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Subject: NYTimes.com Article: When Racial Discrimination Is Not Just Black and White
Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2003 20:39:15 -0400 (EDT)
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When Racial Discrimination Is Not Just Black and White
September 12, 2003
By BRENT STAPLES
The historian John Hope Franklin is black to the naked eye.
A boulevard named in his honor runs through Greenwood, the
black section of Tulsa, Okla., where he lived as a child.
The Franklins are not just black, however, but also Native
American. Milley Franklin, Mr. Franklin's grandmother, was
one-quarter Choctaw and was raised as Choctaw, attending
Indian schools. Her children - including John Hope
Franklin's father, the lawyer B. C. Franklin - are clearly
listed on the official tribal rolls that determined who was
a member of the Choctaw Nation. The rolls were important,
since tribal members got land when the reservations were
dissolved.
Americans are often shocked to learn that black Indians
exist at all - and that Native Americans actually held
slaves. Like the white slave owners they emulated, Native
Americans often fathered children by enslaved women and
occasionally - as in Milley Franklin's case - treated those
children as family. As a result, millions of black
Americans are descended from black people who were either
members of the tribes during slavery or adopted into them
just after Emancipation.
White families have begun to acknowledge mixed-race
connections after centuries of denial. But the attitudes of
some Native Americans have not evolved in the same way.
Both the Seminole and the Cherokee tribes have employed
discriminatory policies to prevent black members from
receiving tribal benefits - and to strip them of the right
to vote in tribal elections.
The Interior Department, which oversees the tribal
governments through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, has
historically regarded this kind of racial discrimination as
a violation of 19th-century treaties that required the
Indian nations to treat black members as full citizens. But
the Bush administration could conceivably change course and
actually validate these discriminatory policies.
The relationship between the federal government and the
five tribes that were removed from the East to Oklahoma on
the Trail of Tears is governed by several laws and
treaties. The most important are the treaties of 1866,
which required the Seminole, the Creek and the Cherokee to
adopt their former slaves as members of the tribes in
return for being recognized as sovereign nations. At the
time, Washington was grappling with its own former slaves,
and the federal government did not want the added burden of
those from the Indian nations. The tribes fought black
membership from the very beginning, but the federal courts
have upheld the treaties again and again.
The federal government has not, however, been consistent
when it comes to racial fairness. When it set out to create
an authoritative membership roll of all the Native American
tribes in the 1890's, the Dawes Commission took the
poisonous step of creating segregated rolls, with so-called
Blood Indians on one list and black Indians - called
"Freedmen" - on another. The Freedmen sometimes had clearer
Native American blood lines than nonblack brethren on the
Blood Rolls.
The Dawes segregation has been toxic to race relations
within the tribes, which have used the rolls time and again
to argue that black Native Americans are not tribal members
at all. The argument that blacks are not really Indians is
ludicrous in the case of the Seminole, which was a
multiracial tribe from its inception. The Seminoles did not
exist when Europeans colonized this country but coalesced
in the mid-1700's when runaway slaves came together with
refugees from other tribes in the Florida wilderness.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs, with the support of the
federal district court in Washington, refused to recognize
a Seminole government that came to office while black
Seminoles were barred from the polls. But Washington may
yet buckle in the face of similar discrimination by the
Cherokees - who are more politically connected than the
Seminoles. The federal government insists that it has not
taken a "final position." But court documents suggest that
the Bureau of Indian Affairs might formally endorse
elections in which black Cherokees are barred from voting.
John Hope Franklin, whose family bridges the black and
Indian communities, takes a dim view of the attempt to
divide the two. He grew up in Oklahoma, where blacks and
Indians were "very much involved with each other, not only
in terms of friendship but in terms of marriage." He adds:
"It is perfectly absurd to talk about dividing Indians and
blacks. Any Indians who speak in exclusionary terms do not
represent the historic interests or the historic
relationships of Indians and blacks."
The tribes argue that they are sovereign nations and can do
as they please. But this sounds suspiciously like the
"states' rights" dodge raised by the South when blacks were
being murdered for seeking the right to vote. Congress
placed clear limits on Indian sovereignty in treaties and
laws that also guaranteed minority rights. The question is
whether Congress will act to ensure those rights or look
the other way while they disappear.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/12/opinion/12FRI3.html?ex=1064413555&ei=1&en=4b8873c20d6338e9
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