We must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. Th history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest between conuerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and domnated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking peoplo, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners (查看原文)
"Jacksonian Democracy" had tried to create a consensus of support for the system to make it secure. Blacks, Indians, women, and foreigners were clearly otside the consensus. But also, white working people, in large numbers, declared themselves outside (查看原文)
Las Casas tells how the Spaniards "grew more conceited every day" and after a while refuse to walk any distance. They "rode the back of Indians if they were in a hurry" or were carried on hammock by Indians running in relays. "In this case they also had Indians carry large leaves to shade them from the sun and others to fan them with goose wings." (查看原文)
The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you will never know what justice is.
Women were important and respected in Iroquois society. Families were matrilineal. That is, the family line went down through the female members, whose husbands joined the family, while sons who married then joined their wives' families. Each extended family lived in a 'long house'. When a woman wanted a divorce, she set her husband's things outside the door. (查看原文)
It is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance. That makes it a biased account, one that leans in a certain direction. I am not troubled by that, because the mountain of history books under which we all stand leans so heavily in the other direction --- so tremblingly respectful of states and statesmen and so disrespectful, by inattention, to people's movements --- that we need some counterforce to avoid being crushed into submission. (查看原文)
Women were important and respected in Iroquois society. Families were matrilineal. That is, the family line went down through the female members, whose husbands joined the family, while sons who married then joined their wives’ families. Each extended family lived in a “long house ".When a woman wanted a divorce, she set her husband's thing outside the door.
Families were grouped in clans, and a dozen or more clans might make up a village. The senior women in the village named the men who represented the clans at village and tribal councils. They also named the forty-nine chiefs who were the ruling council for the Five Nation confederacy of the Iroquois. The women attended clan meetings, stood behind the circle of men who spoke and voted, and removed the men from office if they s... (查看原文)
