Time's "Brief History of Intolerance"

A Brief History of Intolerance in America

This photo essay contains 13 images. There are four references to Catholics, three to Jews, two to Asians and Indians, and one each to blacks, Mormons, and quasi-religious groups.

The two references to Indians are:1883
The Department of Interior declares many Native American rituals to be "offenses" punishable by jail sentences of up to 30 years. Chief Duck, above, was a member the Blackfoot tribe.

1890
On Dec. 29, soldiers massacred more than 150 Lakota Sioux, including Chief Big Foot, near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota.I guess the gallery is slanted toward religious intolerance to show that bigotry against Muslims is nothing new. If you consider Wounded Knee a response to the Ghost Dance movement, the Indian references are religious also.

Odd that Time didn't mention Latinos or immigrants such as the Irish, since those are huge examples of historical prejudice. But okay.



Someone on Facebook said she was "honestly shocked + awed that Indians were included **at all**." My response:Interesting that the first Indian example was in 1883. TIME could've done a whole essay on intolerance against Indians. Broken treaties, land grabs, massacres, the Trail of Tears, the Long Walk, etc. Not to mention the Spanish oppression of Indians in California, the Southwest, and the Caribbean. (If you're going to cover British America before 1776, why not Spanish America also?)Another person's response:The Euro-encounter with "Africans" and "Indians" is the racial script that informs so much of today's neoracial politics :-(More thoughts

Before it was Indians, blacks, immigrants, Jews, and Commies. Now it's gays, welfare recipients, illegal immigrants, Muslims, and socialists. The labels change but the hate remains the same.

The people in the first group are still hated, of course. As are women, a perennial target.

How about if we round up all the Muslim Americans and put them in concentration camps? That worked for all the Japanese Americans who were terrorizing us during World War II, right? Same problem, same solution.

Don't like that idea? Okay, how about if we march them all to Alaska and hope they die along the way? It worked in the case of the Trail of Tears, right?

For more on the subject, see Yesterday's Cherokees = Today's Muslims and Mosque Celebrates Multiculturalism.

Below:  Custer's valiant troops make a last stand against the heathen savages. (This is the illustration for Wounded Knee, but I think it's Custer's Last Stand. The victims at Wounded Knee weren't on horseback.)