Raining on the Thanksgiving Day Parade

Raining on the Thanksgiving Day parade: "Redefining" the holiday is a failed

project

By Robert Jensen

Created Nov 13 2007 - 8:53am

After years of being constantly annoyed and often angry about the historical

denial built into Thanksgiving Day, I published an essay in November 2005

suggesting we replace the feasting with fasting and create a National Day of

Atonement to acknowledge the genocide of indigenous people that is central

to the creation of the United States.

I expected criticism from right-wing and centrist people, given their common

commitment to this country's distorted self-image that supports the

triumphalist/supremacist notions about the United States so common in

conventional politics, and I got plenty of such critique. But I was

surprised by the resistance from liberals -- even some on the left,

including a considerable number of my friends.

The most common argument went something like this: OK, it's true that the

Thanksgiving Day mythology is rooted in a fraudulent story -- about the

European invaders coming in peace to the "New World," eager to cooperate

with indigenous people -- which conveniently ignores the reality of European

barbarism in the conquest of the continent. But we can reject the culture's

self-congratulatory attempts to rewrite history, I have been told, and come

together on Thanksgiving to celebrate the love and connections among family

and friends.

The argument that we can ignore the collective cultural definition of

Thanksgiving and create our own meaning in private has always struck me as

odd. This commitment to Thanksgiving puts these left/radical critics in the

position of internalizing one of the central messages promoted by the

ideologues of capitalism -- that individual behavior in private is more

important than collective action in public. The claim that through private

action we can create our own reality is one of the key tenets of a predatory

corporate capitalism that naturalizes unjust hierarchy, a part of the

overall project of discouraging political struggle and encouraging us to

retreat into a private realm where life is defined by consumption.

So this November, rather than mount another attack on the national mythology

around Thanksgiving -- a mythology that amounts to a kind of holocaust

denial, and which has been critiqued for many years by many people -- I want

to explore why so many who understand and accept this critique still

celebrate Thanksgiving, and why rejecting such celebrations sparks such

controversy.

Once we know, what do we do?

At this point in history, anyone who wants to know this reality of U.S.

history -- that the extermination of indigenous peoples was, both in a

technical legal sense and in common usage, genocide -- can easily find the

resources to know. If this idea is new, I would recommend two books, David

E. Stannard's American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World

and Ward Churchill's A Little Matter of Genocide. While the concept of

genocide, which is defined as the deliberate attempt "to destroy, in whole

or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group," came into

existence after World War II, it accurately describes the program that

Europeans and their descendants pursued to acquire the territory that would

become the United States of America.

Once we know that, what do we do? The moral response -- that is, the

response that would be consistent with the moral values around justice and

equality that most of us claim to hold -- would be a

truth-and-reconciliation process that would not only correct the historical

record but also redistribute land and wealth. In the white-supremacist and

patriarchal society in which we live, operating within the parameters set by

a greed-based capitalist system, such a process is hard to imagine in the

short term. So, the question for left/radical people is: What political

activity can we engage in to keep alive this kind of critique until a time

when social conditions might make a truly progressive politics possible?

In short: Once we know, what do we do in a world that is not yet ready to

know, or knows but will not deal with the consequences of that knowledge?

The general answer to that question is simple, though often difficult to put

into practice: We must keep speaking honestly, as often as possible, in as

many venues as possible. We must resist the conventional wisdom. We must

reject the cultural amnesia. We must refuse to be polite when politeness

means capitulation to lies.

I have not always been strong enough to meet even these basic moral

obligations. Most of us in positions of unearned privilege and power would

be wise to avoid pontificating about our moral superiority and political

courage, given our routine failures. Can any of us not point to moments when

we went along to get along? Have any of us done enough to bring our lives in

line with the values we claim to hold?

Still, we need to help each other tell the truth, even when the truth is not

welcome.

The illusion of redefining Thanksgiving

Imagine that Germany won World War II and that a Nazi regime endured for

some decades, eventually giving way to a more liberal state with a softer

version of German-supremacist ideology. Imagine that a century later,

Germans celebrated a holiday offering a whitewashed version of German/Jewish

history that ignored that holocaust and the deep anti-Semitism of the

culture. Imagine that the holiday provided a welcomed time for families and

friends to gather and enjoy food and conversation. Imagine that businesses,

schools and government offices closed on this day.

What would we say about such a holiday? Would we not question the

distortions woven into such a celebration? Would we not demand a more

accurate historical account? Would we not, in fact, denounce such a holiday

as grotesque?

Now, imagine that left/liberal Germans -- those who were critical of the

power structure that created that distorted history and who in other

settings would challenge the political uses of those distortions -- put

aside their critique and celebrated the holiday with their fellow citizens,

claiming to ignore the meaning of the holiday created by the dominant

culture.

What would we say about such people? Would we not question their commitment

to the principles they claim to hold? Would we not demand a more courageous

politics?

Comparisons to the Nazis are routinely overused and typically hyperbolic,

but this is directly analogous. These are fair, albeit painful, questions

for all of us.

Left/liberals who want to claim they are rejecting that European-supremacist

and racist use of Thanksgiving and "redefining" the holiday in private

clearly avoid the obvious: We don't define holidays individually -- the idea

of a holiday is rooted in its collective, shared meaning. When the dominant

culture defines a holiday in a certain fashion, one can't pretend to

redefine it in private. One either accepts the dominant definition or

resists it, publicly and privately.

Of course people often struggle for control over the meaning of symbols and

holidays, but typically we engage in such battles when we believe there is

some positive aspect of the symbol or holiday worth fighting for. For

example, Christians -- some of whom believe that Christmas should focus on

the values of universal love and world peace rather than on orgiastic

consumption -- may resist that commercialization and argue in public and

private for a different approach to the holiday. Those people typically

continue to celebrate Christmas, but in ways consistent with those values.

In that case, people are trying to recover and/or reinforce something that

they believe is positive because of values rooted in a historical tradition.

Those folks struggle over the meaning of Christmas because they believe the

core of Christianity is experienced through the people we touch, not the

products we purchase. In that endeavor, Christians are arguing the culture

has gone astray and lost the positive historical grounding of the holiday.

But what is positive in the historical events that define Thanksgiving? What

tradition are we trying to return to? I have no quarrel with designating a

day (or days) that would allow people to take a break from our often manic

work routines and appreciate the importance of community, encouraging all of

us to be grateful for what we have. But if that is the goal, why yoke it to

Thanksgiving Day and a history of celebrating European/white dominance and

conquest? Trying to transform Thanksgiving Day into a true day of

thanksgiving, it seems to me, is possible only by letting go of this

holiday, not by remaining rooted in it. If there were a major shift in the

culture and a majority of people could confront these historical realities,

perhaps the last Thursday in November could be so transformed. But that

shift and transformation are, to say the least, not yet here.

For too long, I ignored these troubling questions. To get along, I went

along. I buried my concerns to avoid making trouble. But in recent years

that has become more difficult. So, this year I want to acknowledge my past

failures to raise these issues and commit not only to renouncing

Thanksgiving publicly but also to refusing to participate in any celebration

of it privately.

The choices: Make people comfortable by engaging or by disengaging

Obviously there are people in the United States -- indigenous and

otherwise -- who do not celebrate Thanksgiving or who mark it, in private

and/or in public, as a day of mourning [1].

Also obvious is that there are people who may not have a family or community

with which they celebrate such holidays; it's important to remember that

there are people on such holidays who are alone and/or lonely, and to them

these political questions may seem irrelevant.

But for those of us who do get invited to traditional Thanksgiving Day

dinners, how do we remain true to our stated political and moral principles?

I think we have two choices.

We can go to the Thanksgiving gatherings put on by friends and family,

determined to raise these issues and willing to take the risk of alienating

those who want to enjoy the day without politics. Or, we can refuse to go to

such a gathering and make it known why we're not attending, which means

taking the risk of alienating those who want to enjoy the day without

politics.

This year, I've decided to disengage and explain why to the people who

invited me. These are people I love, yet who have made a different decision.

My love for them has not diminished, and I trust the conversation with them

about this and other political/moral questions will continue.

Once I make that decision, of course I also have the option of participating

in a public event that resists Thanksgiving. I'm not aware of one happening

in my community, and because of commitments to other political projects I

didn't feel I could organize an effective event in time for this

Thanksgiving Day. But on the assumption that others may feel this way, I

have started thinking about what kind of public gathering could make such a

political statement effectively, and in the future I hope to find others who

are interested in such an event locally.

So, what will I do on Thanksgiving Day this year? I'll probably spend part

of the day alone. Maybe I'll take a long walk and think about all this. I'll

try to be kind and decent to the people I bump into during the day. I'll

miss the company of friends and family who are gathering, and I'll try to

reflect on why I've made this choice and why this question matters to me.

I'll think about why others made the choices they made.

But this year, whatever I do, I won't celebrate Thanksgiving. I'm going to

let that parade pass me by.

_______

About author Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of

Texas at Austin and a member of the board of the Third Coast Activist

Resource Center [2]. He is the author of The Heart of Whiteness: Race,

Racism, and White Privilege [3] and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to

Claim Our Humanity [4]. He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu [5].

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their

spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their

government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are

suffering deeply in spirit,

and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public

debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have

patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning

back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at

stake."

-Thomas Jefferson