US not a nation of immigrants (Dunbar-Ortiz)

Dunbar-Ortiz, Mitch Jeserich (Letters & Politics, KPFA); Xochitl, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly

A History of Settler Colonialism

(Letters and Politics, Sept. 13, 2021) Guest: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is a renown scholar of indigenous Native American and radical history. She is the renowned author of the award-winning book An Indigenous People's History of the United States. Her latest book is called Not A Nation of Immigrants: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion.

This new book debunks the pervasive and self-congratulatory MYTH that the United States of America is proudly founded by and for immigrants. Instead it urges readers to realize there is a more complex and honest history of our United States.

Whether in debates or discussions about immigration around the kitchen table, many Americans, regardless of party affiliation, will proudly say that we are "a nation of immigrants."

In this bold new book, historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz asserts that this false ideology is harmful and dishonest because it serves to mask and diminish the US’s history of

• settler colonialism
• genocide
• white supremacy
• racist slavery
• structural inequality

all of which we still grapple with today. Dunbar-Ortiz 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 1960's demands for:

• decolonialization
• justice
• reparations
• social equality.

Moreover, Dunbar-Ortiz charges that this feel good — and inaccurate — story promotes a benign narrative of progress, obscuring that the country was founded with violence as a settler state.

It has been imperialist since its inception.

While some of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, others are descendants of white settlers who arrived as violent colonizers to displace those who were here since time immemorial.

Still others are descendants of those who were kidnapped and forced here against their will, such as Africans brought by force.

This paradigm-shifting new book from the highly acclaimed author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States charges that we need to stop believing and perpetuating this simplistic and ahistorical idea and embrace the real (though often horrific) history of the United States. More