If you don’t already know that virtually every holiday we celebrate has a dark story behind it, the New York Times is happy to remind you about the genocide behind Thanksgiving. But ten to one you already know the story Charles Blow tells in today’s op-ed piece—the first thing you see on the NYT’s web page (it’s the article at upper right):
At the end, not satisfied to indict our genocidal forebears (and yes, many of them regarded Native Americans as either inhuman or ready to be killed or fleeced), Blow then indicts us at the end:
I spent most of my life believing a gauzy, kindergarten version of Thanksgiving, thinking only of feasts and family, turkey and dressing.
I was blind, willfully ignorant, I suppose, to the bloodier side of the Thanksgiving story, to the more honest side of it.
But I’ve come to believe that is how America would have it if it had its druthers: We would be blissfully blind, living in a soft world bleached of hard truth. I can no longer abide that.
Really, all “America”? I guess Blow is the only one among us who can face and absorb the “hard truth.” How vigorously he flaunts his virtue! (Remember, though, that almost all of us already know what Blow sees fit to say again.)
Well, happy Thanksgiving—if you have any appetite after reading Blow on the holiday. And welcome to the New Woke Times.
That is his inner puritan coming out at Thanksgiving to beat him up for something his ancestors did.
I wish I loved the Human Race;
I wish I loved its silly face;
I wish I liked the way it walks;
I wish I liked the way it talks;
And when I’m introduced to one
I wish I thought What Jolly Fun!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Raleigh_%28professor%29
I was worried for a minute, but it was not *the* Walter Raleigh.
Here’s a pretty good response to that idiotic op-ed:
https://blog.simplejustice.us/2019/11/28/thanksgiving-need-not-blow/
Your link is to a blog by Scott H. Greenfield, a defense attorney, who states “Whether Blow’s history lesson is accurate, or sufficient, is immaterial. There are few people above the age of 13 unaware that the colonization of the New World wasn’t what we were taught in kindergarten.” Really? People in this country are amazingly ignorant of history so that if they have any notion about the origins of Thanksgiving, I would think that the kindergarten version of the holiday would largely prevail.
People in the U.S, and probably people everywhere, tend to view the history of the country in terms of myth. Without actually studying history, they accept the myth because it gives them something to be proud of. After all, how many people would readily agree to the notion that the dominant society has a long track record of treating others pretty shabbily? And that goes back to the first colonizers. One can argue as to whether the degree of this is better or worse than other nations, but it is undeniable. For much of American history (including the colonial period), the prevailing ethos was, promulgated by white Protestantism, that America was God’s chosen land, referred to in the mid-nineteenth century as Manifest Destiny and that the Protestant inhabitants were destined and ordered to spread a special kind of democracy throughout the continent. Of course, this democracy excluded blacks, Latinos, and Chinese as well as Native Americans. For a long time, Catholics and Jews were viewed as not fit to participate.
I do not find it particularly surprising that people react in horror and anger at what Blow and historian David Silverman (another op-ed in today’s NYT) wrote about the origins of Thanksgiving. It is no more surprising that today so many white Southerners and others cannot come to terms about the reality of how slavery operated. Rejecting myths creates cognitive dissonance. It is much more comforting to believe in fairy tales. That is why such versions of history will never entirely disappear.
By the way, for an extended summary of David Silverman’s book on Thanksgiving, see this article in the New Yorker by Philip Deloria. But, perhaps, you should read it after you have your Thanksgiving feast.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/25/the-invention-of-thanksgiving
+1
Well put, as usual. That mythologizing extends also to both past and present thinking on Native Americans.
In my youth in Southern New England, a Native American brother and sister, one a teacher another an artist (a carver of totems) would often give talks at schools. We’d have “assemblies” where the entire school (or class) would sit in the gymnasium while they spoke about their people, history and culture. They were Pequots from Southern CT.
I distinctly remember the brother (his name, I believe was Tanaquidgin) commenting, somewhat bitterly, about the common myths of the day about Native Americans. He cited some of the negative ones but also those which purport to show Native Americans were perfect stewards of the environment and lived in peace until the Europeans came, raping and ravaging. He told us (I believe I was around 12 and it’s stuck to me to this day) that such mythologizing about his people was deeply insulting as it made them seem less human. In modern lingo, it “others” them. I agree. It is disrespectful of them -and our ancestors- to not remember them as humans capable as all humans are of kindness and cruelty, belligerence and tolerance. Myths of any kind do no one any good, except for entertainment or to corral children.
Not so sure…
How comforting it is to know that partisans of the Left never, ever fell into the fallacy of believing that one place or another is History’s “chosen land”, the acolytes of which are “destined and ordered to spread a special kind of democracy” to the rest of benighted humanity.
I must have imagined the old days when sentiments of exactly this sort were often expressed about the workers’ paradise and its lucky associated “Peoples’ Democracies”; then about the lands of Fidel and Chairman Mao and Uncle Ho; or more recently about the lucky beneficiaries of Sandinismo or Chavismo. Come to think of it, there hasn’t been much talk of that sort very recently—although not much serious thinking about why.
+ 1.
The same goes for NZ. Although as a whole white NZers are much more aware of the way many Maori were treated than white USians appear to be, most still choose not to accept/remember just how bad it got in some cases. They tell themselves that we did a better job than the Aussies, Canadians, and USians (which is true), and think therefore we can be proud of our history re race relations.
I just found this article and come to post it but you beat me to it!
You must have read Kurt Andersen’s Fantasyland, right?
In America, tragedy seems to follow the path of religious fundamentalism. The Founders never really got through to the rubes. And the expanse has increased as of late.
Really, ALL of the New York Times? It seems that you are generalizing about the NYT in the same way that Blow is generalizing about America. I often agree with your criticisms of NYT editorials and opinion pieces. I believe, however, that most of NYT reporting is excellent and that it’s opinion pages represents multiple perspectives and is thought-provoking. I fear that your negative generalization lends support to trumpism’s claim that NYT and mainstream media is all “fake news”.
Give me a break! You’re telling me I can’t criticize the NYT’s trend of becoming “woke” because that lends support to Trump and his views. Seriously, we’re supposed to stifle ourselves about anything that could be construed as supporting anything Trump does? So much for freedom of speech, Mr. Wylie. I often quote and praise NYT pieces, so you can’t say I denigrate the whole news paper. But I do detect, as do others, a trend towards increasing infusion of political sentiments into its “objective” reporting.
If that’s supporting Trump’s views, well, so be it, but your criticism is hyperbolic here.
Actually, I take back my “lending support” comment—I regretted it as soon as I pressed the enter key. I am not suggesting that you withhold criticism. As I said, I agree with much of it and, although I did not say this explicitly, it is important to say it. I don’t agree with the generalization. I have only been reading your blog for a few months, but I don’t recall much positive comment about the NYT in that time period. And, correct me if I’m wrong, I thought you said you were considering cancelling your NYT subscription, which, if true, suggests that the paper is not worth your time. By the way, I have been enjoying your reporting of your trip. I’m planning a trip to Patagonia Dec 2020, which will include a total eclipse of the sun. Happy travels!
I like your comments. Can it really be that hard to teach and acknowledge the dark history AND recognize that it doesn’t represent all of who were are as a nation AND appreciating a modern holiday of gratitude? Alas, in the US it is.
Shorn of the US-specific links, that’s a statement that is likely to be true of most people in most countries. The countries I’d be more hopeful of having a less rose-tinted view of their formation myths would be ones that lost, badly, in the last war or so, and have had a generation or two of being beaten with the crimes of their siblings/ parent’s/ grandparent’s generations. Yes, I’m looking at Germany and Japan as possibly having a less rose-tinted view of their recent histories.
Then I look at the increasing historical revisionism of resurging fascism in Europe, and the reports of Japanese push-back against being reminded of their genocides in Korea, China and SE Asia … I think that two generations seems to be about as long as people will put up with this before creating their own revisionism, to give themselves a less bloody origin myth. Le plus ça change, le plus c’est la même chose.
This was nice, thank you.
Just to be sure that we all correctly understand our racist, genocidal giving of thanks, there is also a piece in today’s NYT called “The Vicious Reality Behind the Thanksgiving Myth” by David J. Silverman. Just to be clear, I do understand, and I am still grateful.
I watched David Silverman’s book talk on CSPAN2 a couple of days ago. [BookTV is archived online, interested parties can probably find the talk.] This was not the history I got in 2nd grade, in particular we forget how barbaric the English were in the mid-17th Century. I have trouble imagining how I might have survived in a theocratic society.
“We would be blissfully blind, living in a soft world bleached of hard truth. I can no longer abide that.”
So he is giving up religion?
Feh. The revisionism in that piece is bad…..
This is a garbled account – the man who was killed (a guy by the name of Oldman) was killed at sea and the colonists blamed the Narragansetts, a coastal group of Wampanoags. So some Connecticut colonists attacked an empty Niantic village on Block Island killing around 100 -if you believe the colonists- or only 1 if you believe the Narragansetts.
The Pequot war is called that because the Pequots, a native American tribe from Southern New England, allied with European colonists and waged a war against their enemies, the Mohegans and Algonquins. In particular they sought to take coveted lands held by the Wampanoags in what is today Eastern Massachusetts. The colonists were natural allies as they too wanted that land and as was typical of the day they sought to leverage whatever they could from Native tribal conflicts. But make no mistake about it – the Pequot war was a war between Native Americans with Europeans allied to one side or another; the French -naturally- supported the Mohegans.
Happy turkey day to all.
The think is, he cannot go back in history and fix or change reality regardless of how he might try. His anger should be fixed on those who pushed the Thanksgiving fantasy on him at early childhood and himself for not learning more before adulthood. A lifetime he says – really?
Proof, if ever any was needed, that the failing New York Times serves as the fifth column in the unending “War on Thanksgiving”:
The Times has been failing for quite some time, but never quite seems to go out of business.
I commented on the post from a while back where the HuffPo published an article which included ways to decrease the environmental impact of the thanksgiving dinner. It seems this article – chewed up by a certain news channel- is at the origin of the claims of the President.
Or actually, what he should be angry about is all the additional damage caused by the holiday. All those people traveling by air and highway to eat at some other location and then coming back. By comparison those people at the first thanksgiving were saints. I won’t even mention XMAS.
I am going to read that as sarcasm.
That millions of Americans go racing cross country by auto and air due to a Holiday that no one really cares about other than eating? How many additional tons of carbon fill the air and contribute to the climate change. I am not attempting sarcasm, just saying if the guy wants to cry over the holiday then worry about that instead of some crap he learned in school.
As one of the people who traveled across the country for the holiday, I will make the claim that it is not about the food. For my wife’s family, it is the one time each year that everyone gathers at the old homeplace as a family. And they give thanks for the fact that the opportunity exists for them to gather together, and that the family, on that spot, endured poverty, famine, and relentless attacks from the Comanches, but survived and prospered.
How about price gouging by airlines, to start?
Can you be certain that the environmental impact is negative?
I think our traditional blow-out equivalent in the UK is Christmas. We even eat turkey at Christmas for some bizarre reason.
At Christmas time in the UK, you find lots of people travelling to see relatives, but on the other hand, most people don’t go to work, or school or whatever else they would normally do during the week. On Christmas Day there are no trains and road traffic is practically zero.
I think the only good thing to come out of thanksgiving is the film “Planes ,Trains and Automobiles ” with the late John Candy and Steve Martin .
“People Train Runs outa Stubbville “
Blow forgot to remind us on this day how bad Thanksgiving is for the turkeys.
My sister, no vegetarian, calls today “Turkey Murder Day”.
When you signal your pain and guilt and agree with the case put forward, you will be found wanting.
As ever was the case.
He’ll never be pleased.
*Should not use “never,” only the Sith deal in absolutes.
Well, here is the most “liked” comment in response to Blow’s article, coming from the NYTimes’s moderated comment section:
“The Buddy
Astoria, NYNov. 27
Times Pick
However much it’s become fashionable to rethink traditional holidays, I think most people celebrate Thanksgiving in order to enjoy a feast with the people they love, and to remind oneself to be grateful for one’s blessings. No one is looking to celebrate the subjugation of indigenous peoples.”
(Note: the writer uses the social construction “indigenous peoples”. I was stunned to find that there are progressives I know, not just one, who really took the indigenous literally and think that Native Americans evolved as distinct species of homo sapiens in the Western Hemisphere. They at first were incredulous that it was in Africa….)
Off to Thanksgiving lunch/brunch/dinner!!!!!!
And joyous day to all.
To me it sounds as if Ch. Blow is indicting his former ignorance rather than us or America. Following this in Europe, I’m under the impression that the man is fairly reasonable. Writing for the ‘New Woke Times’ doesn’t imply membership of the ‘Wokistan Tribe’.
Reader bobbygee, who’s having trouble posting, asked me to post this comment as his:
____________
Heather Cox Richardson, a professor of American history at Boston College, just posted a piece on Thanksgiving. She points out the holiday is not celebrated for the reasons most U.S. residents believe (to honor the Pilgrims’ first harvest in 1691) but rather because Abraham Lincoln declared the date a national holiday in 1863 after the Civil War came to an end. Lincoln’s Thanksgiving was to celebrate and honor the end of the war and the continued safety of the American dream.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-28-2019
The Wikipedia entry on Thanksgiving goes into greater detail and points out that “Thanksgivings” were celebrated well before and after the Pilgrims’ encounter with native Americans. Indeed, the Thanksgiving holiday was only intermittently celebrated from the time George Washington officially declared it in 1789 to the day Lincoln made his proclamation in 1863. It’s only been since 1863 that the holiday has been observed annually.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_(United_States)
There’s more information in the two articles, but I wanted to raise the idea that the holiday most Americans think of as a celebration of friendship and community between early American settlers and native Americans might likely be more a celebration of the end of civil war and our thankfulness that the bloodshed was over and the Union had survived. Perhaps our schools continue to focus on the “first” Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims and Squanto because it makes a nicer story? I never knew about the Civil War aspects and the “true start of the annual holiday” until I read the piece by Heather Cox!
I would also point out that during the civil war both sides declared days of thanks as it was a way of attempting to get through a horrible period.
The Civil War did not end in 1863. Lincoln declared a day of Thanksgiving in the midst of the war. In fact, Gettysburg was yet to come when he made the proclamation. Thanksgiving was not proclaimed to offer thanks for the end of the war.
Sorry, the Thanksgiving Proclamation came in October 1863 AFTER Gettysburg, but certainly well before the end of the war. The many brutal battles of 1864 lay ahead.
You are correct on that point, however, I think you will find what I said above is true. It was common practice for both sides to have or announce these days of prayer or thanksgiving. It was a political/religious thing they did. I think the thanksgiving holiday thing had mostly been a New England thing prior to this time.
Yes. I can imagine soldiers gave thanks every day they lived to fight another day.
According to the author of “White Trash ” thanksgiving was meant to give a boost to the turkey farmers .
This explains how Thanksgiving became a federal holiday in the United States. It does not explain how any other associations were made between the holiday and anything else.
I am still looking for the source of the New Yorker article which claimed the Pilgrim story was employed to resist immigration from non-English speaking Catholic countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries – including Irish, Italian, and Jewish populations.
Some thanks to the US (from an Australian-German):
1. In Berlin there’s a monument to the American pilots who risked (and in several cases gave) their lives to fly in supplies to the city during the Soviet blockade. Some of the pilots had previously bombed Germany, and were now asked to risk their lives for it.
2. Around the corner from where I used to live (in Berlin) was a stadium where in 1942 Goebbels gave his infamous ‘Total War’ speech, telling Germans that there was no choice now but to invest everything in victory, or the Russians would invade and murder, rape, pillage, destroy. In 1969 — 26 years later — Jimi Hendrix performed at the same venue.
—-
Thanks for the comment.
I recently read Cornelius Ryan’s “The Last Battle” which described Berliners fear of the Russians based on Goebbles’ propaganda. Entire families committed suicide before the Russians even reached Berlin. And many Berliners were surprised to find that most? of the Russian soldiers left civilians alone.
Yes ,the Red Army soldiers come across as a strange bunch ,they loved children and liked giving them presents ,even if they had just taken them off some others earlier .
Hitler had many American admirers of repute, such as Henry Ford. America’s economy made the fortune of the century on the war in Europe and was generally stalling direct involvement. After having sucked dry the other allies, and with a collapse of the Eastern Front, the USA famously swooped in last minute and looted also Nazi Germany. Especially of interest was the chemistry and Nazi technology, both readily incorporated, from Nazi to NASA, essentially.
The Germans liked the Americans best. The conflict with Americans was negligible. In comparison, the conflict with the Red Army was a gory slaughterfest unprecedented in history. Absolutely everyone who could was trying to get away from the revenge-filled hordes who were bulldozing towards Berlin. Of course the Americans were popular. And also needed: America earned a few trillion from patents alone in post-war Germany, in exchange for candy and peanuts.
It’s true, Americans supplied Berlin, and I’m happy that I was born on the Western Side. But there’s a context virtually always omitted while we’re absolutely swamped by US military propaganda.
That is utter garbage. The US was in the war as of December 1941 long before the collapse of the Eastern Front. The battle of Stalingrad did not end until the summer of 1943. There was no last minute swooping in. US resources and air power were critical in the bombing campaign that demolished the German war industry and in the Normandy invasion and liberation of Europe. Also, the Americans bore the brunt of the Pacific war almost single handedly. I suggest you need to read some history.
The US remained neutral the first two years of the war, and entered with the attack of Pearl Harbour. The Pacific Theater was the main stage of American involvement, indeed.
The main involvement in the European side of the war was captured in Roosevelts “Arsenal of Democracy” speech in late 1940. Here, the US ended isolationism and shifts involvement to the production to supply to the other allies. In perspective, this was the main contribution, especially compared with the Eastern Front, where about 20 million Russians died alone, that’s orders of magnitude a different scale.
Meanwhile, as the correpondence between the allies reveals, the Russians repeatedly urged for a relieve, which was however dismissed. The Western allies entered instead in the far-off periphery, e.g. Africa and when the tides had turned in the East Front, from the Mediterranean (mid 1943).
The battle of Stalingrad ended early in Feb 1943 ,the battle of Kursk took place in July 1943.
Also, regards “utter garbage”, here’s a source on Henry Ford.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/henryford-antisemitism/
Ford published the infamous (fabricated) conspiracy of the “Elders of Zion” in his papers, so that “when you drove off with your Model T, there you had on the seat next to you a copy of The Dearborn Independent [Ford’s publication]”
The part about “swooping in” for the spoils after the USSR defeated Germany is garbage. There were plenty of ant-semitic Nazi sympathizers in the US and the UK.
“I spent most of my life believing a gauzy, kindergarten version of Thanksgiving, ”
Isn’t that Mr. Blow’s own problem? It’s in kindergarten because it’s for kindergarten-age children – it is not serious. There’s a reason things are designed for kids. As people grow up and mature, they can and should take and seek out things seriously. Both modes of knowledge acquisition can exist simultaneously.
I don’t really materially disagree with the article (look here for a somewhat different take) but there’s something that feels deeply disingenuous about NYT’s garment-rending.
Back when Michael Flatley was a thing I wondered why so many could get teared up about the murderously exploitative economic policies 100 years earlier of a British Empire that had then been defunct for 50 years, while no-one seemed to take any notice of the even more murderously exploitative economic policies of the IMF and World Bank that were in play at the time. What’s the point of remembering the past only to repeat it? Did Bruce Cockburn just need to take more dance lessons?
Here is the thing:
It is very easy, and very cheap to get upset about the evils of distant history – as they are far enough removed as to not require much real action to deal with them.
It is chest beating about an awful past which frankly doesn’t do anybody one whit of good. The debts are long lapsed.
The challenge is what you do now.
When the Keystone Pipeline was first announced – there was a media blackout on the protests. There were several high ranking Democrats who were invested in it, and thus in favour of it.
And I didn’t see the New York Times breaking the story until long after it was big on much smaller online news media.
All this maudlin chest beating, and that’s the truth of the concern expressed.
Perhaps the solution to this problem would be to have 2nd graders depict genocide in the background of the meal scene (lots of extras needed). Perhaps Christmas for school kids should focus on crucifixion as a method of capitol punishment with staged scenes like – Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. Easter: let your imagination go wild. The result: woke parents in the next generation.
“The National Thanksgiving Proclamation was the first formal proclamation of Thanksgiving in the United States. President George Washington declared Thursday, November 26, 1789 as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer.”
It appears the original conception of Thanksgiving had nothing to do with indigenous people, or any other people, and effectively everything to do with religion. That state leaders added in cherry picked facts from history is another matter.
Source:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Thanksgiving_Proclamation
I had a couple of coworkers, one a Navajo, one a Cheyenne, who always wished everyone a “happy thankstaking!”, which was fine and taken in the spirit in which it was intended.
But there are a bunch of things wrong with the fun new trend of reversing the national mythology. It is great to add as much factual information as possible, but just switching the identity of the heroes and villains is absurd. Not that we were taught that the pilgrims were wonderful people. They were 17th century people, with 17th century notions and prejudices.
But the romanticizing of the Native peoples is also completely misguided. The Chesapeake bay itself is named after a tribe that was genocided by the Powatans before Jamestown was established. Conquest, assimilation and genocide were just as much a part of life in America as anywhere else.
But my main point is that the English settlers saw themselves as a people who had once been savages, but had been civilized and Christianized, and were better for it. They felt the duty to pass on that service to the natives. Of course such efforts tend to end poorly for the targets of conversion and civilization.
“Just switching the identity of the heroes and villains is absurd”
Exactly. Americans have gone from thinbking their country was the greatest in the history of humankind to the most evil. This seems to reflect a loss of national confidence and cohesion on the part of Americans. In any case, the extreme left and right-wing views of America are equally parochial.
I would not be suprised if within a few decades Thanksgiving became another football in the culture wars, with the woke demonizing it for expressing the supposed awfulness at the root of America and unwoke red staters turning it into a quasi-religious pageant.
Thanksgiving probably originates from early harvest festivals and has been co-opted by many cultures since (read appropriated). This means that the meaning is that we are to appreciate the fact that farming works and that our families depend on the forces of nature to supply (given our labor inputs) our sustenance. The idea may have often been to give thanks to the Gods that control the weather and such. But now, the idea has been co-oped (yet again) by the NYT columnist who wants to politicize the concept so he can submit a column on deadline for publication and receive a paycheck.
Check out [1] the New Yorker article and [2] the Wikipedia link I posted. Agrarian harvest festivals are one thing. The origin of United Stares holiday of Thanksgiving appears not to have anything to do with harvest festivals or any people except God. Lincoln used the holiday as a healing process for the Civil War. The pilgrim story was confected in the late 19th c. I still don’t understand why November was chosen other than having some vague relationship to harvest festivals.
Interesting!
Oops – I wrote “confected” but meant “added in” to Thanksgiving in The United States.
An interesting article on Thanksgiving which does not ignore the pugnacity tied to the holiday…
“The land was inhabited, albeit sparsely, by natives who made no show of hostility but also evaded any attempts at contact. What the passengers we call “Pilgrims” could not have known was that the area had recently been depopulated by a combination of rampant disease and European slave-taking. The Mayflower’s first scouts found an abandoned Patuxet village and carried back to their ship such provisions as could be scrounged. After a little further exploration, including one encounter with openly hostile natives to the south, the Mayflower arrived at its final destination—Plymouth Bay, Massachusetts—in December of 1620. Of the original 30 crew and 102 passengers, fewer than half would be alive at winter’s end.”
https://quillette.com/2019/11/27/thanksgiving-a-uniquely-american-tradition/?fbclid=IwAR09fMvtaHU55JJe7kEazTClOU3syUAXNY4nhIeb4BvswncGzjHJVBghxRc
Whatever the origin of the holiday, I appreciate the, at least annual, opportunity to express my thankfulness for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” with family and friends. Thankfully, as a chronically more optimistic than pessimistic person, I often manage to sneak thankfulness into my daily life.
Although, like all human beings, I know I have not always lived up to my highest and best potential. Yet, I continue to try to err on the side of goodness and celebrate the goodness of humanity over the bad. We cannot change the past; only know about it and make an effort not to repeat the atrocities.
We can, as individuals, try to be more good than bad, and teach our children the to be the same. Maybe we can start a movement of good people with whom we can proliferate thankfulness.
“Before you fill your plate, please remember why we mark this day.”
None of what Blow describes is “why we mark this day.”
Have you seen that account of British and German soldiers in World War I playing soccer together on Christmas Day? I find the same spirit there as in the idea that “Pilgrims and Native Americans came together to give thanks.”
The fact that we fought each other not withstanding, if Pilgrims and Native Americans could come together peacefully to give thanks one day a year, so can we. And that is why we mark this day.
+
But what is the origin of the association of pilgrims with Thanksgiving in the United States?
association of pilgrims, rugby players, or turkey with Thanksgiving are conjuring tricks. It was never clear to me until I paid careful attention to George Washington’s proclamation. This used to sound edgy to me but it’s all there to read, with dates. Thus, to criticize United States Thanksgiving associations is to be tricked into chasing a red herring.
The article is alright, given that the US military sponsors plenty of blockbuster/action films each year that must present US militarism favourably — “criticism” baked in, like there a few “bad apples” or “mistakes were made” but overall a worthwhile, pro-humanity-pro-goodness war machine. In contrast, this article is mostly historical and got greenlit because it’s topical and probably nicely shareable.
Of course, the article can’t have it both ways. When people are ignorant about the history, they cannot actually celebrate what happened.
I don’t agree with the sometimes implied woke narrative that casts stark morality on different so-called “racial” groups. The evil white people against the good others.
Reality is of course messy and does not even work that way in simple terms. Many of those so-called “white people” where themselves persecuted earlier, or escaped servitude (effectively slavery). America continued to attract people who often fled from miserable circumstances and who weren‘t automatically allowed into the “white master” club. Woke peoole know this in some other part of their mind, when they cite how Mediterraneans or the Irish were not seen as “white”.
Thank goodness for the insight of Charles Blow. In fact, we should start every day with a guilt self-flogging with a small bushel of thorned weed to remind ourselves that not a day, nay an hour or a minute, goes by without recalling some grotesquerie for which to feel responsible.
I weep, Charles.
The point is not merely that there were historical injustices to Native Americans, but that these are *ongoing* and that the descendents of the settlers (etc.) *currently benefit* from that injustice. *This* should create a sense of obligation.
This post compelled me to read Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen again. Chapter 4 is particularly relevant, as it discusses Plymouth Plantation in the context of the growing interests in the “New World”, and the motives behind them.
To keep my comment short ( I tried!) : I claim that religion was the origin of “genocide”. Blow completely ignores this, as well as ignoring anti-semitism in the origins of Protestantism back in Europe. It wouldn’t have mattered back then who was on the North American continent – if they weren’t into the Bible, they were the devil’s servants, the puzzling thing is how the pilgrims seem to have lucked out that the natives they encountered were apparently pretty cool – for a while. This was not a rule.
So I think the modern thanksgiving myth persists because it strongly suggests religion is the origin of the success of the United Ststes.