Pure Racism
Posted on 11/25/2008 11:29:16 AM PST by Sub-Driver
Claremont parents clash over kindergarten Thanksgiving costumes Some say having students dress up as pilgrims and Native Americans is 'demeaning.' Their opponents say they are elitists injecting politics into a simple children's celebration. By Seema Mehta
November 25, 2008
For decades, Claremont kindergartners have celebrated Thanksgiving by dressing up as pilgrims and Native Americans and sharing a feast. But on Tuesday, when the youngsters meet for their turkey and songs, they won't be wearing their hand-made bonnets, headdresses and fringed vests.
Parents in this quiet university town are sharply divided over what these construction-paper symbols represent: A simple child's depiction of the traditional (if not wholly accurate) tale of two factions setting aside their differences to give thanks over a shared meal? Or a cartoonish stereotype that would never be allowed of other racial, ethnic or religious groups?
"It's demeaning," Michelle Raheja, the mother of a kindergartner at Condit Elementary School, wrote to her daughter's teacher. "I'm sure you can appreciate the inappropriateness of asking children to dress up like slaves (and kind slave masters), or Jews (and friendly Nazis), or members of any other racial minority group who has struggled in our nation's history."
Raheja, whose mother is a Seneca, wrote the letter upon hearing of a four-decade district tradition, where kindergartners at Condit and Mountain View elementary schools take annual turns dressing up and visiting the other school for a Thanksgiving feast. This year, the Mountain View children would have dressed as Native Americans and walked to Condit, whose students would have dressed as Pilgrims.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
“....university town...”
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Got it. Say no more.
Some people wake up each day and say, “Now what can I find to be offended at today?”..............
This nation is being destroyed, ripped apart at the seams.
Evidently we are not allowed our traditions. I note that the traditions of other cultures are celebrated here. It’s just our own that are now forbidden. All it takes are one or two idiot leftists to destroy the remembrance of our heritage.
Our Founding Fathers fought for this eventuality? No, and it is very sad what we have become as a nation.
We don’t reverence our past.
We hate that our military defends us.
Our borders are non existent.
We don’t want to remain a free republic.
Socialism/Communism/Marxism, now there’s the way to go!
The end...
She’s angry because the Native Americans saved the pilgrims from the starving season. She’s angry that the pilgrims didn’t die.
It’s pretty clear that Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Okay, Michelle Raheja, In June we can celebrate Little Big Horn Day. Happy?......
Pure Racism
Raheja is an Indian (India) name. Maybe she’s confused.
And those kids look like pure evil too. /s
Racist sterotypes? That’s a plus in my book. I love stereotypes, from Uncle Remus and Aunt Jemima to slackjawed hillbillies, lockjawed WASPs, and rockjawed Guidos. I look forward to the day when Americans can enjoy ridiculous racial stereotypes without fear of censure.
She would rather teach the children hatred rather than thankfulness. She would rather tell the children about what the pilgrims later did to the Native Americans rather than let them keep their innocence for a little while longer.
It’s these types of people the world can do without.
Hehehe...
well, last Sunday at our 90% homeschooling family church, they did a historical skit on the Pilgrims and Indians. Yes, INDIANS. Not “Native Americans”, INDIANS.
And the kids were dressed as INDIANS and had feather headbands and stood with their arms folded.
Bite on it, lefties.
Professor Raheja’s area of research is Native American literature, with a special interest in autobiography and film and visual culture. Her training and teaching cover all periods and genres of American literature up to the present, with a special emphasis on literature covering the period from oral narrative to 1630, autobiography, comparative minority discourses, critical race theory, and film and visual culture.
In 2005-2006, Raheja was invited to Oberlin College as part of the Indigenous Women’s Series to present a lecture entitled, “’Molly Spotted Elk is a Dancer… But She Also Knows How to Punch a Typewriter’: Gender, (Auto)Biography, Race & Performance.” She also presented “(Northern) Lights, (Hand-held) Camera, (Ethnographic) Action: Filming the Arctic,” an invited talk at Sarai: The New Media Initiative in Delhi, India, and “John Ford’s Indian Fighters: An Introduction to She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” an invited talk at the Hollywood and the Cavalry Exhibit at the Riverside Metropolitan Museum. Her most current publications include “’I leave it to the people of the United States to say’: Autobiographical Disruptions in the Personal Narratives of Black Hawk and Ely S. Parker,” in the American Indian Culture and Research Journal (Vol. 30, No. 1, 2006) and “Reading Nanook’s Smile: Atanarjuat/The Fast Runner, Visual Sovereignty, and the Persistence of Ethnography” (accepted for publication by the American Quarterly).
Her book manuscript, Reservation Reelism: Redfacing, Visual Sovereignty, and Representations of Native Americans in Film, is under contract with the University of Nebraska Press and explores the personal narratives and visual aesthetics of indigenous actors, entertainers, and filmmakers from the inception of the motion picture industry in the United States and Canada to the present. She is also co-editing two anthologies: Pretending to Be Me: Ethnic Transvestism and Cross-Writing with Joe Lockard and Melinda Micco and Red Rhythms: Contemporary Methodologies in American Indian Dance with Jacqueline Shea Murphy. Raheja’s research has been supported by an Institute of American Cultures/American Indian Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship at UCLA, the Center for Ideas and Society at UCR, and the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian History/Lannan Foundation.
On campus she serves on the executive committee of the Film and Visual Culture Program and has co-organized two major conferences, Filmmaking @ the Margins: A Film Symposium and Red Rhythms: Contemporary Methodologies in American Indian Dance.
Not a bad lokking lady. She actually looks Native American not, Indian (India)
She could have used her expertise to help the kids dress in a more historically accurate way.
Instead all she did was play the chip-on-shoulder race victim card.
Bad analogies lady.
There is no comparison between the fellowship or relationship between the Pilgrims and the Indians (at that time) and masters/slaves or Nazis/Jews.
No comparison at all... EVER.
Thanks Giving is when the Indians, oops I mean “Native Americans”, took mercy, and brought food to the half starved and freezing pilgrams, and for one day, everybody ate good and no one died (unless you think turkeys are people too). Then, later, in what can only be described as an act of vengance, the white man pushed the nice Native Americans to the brink of obliviation. Now, as retubution, or self induced guilt, white people wish to exponge any mention of our past, say nay to Clevelands baseball team, and Chicagos hockey team, and school plays. Let them build casinos on thier reservations, and let them fleece the white man. Like that makes up for everything. /supreme mega sarc/.
What a beautiful picture. Thank you for posting it.
When I tutor, I call them ‘Indians’ too. Let the kids be confused. I also make sure to tell them that women really did NOT take pick axes to the Gold Rush; they cooked and etc.
“...at Condit Elementary School”
You mean Gary Condit has a school named after him? Amazing!
I’ll go with “...elitists injecting politics into a simple children’s celebration.”
The solution seems simple enough to me, and I wonder why the school board couldn’t figure it out. The event goes on, with costumes, as planned and according to local traditions. Kids need not participate if their parents object or may participate without wearing costumes.
Before coming to Riverside, she taught at San Francisco State University, San
Quentin State Prison’s College Program, and Swarthmore College
From what I heard on KFI yesterday, the majority of parents were sending their kids to school in Thanksgiving garb today, and keeping them home Wednesday as punishment to the school district. (So the state doesnt pay their daily head tax)
What...they showed up in black-face????
Ah, but think about what the alternatives are...
“Raheja, an English professor at UC Riverside who specializes in Native American literature, said she met with teachers and administrators in hopes that the district could hold a public forum to discuss alternatives that celebrate thankfulness without “dehumanizing” her daughter’s ancestry.”
Perhaps the school could recreate the war of conquest the Seneca waged against the Huron in the 18th century?
You know, the one that was partly about their rivals cutting into their share of the fur trade business?
I bet the Seneca were pretty thankful they won the war!
She should have a few belts of firewater, a drag on ummm peace pipe, and stop being so hysterical.
The horra. The horra.
She is at least part “native American”. This, from the article: “Raheja, whose mother is a Seneca...”
I’d like her to come up with some nice multicultural skits showing her ancestors of the Seneca/Irquois Nation practicing torture and ritual cannibalism against their foes (it’s true, that’s what the Seneca and Mohawk tribes of the Five Nations did).
It’s important to be historically and culturally fair and accurate.
The term “Native American” was coined by white liberals in New York in 1970.
Anyone born in America is a “Native American” as far as I’m concerned.
All the "Native Americans" I know call themselves Indians.
Yes, definitely. How sad that these kids are to be forbidden a chance to enact an event that saw two people’s congregate in a respectful manner. The left is so damned destructive.
Much learning has mad them mad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
She's equating American Indians to slave masters and Nazis?
If she’s a Seneca what’s her beef with Thanksgiving? I didn’t think the Seneca were in New England but Western NY.
She could also mention the tribes that began to massacre the men, women, and children of the settlers out of fear when the colonies grew too large.
What’s with this boy with his arm around the girl? Is this sex harrassment? It should be investigated too, since we’re being politically correct here.
Also, he’s a pilgrim holding an Indian girl. That must also be a shameful stereo type which should be stamped out.
Send that boy to sensitivity training.
According to Liberal logic, if you get attacked you are not allowed to fight back.
Remember the fools on 9/11 shouting down the US citizens as evil imperialists who deserved it?
This is insane.
And if schools, whatever DIDN’T acknowledge the Indians existence, that would tick them off too!
There is NO pleasing any people who insist on being VICTIMS.
I think dressing up as Calvinist Pilgrims is more offensive than dressing up like Indians. The doctrines of Calvinism are grotesque. Their religion is harsh, elitist and unforgiving. One of their great texts is a poem by the clergyman Michael Wiggelsworth, entitled “The Day of Doom”:
“The Day of Doom was a religious poem that became a best-selling classic in Puritan New England for a century after it was published in 1662. The poem describes the Day of Judgment, in which a vengeful Jesus sentences sinners (including, by Puritan theology, unbaptized infants, and just about everybody else) to punishment in hell. So popular was the work that no first or second editions exist because they were thumbed to shreds.”
Among their other doctrines was that God favors the elites, which is why they are wealthy on Earth, and despises the poor, who are likewise punished by being poor. Elitist New England Democrats today have their philosophical roots in the idealistic pessimism of Calvinism.
A great anecdote is about a Calvinist preacher who pays a visit to a distraught couple, whose disturbed teenage daughter has committed suicide. Despite their pleas, he assures them that their daughter is now burning in Hell for committing a mortal sin. Have a nice day.
Even back in England the Puritans were highly unpopular because of their intolerance and elitism. They despised the expression of art, color, imagery, music and dancing found in the Church of England, as too akin to Roman Catholicism. Their churches are noteworthy in their lack of decor, having little more than a plain wooden cross and hard benches.
Religion, above all, had to be hard, unpleasant, and menacing.
“Yes, INDIANS. Not “Native Americans”, INDIANS.”
All my INDIAN ancestors called themselves that. That’s good enough. I’m tired of history and our language being revised!
That is an apt and exact turn phrase! "What can I find to be offended at today?" Not "What may offend me today?"
Folks like the mother in the article look for things that "offend" them. If their passive-aggressive frame of mind can somehow find an obscure "offense" in otherwise innocuous activities, they feel entitled to become torch-bearing crusaders if they can wring any attention for themselves from it.
There were no Seneca at the table with Governor Bradford.
This story is Claremont in a nutshell. I lived there for 9 years. Nice place, but lots of fruitloop academics.
You would think that she would dress in such a way as to not look Indian.
This overeducated Injun needs to listen to what some of her subjects actually said and GET OVER IT ALREADY!
General Ely S. Parker, a member of the Seneca tribe, drew up the articles of surrender which General Robert E. Lee signed at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Gen. Parker, who served as Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's military secretary was an educated attorney who was once rejected for Union military service because of his race. At the meeting, Gen. Lee was at first taken aback at the presence of an Indian being in such a position. After he got to know Parker, Lee is said to have remarked to him, "I am glad to see one real American here."
Parker replied, "We are all Americans."
“She could have used her expertise to help the kids dress in a more historically accurate way.
Instead all she did was play the chip-on-shoulder race victim card.”
Exactly. There seems to be no interest in preserving their culture, only in preserving their right to piss and moan for a century or two.
Might want to cross check your post and your tag line.
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