All we take for granted has been built on genocide

I experienced an odd sensation today as I was on the subway today. Today was Columbus Day but I had to go in to work for part of the day anyway. The book I am currently reading is King Leopold's Ghost, a pretty horrifying history of the Congo under colonialism.

Reading about colonial genocide in Africa on Columbus Day. Had a kind of irony to it.

I have been ambivalent, in the litteral meaning of the word, towards Columbus Day for years now. I celebrate America and Columbus' "discovery" of the "New World" because the result of his discovery and the ultimate founding of America is that my family, myself included, is alive and thriving today. Without America, my family would have been exterminated in the genocide of Nazi Germany if not before that in the genocide of the pogroms in Tsarist Russia and later Stalin's genocide in the Soviet Union.

But I am reminded every Columbus day of the genocides on which the founding of America was based. My family had a refuge from genocide because of a previous genocide committed against the natives of America. How's THAT for ambivalence?

King Leopold II set out to turn the entire Congo basin into his own personal colony. It wasn't a colony of Belgium until later. It was a colony held by a single man. According to some estimates, ten million people were killed so that one man could make the modern equivalent of $1 billion. Those people were killed to keep costs down in production first of ivory, then of rubber. Eventually, outrage from Britain, the US, France and Germany led to the transfer of the Congo from Leopold to Belgium...without much change in the genocidal practices.

Those familiar with Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness will be familiar with King Leopold's Congo. Kurtz was based on real people, and much of what is described in that fictional book was taken straight from Conrad's own journals while he worked on a steamboat going up and down the Congo. What Conrad wrote was fiction...but it was about the most factual fiction one can find. Conrad witnessed genocide and did his best to convey what he saw in his book.

One slight technicality. Technically it wasn't genocide because the goal was not the extermination of a race, but rather a profit. The result was not so different though. About 50% of the population of the Congo basin died in turning Leopold's profit. And the echoes of that time continue to reverberate through Africa today. The Congo is one of the world's richest nations in terms of natural resources. But the exploitation of that wealth leaves most of the population destitute and tortured.

The same applies to the colonies of Britain, France, Germany, etc. The outrage that those nations felt towards Leopold's horrific regime was hypocritical since they too did the exact same kinds of practices. France's expoitation of rubber next door to Leopold's Congo was almost identical to Leopold's...right down to an estimated 50% reduction in the native population in the process.

This is the history that creates modern Africa--colonial genocide for profit.

And this is exactly how America was founded, and without America, I would not be here today.

Now I do not glorify the "noble savage." That Romantic concept was just as false as the concept of a slothful, thieving savage that the "noble savage" idea was a reaction to. The "savages" of America, Africa and elsewhere were no more or less savage than the so-called "civilized" nations...they just didn't have as good weapons. So THEY were the savages, and the people who wiped them out for fun and profit were "civilized."

We are not much better today. Everything we take for granted was built on genocide. America was built on genocide. Rubber was and to some degree still is harvested through an oppressive system tantamount to genocide. Our clothing today is made in sweat shops that fail to adequately support those who work so hard for our cheap prices. Eighty percent of the uranium used in the atomic bombs that ended WW II came from mines in the Congo run along similar lines to the genocidal system of King Leopold. Recently I saw a segment on Al Gore's Current TV that showed in some detail the way gold is mined in the modern Congo, and much of it was reminiscent of what I read about King Leopold's exploitation of ivory and rubber, and what is described in Heart of Darkness. When I bought the engagement and wedding rings, the diamond and gold probably were extracted thanks to near slave labor.

I was raised with the idea of "never again." To me this didn't just mean never again for genocide against Jews. It meant no more genocide...no more horrors like those I read in Heart of Darkness as I grew up.

Rwanda, Burundi, Darfur...sweat shops, Chinese prison labor, sub-minimum wage jobs right here in the US...

We all benefit from atrocities. And, let's face it, that is the history of civilization in a nutshell. From Babylon and Egypt, through Harappa and China, right to Belgium, America and Britain, we all benefit from atrocity.

In fact, we often glorify atrocity. Some of the perpetrators of the Catholic Inquisition and slaughter of American Natives are now sainted by the Catholic Church. There are statues glorifying slave holding Southerners here in America, and glorifying King Leopold II in Belgium. In Japan Hideyoshi is considered the "George Washington of Japan," but he also led the slaughter of many Koreans, a group still oppressed by Japan. And there is Columbus Day in America, a holiday that, without intending to, glorifies genocide.

How do we deal with this? Ignoring the issue is the most common way of dealing with it. Belgium has museums, monuments and palaces glorifying King Leopold, but nothing that admits, let alone makes up for, the genocide in the Congo. In America we have history books that claim that slavery "wasn't so bad" or that the blacks were worse off after being freed or that the Civil War was not fought over slavery.

Considering the problem something in the past that we can now ignore is another one. But blacks in America are still far from equal, even though slavery was outlawed more than 100 years ago and blacks were technically given full civil rights about when I was born. Africa still suffers from the echoes of colonialism, failing to thrive despite having rich natural resources.

For those who take seriously the idea of "never again" and who recognize that we today have a responsibility to make up for the sins of our fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers, what do we do. I have suggestions, but they are not any kind of fundamental wisdom. They are small ways I work to make the world better and to help those who were wronged so that my family could survive and thrive. I have written about some of them, like donations to the NAACP Voter Fund and the Indigenous Democratic Network and loans through Kiva. But I don't have any fundamental way to reconcile the fact that my life today and the life of my son depend on past genocide. I am open to suggestions.

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