When I first read the article by CityWorldNews, “Native American Council Offers Amnesty to 240 Million Undocumented Whites”, the first thing I thought about was the controversy on immigration now. That article talks about Native Americans offering amnesty to the illegal whites in America. In my head, the article was describing the current ongoing fight of Dreamers to attain citizenship. It is ironic to think that it could have been whites asking for an amnesty, but today it is mainly Hispanics fighting for citizenship; fighting for rights in a country they’ve lived and worked for years. This past week thinking a lot more about colonization, made me realize we’re demanding citizenship from people who originally didn’t own the land, from people who believed their customs and skin color were superior to the indigenous people living here. Today, the fight for an amnesty is much more than obtaining rights, it is also proving to the country that we’re valuable and that our ethnicity doesn’t define our intelligence or work ethic. It is exhausting and frustrating dealing with this struggle, but we will stay determined to soon end the ethnical-race hierarchy that was created years ago.
After reading this article, I felt the same way as Sarmiena. This article draws a parallel to the Dreamers in the U.S. fighting to obtain citizenship. However, the irony is that whites are asking them for an amnesty when they completely “trumped” over natives, whom they should be asking amnesty for. The fight for an amnesty is much more than obtaining citizenship nowadays, it’s about fighting for rights for people working hard in a country they’ve lived and worked for years and moreso, fighting to end the ethnical-race hierarchy embedded in American society.
I wrote about this for my paper, I also found it so compelling. It really is ironic and disappointing how those who are not native to this land try to kick people out and stop people from coming in.
I really enjoyed this reading assignment we had. It was very interesting reading a satirical piece on immigration, changing the roles of the dominant and subordinate. I agree with your point that it is ironic to think that it could have been whites asking for an amnesty, but this is not the case due to the way that history played out. It kind of makes you think, if history were to play out a different way, could this have been the case?
I also find it interesting to how things might have played out if the roles were switched. The fact that the common white nationalist idea going around is that they’re the native ones, and everyone else doesn’t belong in America, when in fact they are about as foreign as any other immigrant in a technical sense, since they weren’t the first ones to come to this land–legally–either.
It is crazy to me because people are literally fighting to prove their humanity and that they deserve a place in this country. To me that is the most absurd thing because no human should ever have to endure that.