The same myopia that led many Americans to believe it somehow
justified to launch an illegal, preemptive war against Iraq
unfortunately seems to be a play in the campaign currently underway
to tax Native American casinos located on sovereign Native American
land in California.
Dear Editor,
The same myopia that led many Americans to believe it somehow justified to launch an illegal, preemptive war against Iraq unfortunately seems to be a play in the campaign currently underway to tax Native American casinos located on sovereign Native American land in California. The Prop 68 ads feature agonized white people (with a few people of color thrown in an attempt to detract from the racist nature of the message) looking into the camera, eyes brimming with tears of righteous indignation, positing the rhetorical question: “When did Indians casinos get our OK to make $8 billion a year? I didn’t vote for that.”
My response? Why should Native American tribes need our permission to make money? Did we need their permission when we as a white race stole their land, wiped many of them out with disease and attack, ethnically cleansed them from their land and then imprisoned the survivors in reservations?
Did they vote for that? The only reason gaming was confined to reservations in the first place was so that our pure Anglo communities wouldn’t be sullied by so ignoble an activity as gambling. It’s only when the money started rolling in for the Native Americans that we suddenly discovered how unfair the system was.
What little of the remaining land that we did not steal from the Native Americans is now legally recognized as sovereign. In other words, it is rightfully theirs to do with as they will. So please, please, enough already with the weepy, whiney, teary protestations. I mean, really, I haven’t seen so many white people shedding tears since Ronald Reagan died.
Ronald O. Richards, White Person (Non-Weepy)
