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by Clueless Ned on January 21st, 2007

Clueless Ned

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Who are the biggest victims of racism?

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  • by Sweet T on January 21st, 2008

    Sweet T

    I think it is the Native Americans.


    The European colonization of the Americas nearly obliterated the populations and cultures of the Native Americans. During the 16th through 19th centuries, their populations were ravaged by conflicts with European explorers and colonists, disease, displacement, enslavement, internal warfare as well as high rate of intermarriage.[3] Scholars now believe that, among the various contributing factors, epidemic disease was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the American natives.[4][5][6]

    The first Native American group encountered by Christopher Columbus in 1492, were the Island Arawaks (more properly called the Taino) of Boriquen (Puerto Rico), the (Quisqueya) of the Dominican Republic, the Cubanacan (Cuba). It is said that of the 250,000 to 1 million Island Arawaks, only about 500 survived by the year 1550, and the group was considered extinct before 1650.[citation needed] Yet DNA studies show that the genetic contribution of the Taino to that region continues, and the mitochondrial DNA studies of the Taino are said to show relationships to the Northern Indigenous Nations, such as Inuit (Eskimo) and others.[7]

    In the sixteenth century, Spaniards and other Europeans brought horses to the Americas. Some of these animals escaped and began to breed and increase their numbers in the wild. Ironically, the horse had originally evolved in the Americas, but the early American horse became game for the earliest humans and became extinct about 7,000 BC, just after the end of the last ice age.[citation needed] The re-introduction of the horse had a profound impact on Native American culture in the Great Plains of North America. As a new mode of travel the horse made it possible for some tribes to greatly expand their territories, exchange goods with neighboring tribes, and more easily capture game.

    European settlers brought diseases against which the Native Americans had no natural immunity. Chicken pox and measles, though common and rarely fatal among Europeans, often proved deadly to Native Americans. Smallpox, always a terrible disease, proved particularly deadly to Native American populations.[8] Epidemics often immediately followed European exploration, sometimes destroying entire villages. While precise figures are difficult to arrive at, some historians estimate that up to 80% of some Native populations died due to European diseases.[9]

    In 1617-1619 smallpox wiped out 90% of the Massachusetts Bay Native Americans.[10] As it had done elsewhere, the virus wiped out entire population groups of Native Americans. It reached Mohawks in 1634,[11] the Lake Ontario in 1636, and the lands of the Iroquois by 1679. During the 1770s, smallpox killed at least 30% of the West Coast Native Americans.[12] Smallpox epidemics in 1780-1782 and 1837-1838 brought devastation and drastic depopulation among the Plain Indians.[13][14] By 1832, the federal government established a smallpox vaccination program for Native Americans (The Indian Vaccination Act of 1832).[

    Comments

    • You make some good points here but, that was a different day and age and disease really can't be counted as a act of racism. Indians, Europeans, Asians...just about all mankind is guilty of racism, genocide, mayhem, conquering, enslavement, spreading of diseases. This is human nature and we as a species have a long way to go on the ladder of evolution before we can overcome our dark side. At least we today can recognize our faults, although it another matter on how we deal with on a planet that is small with limited resources and no technology to travel else where.

      Chaos /mayhem as always been this planets default setting.

      deltabtry

      by deltabtry on January 21st, 2008

    • Interesting viewpoint. I dont believe disease is the only thing that wiped out the Native Americans.

      Sweet T

      by Sweet T on January 21st, 2008

    • In short this is what humans have been hard wired to do:

      Racism=prejudice, which is to prejudge, and to prejudge is a survival instinct. If we can refine this and cultivate it to benefit mankind then and only then will racism end. To right laws and force humans to comply only mask the problem. African history/Middle East/Southern Europe/America's and the Far East is a perfect example of laws masking the hatred. Once governments fall the hatred makes a hasty return.

      deltabtry

      by deltabtry on January 21st, 2008

    • We are not wiped out. We are still here. In very low numbers sadly. And someone had said this racism towards us (native Americans) was a different day and age. That is wrong. We are still very much a target of racism as much now as we were then. Where I live, small reservation outside of Montreal, Quebec, we are considered savages and pieces of dirt because we're not "French".

      Cmo519

      by Cmo519 on January 7th, 2012

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