A Brief History of Race in America
Introduction and Part I: Rebranding Conquest into “Discovery”
Introduction
A few weeks ago, we saw hundreds of Nazis (and their sympathizers¹) openly marching on the streets of an American city, chanting horrendous slogans such as “Jews will not replace us,” and “Blood and Soil,” an English version of the Nazi German slogan of Blut und Boden. Such a sight was unthinkable a mere half century earlier. After all, precious American treasure and blood was spilt in WWII fighting against Nazi Germany.

So how exactly did we get here?
For some, Charlottesville was not all that surprising given our nation’s historical treatment of non-whites.² Meanwhile, others may view Charlottesville as an awakening to the poor status of race relations in America today.³
Regardless, these recent events have caused us all to question what it means to be an American. What exactly is America and what does she represent? Does she live up to those ideals? And importantly, what should America be?
When considering the question of how we arrived where we are today, many commentators have opined that the rise of extremist right-wing ideology, such as that of the self-described “alt-right,” can be attributed to the race-baiting and incendiary rhetoric of Donald Trump, as well as his election and now the implementation of his openly racist policy preferences.
While that viewpoint might explain the comfort level of these groups to march publicly, that theory ignores a long and storied history of race relations in America as a whole, and how other aspects also contribute to the story.
To shed at least a small light on some of these questions and what America’s history with race entails, this multi-part series discusses the following threads in America’s history:
- Part I: Rebranding Conquest of Natives⁴ into “Discovery”;
- Part II: Slavery and the Civil War;
- Part III: Reconstruction, Reparations, and Entrenching White Supremacy (through monuments and Jim Crow laws);
- Part IV: The Civil Rights Era;
- Part V: Jim Crow 2.0: Mass incarceration and the “War on Drugs,”;
- Part VI: Dog Whistle Politics (from the 1980s to Obama); and
- Part VII: Today’s “Post-Racial” America, What America’s Ideals are, Whether She is Living Up to Them, and What America Should be.
Part I: Rebranding Conquest into “Discovery”
Nowadays, white supremacists groups have complex PR mechanisms and methods. They’ve traded in their skinheads and attempted to “re-brand” themselves with different symbols and innocuous sounding names like “white nationalists” or “alt-right.”
But none of these efforts are new in America though.
Race relations in America starts before even the first colonialist arrives on its shores. It’s the 15th Century, and it was called the “Age of Discovery,” where European powers like England, France, Spain, and Portugal would travel the world and establish colonies. All the while, they decimated indigenous populations, and justified their actions through a racist and Eurocentric worldview that saw European culture as being “civilized” while indigenous culture was “barbaric,” oftentimes, viewing their “right” to impose European Christianity on the heathen populations, and viewing it as their right to take any land and resources they “discover.”
Instead of calling it what it was — a foreign invasion — the Europeans rebranded their conquest into a “discovery” to elicit an idealized and romanticized vision of adventure and exploration.
Contrary to the notions that we’ve been fed our entire lives as Americans, America is no exception from these colonial roots. We are not a shining light on the hill, fighting for freedom and justice and liberty like “Captain America” rushing into the breach. (Although I desperately wish it were.) Our history is one of foreign invasion of Native lands.
In fact, America has been really fucked-up to our Native populations. Our forefathers sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and then waged biological and conventional warfare to steal land and resources, and now, we celebrate that occasion by eating turkey and cranberry sauce and telling each other what we’re thankful for.

From a legal standpoint, the racist and Eurocentric notions of “Discovery” and colonization are embedded within the core of American jurisprudence. As every first year law school student learns in their Property class, the right of conquest means that Natives have no rights, not even to their own land. And the Supreme Court had the temerity to adopt the rebranding by enshrining it as the Discovery Doctrine.
On the first day of Property class, the very first case we discussed was Johnson v. M’Intosh, 21 U.S. 543 (1823), which lays out the very foundations of landownership in the United States. (Everyone should read this case. The coded language is astounding.)
At issue in Johnson was a land dispute. Plaintiffs, on the one hand, had purchased the land from the Piankeshaw Indians in 1775. On the other hand, the defendant was granted the same parcel of land from the United States government in 1818.
Guess who came out on the winning side?
Chief Justice John Marshall, on behalf of a unanimous Supreme Court, declared that after “the discovery of this immense continent,” Natives in American no longer had the “power to dispose of the soil, at their own will, to whomsoever they pleased” and that, consequently, “the plaintiffs do not exhibit a title which can be sustained in the Courts of the United States.” Id. at 572–574.
So . . . the U.S. has a monopoly on all of the land because it “discovered” the land. Quite the euphemism there.
Thus, from the very beginning, America has imposed conquest through a legalistic fiction, “discovery.” Obviously, the U.S. couldn’t have discovered the land if it was already inhabited. We simply took it and then subordinated the rights of the indigenous people.
To lend further credence to the racist and Eurocentric viewpoint of this case, look at the coded racial appeals used to justify the outcome of the European settlers (i.e. white people) over the Natives:
- Repeatedly, “civilized state”;
- “remote, heathen, and barbarous lands”;
- “not possessed by a Christian prince or people”;
- “civilized inhabitants”;
- “civilization and Christianity”; and
- countless others.
Does this shit sound familiar? White supremacists saying that they are trying to preserve their “European,” identity or “culture,” “Western civilization,” the notion of a “Christian” identity, nation, or peoples. (Hint: they’re all coded references to mean White people that non-Whites are dirty or yucky or barbaric or uncivilized.)
Above all, Johnson v. M’Intosh denies fundamental human rights and self-determination to indigenous peoples. Worse yet, the case gave it the imprimatur of law to justify war and genocide against Natives by concocting the legal doctrine of Discovery.
Since then, America has been rebranding shit up until today.⁵
American-Native Relations Today
Coinciding with Johnson v. M’Intosh, was the Indian Removal Act some seven years later in 1830, where Indians were forcibly relocated to present-day Oklahoma and an estimated 6,000 Natives died along the Trail of Tears.
Fast forward a few centuries to today, and America’s history is replete with atrocities and horrors by colonialists and the United States against the Natives. Sand Creek Massacre. The Mendocino War. Pontiac’s Rebellion. Just to name a few. And the U.S. Government’s response: Reservations and Casinos.
America’s race problem started with the original inhabitants of the land. We thought our European culture and our way of living (/being) was superior. So we thought it was okay and right for us to take the land and resources, to indoctrinate the inhabitants, and to steal everything. And then we said it was perfectly legal.
Among a myriad of other things, America needs to own up to its horrendous treatment of Natives. It needs to do more than reservations and casinos.
American can do better. America has to do better.
Footnotes
[1] Various Neo-nazi and white supremacist groups have tried to re-brand themselves as “white nationalists” and/or as the self-described “Alt-Right.” While they may vary in terms of their specific beliefs and their means and methods, they all subscribe to the notion that “white” European people should receive favorable treatment in society.
[2] Mass genocide of Natives, Slavery, Reconstruction, reparations for slaveholders, not freed slaves, erecting Confederate monuments, passing Jim Crow laws, mass incarceration, the “War on Drugs,” dog whistle politics, police abuse and murder of POC, etc.
[3] With all of the POC that are killed by white cops when white terrorists and murderers (like Dylan Roof) are mysteriously captured alive and unharmed, I seriously question anyone that thought race relations were doing “A-OK” in the U.S. before Charlottesville, but perhaps what they mean is that Charlottesville really shook people out of their apathy because they literally saw Swastika’s being openly waved and because a domestic terrorist attempted mass murder against anti-Nazi protestors.
[4] “Natives” is used because the terms “Indians” and “Native Americans” are both really fucked-up. (I’m also open to using other terms if you have suggestions.)
[5] Just as conquest became “Discovery,” other words have been utilized, either as euphemisms or as clever marketing scheme that is designed to mislead. Modern examples include the Tea Party, which evokes the historical Boston Tea party, a watershed moment in the American Revolution, when the colonies dumped tea into the Boston harbor in protest for British taxation without representation. Meanwhile, the modern day Tea Party advocates no taxation altogether, Grover Norquist-style. “Right to Work” is a deliberate misnomer, bare-naked union-starving initiative designed to permit workers to opt-out of union dues to create massive free-rider problem. “Pro-Life” is in actuality, merely anti-abortion. At most, they are “pro-birth,” but to call them pro-life is a logical leap because the birthing of a child is only the beginning of their life. In order to live up to the moniker of “pro-life,” there needs to be a robust child development platform, including early education, child food supplemental programs, after school care, etc. Yet many pro-lifers are adamantly opposed to the so-called welfare state.
