Even before the Ohio pet-eating controversy began to slither away from the virulent grasp of American politics, another political sucker punch suddenly hit Uncle Sam in the face — this time a racially sensitive incident that smacks of deep-seated bigotry within the bowels of small-town America.
“I’m so sick of your liberal (expletive). Why don’t you go back to where you came from?” yelled a hot-tempered Republican state senator at a female Democratic candidate during a pre-election forum in the rural city of Kendrick, Idaho.
Ironically, the lady being “chased” away was an Idaho native and a member of the Nez Perce Tribe, a Native American community that has thrived on the Pacific Northwest for over 11,000 years, long before Christopher Columbus set foot on the Americas in 1492.
According to news reports, the outburst was preceded by discussions regarding the existence of discrimination in the state, during which the Native American lady made a comment about the history of white supremacists (‘Aryan Nations’) in North Idaho.
The short-fused gentleman then abruptly stood up and began his racist tirade, followed by a dramatic walkout.
Is he purblind or just plain dumb?
As an elected official in a state with a substantial indigenous community presence, the gentleman should have known that the Native Americans were already thriving in the North Americas long before the legendary Mayflower vessel carrying English settlers or “immigrants” dropped anchor in the modern-day Cape Cod, Massachusetts in the 1600s.
As explained in a previous article by this corner about the origin of the Thanksgiving holiday in America:
“A glimpse of the first Thanksgiving feast would illustrate the odyssey of a group of people from a foreign land (England) who found a new home in a vast territory already populated by local inhabitants (Native Indians). Although these English settlers did call themselves ‘colonists’ (presumably to emphasize their perceived superiority over the locals), in reality they were ‘immigrants.’ They did not originally come from the Americas — they originated from Europe.
According to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, to “immigrate” means to come into a country of which one is not a native for permanent residence.
Of course, the empire-seeking Western colonists were savvy enough to call themselves “colonizers,” not immigrants, and definitely not invaders.
In reality, what occurred — over a long period of time – was a malevolent type of generational migration, if not an outright invasion.
Take the Philippines, for example. When Ferdinand Magellan “discovered” and landed on the Philippine archipelago via the island of Cebu in 1521, he did not consider his oceanic expedition an invasion.
Neither did the Western historians call it immigration — despite centuries of continuous Spanish migration to the islands.
At most, they labeled the conquest as some sort of benevolent assimilation — as if peoples, cultures, and geographies can be subdued and subjected to such turbulent process without their express permission.
In the Idaho incident, the Native American lady, upon hearing the “un-gentleman” fellow’s remark, leaned over and whispered to another Republican candidate (who also happened to be a woman):
“Where am I supposed to go?”
It turned out that the lady’s tribal community owns plots of land in the area that are being leased out to family farms nearby. Later, the woman, who lives in a town less than 25 miles away, was quoted as saying: “This is our land. We’ve never planned on leaving; this is where our ancestors are buried.”
What’s ironic, if not moronic, is that the “un-gentleman” fellow was not even a native of Idaho.
He was born more than a thousand miles away in Illinois.
Dang.