Is the United States Certificate of Degree of Indian or Native Alaskan Blood inherently racist?
Why don’t you tell us what you think?
“Agencies which provide services” mostly avoided the problem in my state by providing services to anyone who walked in the door. The fact that they were named for and engaged with a particular section of the community was close enough – that and anyone poor enough and needy enough to walk in the door probably deserved a bit of help anyway.
Inherently, I believe the certificate is nothing more than a geneological document. The document itself is independent of the concept of race.
~Max
No. It doesn’t express prejudice nor does it assert superiority.
Why, do you think it is racist?
This is the first time I’ve ever heard of the concept of the US government officially issuing a “certificate of degree”, for ancestry of any kind. And it surprises me.
But I think we’re going to be seeing a LOT more of this in the next couple decades. And not just for Indians.
Because the issue of reparations for blacks is not going to fade away. It will eventually become law.
And when that happens, there’s going to be a lot of money given away–maybe
$150,000 or even $1million to every black person. And everybody is going to want to grab some of that cash… The only way to determine who is “black enough”* to deserve the money is going to be an official government certificate like the one in the OP.
DNA testing is already popular; people give them a Christmas gifts. So I can see the day when DNA certficates are as acceptable and as common as social security numbers. .
*(Hey, those are Biden’s words, not mine)
There are 37 million black people (at least – if that kind of money were floating around, there would be a lot more) in the United States. One million dollars to each would be $37 trillion. Seems unlikely.
37 million people who self identify as black. When you do genes testing on everyone (and everyone will want to if that kind of money is on the line), you’ll likely find a whole lot more who have at least 1 drop of blood that qualify as black.
This thread (180 posts as I write) is substantially the same concept albeit with a different precipitating example:
IMO all of these tendentious discussions can be summarized in a few short paragraphs. To wit:
If there had never been any racial awareness there would now be no race-based discrimination or race-based inequality. Right now there is both a high degree of racial awareness and a high degree of race-based discrimination and race-based inequality.
If we fix the racial awareness first, that will entrench the inequality but render it invisible. If we fix the inequality first, that will necessitate delaying fixing the awareness and may in fact increase racial awareness in the interim.
Some people would love the consequences of door number 1. So they disingenuously claim that the delays and increases inherent in door number 2 are unconscionable and make the problem worse not better.
Others understand that we don’t fix the accumulated consequences of centuries of neglect by simply screwing our eyes shut, declaring “problem solved”, and moving on. Instead actual work and actual change is required. Which requires paying deliberate close attention to what we’re working on: matters of race.
Thank you.
If there had never been any racial awareness, we would still have certificates of degree of Indian or Native Alaskan blood. As I said before, these are genealogical documents. They are used by the tribes to determine eligibility for tribal membership because they are considered documentation of tribal ancestry.
There are literally lists of people known to belong to each tribe a hundred plus years ago, and if you have convincing evidence that you are a descendent of one of them, you can get the certificate. Then you take that certificate to the tribe when you apply for membership.
~Max
It’s this exactly. And the amount of financial benefits you receive are often based on “blood purity” so documentation is important. The documentation is initiated by the tribal members themselves so it’s nothing to do with racism; it’d be similar to African Americans choosing to trace their ancestry back to pre-slavery times.
Still waiting for the OP to come back and give their own opinion…
So, @Ynnad , got anything to add to your bare OP?
I’m failing to see how this certificate is all that different from my Certificate of Citizenship.
Hey, if you want an inherently racist certificate, somewhere in my cupboard I have a Population Registration certificate from the apartheid South African government that certifies my race. Not sure if I should burn it, or keep it as a historical artefact.
Reading about this CDIB, it doesn’t sound like it is used to discriminate against Native Americans, so I don’t think it’s inherently racist. It does seem like there are some maybe-racist practises in the issuing, like problems for descendants of freed slaves of the Cherokee who were supposed to be admitted into the tribe.
It is more or less meaningless. The thing that really counts is if you are a registered member of a recognized tribe. Which requires anything from both parents to not even a drop. Each tribe sets their own rules.
Let us not hijack this into Reparations. No one will ever be getting a check due to being black.
This creeps me out. Here in Virginia until the 1970’s we had miscegination laws. Our eugenics laws defined race for whites, blacks, and native americans well into the last half of the 20th century. None of this was based on science- it was simple racism given the name of eugenics. It was shameful in the 70’s. It is horrifying to see the same principle applied 50 years later. Truly, wtf??
Get used to it, because it’s coming back… But this time, it’s coming with science. See my post #5 above.
There will be DNA samples taken from every citizen, defining your racial purity. (and thus your eligibility to receive payments.
And it will be stored in a government data base.
Big Brother’s on the way.
But don’t worry, when the government defines racial purity, that’s a good thing … What could go wrong?
Not gonna happen.
Genetic markers for racial classification are a dicey proposition at best. In the south in particularly, lots of folks have ancestry spread all from hell to breakfast. No way to use the ‘one drop rule’, particularly if you are looking at 1000 different loci/ restriction fragments that ‘define’ a race. And which companies tests are you going to use? How does one validate a population of a given race to build the database from?
Not looking for this to happen in any rational way, ever. The problem arises when some demagogue tries to legalize his/her subjective race definitions based on appearence, smell, or some other idiot idea.
Perhaps so, but I would distinguish application of racist discrimatory practices from mere geneology. The certificate relevant to this thread is not dependant on any particular genetic marker for racial classification, nor does it really depend upon genetic tests or the concept of race at all. You can apply for one if you have evidence of ancestry going back to a known member of one of the listed Indian or Alaskan tribes.
Perhaps it is racist for the tribes to precondition benefits on the issuance of this certificate. Even assuming so, I do not think it follows that the certificate itself, or the concept of certifying Indian or Native Alaskan ancestry, is inherently racist.
~Max