An edition of Not a Nation of Immigrants (2021)

Not a Nation of Immigrants

Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion

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Not a Nation of Immigrants
Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, Roxanne ...
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August 18, 2023 | History
An edition of Not a Nation of Immigrants (2021)

Not a Nation of Immigrants

Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion

  • 4.0 (1 rating)
  • 3 Want to read
  • 2 Have read

Whether in political debates or discussions about immigration around the kitchen table, many Americans, regardless of party affiliation, will say proudly that we are a nation of immigrants. In this bold new book, historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz asserts this ideology is harmful and dishonest because it serves to mask and diminish the US's history of settler colonialism, genocide, white supremacy, slavery, and structural inequality, all of which we still grapple with today. She explains that the idea that we are living in a land of opportunity--founded and built by immigrants--was a convenient response by the ruling class and its brain trust to the 1960s demands for decolonialization, justice, reparations, and social equality. Moreover, Dunbar-Ortiz charges that this feel good--but inaccurate--story promotes a benign narrative of progress, obscuring that the country was founded in violence as a settler state, and imperialist since its inception. While some of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, others are descendants of white settlers who arrived as colonizers to displace those who were here since time immemorial, and still others are descendants of those who were kidnapped and forced here against their will. This paradigm shifting new book charges that we need to stop believing and perpetuating this simplistic and ahistorical idea and embrace the real (and often horrific) history of the United States.

Publish Date
Publisher
Beacon Press
Language
English

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Book Details


The Physical Object

Pagination
392
Weight
0.369

Edition Identifiers

Open Library
OL38067192M
ISBN 13
9780807055588

Work Identifiers

Work ID
OL24520419W

Source records

Excerpts

The term “genocide,” both in popular use and often by historians and other scholars, even legal scholars, is often misused to indicate only extreme examples of mass murder, the death of vast numbers of people, as in the Holocaust, or in the midst of aggressive warfare, as, for instance, in Cambodia, thereby dismissing Native and African American claims of US genocide.
Page 27, added by reshelved.
The history of the United States is a history of settler colonialism. The objective of settler colonialism is to terminate Indigenous peoples as nations and communities with land bases in order to make the land available to European settlers. Extermination and assimilation are the methods used. This is the very definition of *genocide*.
Page 23, added by reshelved.

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