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It is confusing that Foner doesn't point out how the Declaration of
Independence, while not articulating modern scientific racism in the
formulation we all know today, did in fact include a rather potently racist
demonization of the Indigenous and Africans:
He [King George] has excited domestic insurrections amongst us [what we
would call slave revolts today], and has endeavoured to bring on the
inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule
of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and
conditions [caused primarily by British treaties forbidding westward
expansion of the colonial project].
Foner and Gerald Horne are both CPUSA-ers, in fact Horne wrote a rather
adulatory preface for the International Publishers re-issue of Phillip
Foner's anthology of American writings from the advent of the Bolshevik
revolution, so I am forced to wonder what sort of connection the two have
--
Best regards,
Andrew Stewart
Message: 1
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2019 09:27:50 -0500
From: Louis Proyect
To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
Subject: [Marxism] Nicholas Guyatt?s ?Bind Us Apart?
Message-ID: <05313d7a-9614-44c7-087b-7b9c50d45...@panix.com>
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(In this review, Eric Foner has problems with Nicholas Guyatt's new book
that argues that our Founding Fathers were racist to the core. I have
heard through the grapevine that Foner has "no dog in this fight" when
asked how he stood on the Project 1619 controversy.)
Nicholas Guyatt?s ?Bind Us Apart?
By Eric Foner
April 29, 2016
BIND US APART
How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation
By Nicholas Guyatt
Illustrated. 403 pp. Basic Books. $29.99.
Half a century ago, inspired by the Supreme Court?s decision in Brown v.
Board of Education, historians embarked on an effort to identify the
origins of racial segregation. C. Vann Woodward insisted that rather
than existing from time immemorial, as the ruling?s opponents claimed,
segregation emerged in the 1890s. Others located its genesis in
Reconstruction or the pre-Civil War North.
Eventually, the debate faded. Now, Nicholas Guyatt offers a new
interpretation. Segregation and its ideological justification ?separate
but equal,? he argues, originated in the early Republic in the efforts
of ?enlightened Americans? to uplift and protect Indians and
African-?Americans. After trying and abandoning other policies, these
reformers and policy makers concluded that only separation from whites ?
removal of Indians to the trans-Mississippi West and blacks to Africa ?
would enable these groups to enjoy their natural rights and achieve
economic and cultural advancement. Thus, almost from the outset, the
idea of separating the races was built into the DNA of the United States.
Guyatt, who teaches at the University of Cambridge, is the author of a
well-?regarded book on the history of the idea (still very much alive
today) that God has chosen this country for a special mission. In ?Bind
Us Apart? he addresses another theme central to our national identity:
Who is an American? To find an answer he offers a detailed account of
early national policies toward Indians and blacks.
By the somewhat anachronistic label ?liberal? ? usually applied, when
referring to the 19th century, to believers in limited government, free
trade and individual liberty ? Guyatt means adherents of Enlightenment
values, including the repudiation of prejudice against others. These
people realized that the presence of subordinate racial populations
could not be reconciled with the affirmation that ?all men are created
equal? in the Declaration of Independence. They assumed that what
appeared to be black and Indian inferiority resulted from oppressive
circumstances, not innate incapacity. With proper education and
training, these groups could become equal members of American society.
This belief led to a ?civilizing agenda? whereby the federal government
encouraged Native Americans to form compact communities where they would
take up settled farming and abandon communal land holding for the
benefits of private ownership. The ultimate aim was that whites and
Indians would ?become one people,? in the words of Thomas Jefferson.
One of Guyatt?s surprising findings is how many liberals believed that
the Indian population should be assimilated through intermarriage. ?You
will mix with us by marriage,? Jefferson told an Indian delegation in
1808. ?We shall all be Americans.? Not all whites agreed, of course. In
the 1820s ?all hell broke loose? in Cornwall, Conn., when two young
Indian men who arrived to study at a religious school
