruler. The allegiance and subordination of the colonists to the homeland was a necessary condition, not always offered willingly, for the economic growth of the parent state.

          Colonialism is a relationship between an indigenous (or forcibly imported) majority and a minority of foreign invaders. The fundamental decisions affecting the lives of the colonized people are made and implemented by the colonial rulers in pursuit of interests that are often defined in a distant metropolis. Rejecting cultural compromises with the colonized population, the colonizers are convinced of their own superiority and their ordained mandate to rule.^[6]  -- Jürgen Osterhammel's Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview

     The British, French and Russian settlements on the American continent during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries certainly fit the description for colonies. After the revolution and separation from England, the American government extended the practice of colonial occupation with regard to the indigenous people and the lands they inhabited. Despite increasing tension over slavery, the economies of the southern states continued to depend on the plantation system established under colonialism. Although slavery was later abolished by law and treaties were signed ending hostilities with the native peoples, the social and economic conditions for these populations did not improve and often became worse. The arbitrary cruelty of a hierarchy defined by skin color, gender and ancestry was and is the legacy of our Jewish and Christian forbears.

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       “Feminism means that we renounce our obedience to the fathers and recognize that the world they have described is not the whole world.”     -- Adrienne Rich

    This attitude of superiority and entitlement that men express in contemporary social settings is grounded in a patriarchal construction of the world. This is elegantly deconstructed by Susan Griffin (Woman & Nature: the Roaring Inside Her), diagnosed as pathology by Mary Daly (Gyn/Ecology), and further developed in work by Adrienne Rich, bell hooks, Clarissa Pinkola Estés and others. Male privilege and white supremacy are the twin pillars supporting colonial oppression. As we are witnessing in America, and elsewhere in Europe, anti-establishment, xenophobic, nationalist sentiments are fuelling a resurgence of white male assertiveness that empowers and validates the authoritarian regime.

    In addition to a thorough feminist analysis, and certainly as important, is a comprehensive anti-racist, anti-colonialist analysis.  Beginning with Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth), Walter Rodney (How Europe Under-Developed Africa), Frederick Douglass, and W.E.B. DuBois, one begins to appreciate how deep are the roots of white supremacy. It is widely recognized that these hierarchies of status are learned in childhood and become lifelong factors in our behavior, so we know when to step up and when to defer. This internalized set of rules is the psychic glue that holds families, communities, nations, civilizations together. Since we tend not to recognize these inner processes, we don't connect the consequences that result from our unconscious participation and compliance with the social order.