Unsettling Narratives

The master narrative of American history depicts the triumph of “civilization” over “savagery,” with Angloamerican settlers braving the wilderness to assert their “right” to establish a state over which they would exert complete control. It is a story of constant and inevitable progress, of racial and gendered hierarchies, and of the transformation of land and people into property. It overwrites the stories of others—particularly the peoples indigenous to these lands—erasing their histories, worldviews, and often even their existence, masking the violence inherent to colonization. This chapter sets the stage for the construction of narratives that better account for the actual histories of all peoples within the United States, thereby providing a more realistic basis for meaningful change.

Racial Realities

In the 1960s, global decolonization and the civil rights movement inspired hope for structural change in the United States, but more than fifty years later, racial disparities in income and wealth, education, employment, health, housing, and incarceration remain entrenched. In addition, we have seen a resurgence of overt White supremacy following the election of President Trump. This chapter considers the potential of movements like Black Lives Matter and the Standing Rock water protectors in light of the experiences of the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, and other efforts at community empowerment in the “long sixties.”

Mapping New Worlds

There is no blueprint for the decolonization of a settler colonial state. To the extent that racial subordination is rooted in and perpetuates colonial relationships of domination and subordination, its eradication will require us to imagine how we can implement the right of all peoples to self-determination. This chapter suggests that the process will involve independent understandings of state, nation, and identity; the development of strategies to empower our communities; and engagement with or support of grassroots movements for self-determination.

Others of Color

This chapter considers how the “dynamic of difference” is constructed and maintained with respect to migrant Others. It addresses their racialization, particularly as “foreign,” as well as ways in which they are racially conflated and manipulated. Assimilationism is critiqued as both a form of conceptual disappearance and an illusion intended to maintain settler hegemony. The social and legal control of land, population, and opportunity are viewed in terms of the functions they serve within the American settler colonial state.

Settler Colonialism

Colonialism is a form of sociopolitical organization in which the colonizing power not only exploits the land, labor, and natural resources of the colonized but also attempts to eradicate their cultures, histories, and independent identities. As such, it is inherently genocidal. This chapter provides an overview of classic or external colonialism, internal colonialism, and settler colonialism, developing a framework that will be applied throughout the rest of the text.

Introduction

Race has always been essential to the establishment and maintenance of structures of power and privilege in the United States, and communities of color remain racially subordinated. This book analyzes racial privilege and subjugation in the United States as a function of ongoing settler colonialism.

Conclusion

Settler colonial theory provides a conceptual framework for understanding the origins of racial disparities and injustices in the United States. International law supports Indigenous rights, and the rights of all peoples to self-determination. Self-determination can be exercised in an infinite variety of ways, and any action that empowers people can contribute to their decolonization.

Constitutional Protection and the Dynamic of Difference

In American law and culture, the presumption is that the Constitution’s guarantees of due process and equal protection will effectively rid society of racial discrimination. In fact, however, the “dynamic of difference” inherent to all colonial relations persists. This chapter considers how the plenary power doctrine, equal protection jurisprudence, and the presumptive goal of assimilation into the dominant society all contribute to the maintenance of structural racism.

Enslaved Labor and Strategies of Subjugation

The Indigenous lands appropriated by Angloamerican settlers could be made profitable only by a large force of low-cost labor. Toward this end, both American Indians and Africans were enslaved, and the settlers developed strategies of subjugation to control them and to maximize profits. These included the construction of persons as property, and their control through racialization, forced reproduction, spatial containment, and social control through violence and terror. Understanding this history allows us to see how these functions continue to be reflected in contemporary forms of structural racism.

Decolonization and Self-Determination

International law recognizes the unique status of Indigenous peoples and the right of all peoples to self-determination. However, it is also largely controlled by states whose primary interest is in maintaining their own power, wealth, and “territorial integrity.” Considering what the right to self-determination encompasses and how it differs from the law protecting “minorities” from discrimination, this chapter suggests that decolonization of settler states will not be implemented by international legal structures but must be undertaken by the peoples themselves.