"Don't Forget the White Men," a Thanksgiving Story

Once upon a time...

There were some people called Europeans and they wanted to find a faster way to get to India to expand trade routes.

Some of them went exploring, and those white men happened upon a place they called "The New World."

But that world wasn't really new. It was only new to them. There were many people already living there, who had lived there for centuries.

But the newly arrived white men wanted the land and the resources in this "New World." So those white men systematically slaughtered the native non-white population and made this "New World" their home.

Later, some more white men got tired of one particular white man - we'll call him George - telling them how to live and think and pray, so they left and went to that "New World" to get away from George.

But George, the white man back home, the one in charge, got angry and made harsher rules that he imposed on the people who'd gone across the sea.

So those people across the sea, now led by white men who had grown up in the "New World," who had colonized it and taken it for their own from the native (non-white) population, rebelled against George, their white ruler back home.

A great war was fought.

But in the end, the colonists won!

Now those white men in charge of the colonies became the white men in charge of what came to be known as The United States of America.

United. States.

We say it casually now - often only voicing the first letter of each word - but it carries weight.

United.

States.

Now, starting before the rebellion and carrying on into the early years of the United States, white men went back and forth between Europe, the United States, and Africa, kidnapping the native Africans and taking them back to the United States and other places to be slaves to white men.

(Remember, at this time, only men had full rights under the law.)

After a while, some people decided that it wasn't right to kidnap people from their homes, take them to someone else's home, and sell them like property to be used up until they died.

But many other people, mostly white men in the Southern half of the United States, disagreed. They thought that it was perfectly fine to enslave these people because, you see, the Africans weren't actually whole people. They were only part human.

So another war was fought.

Many people died, but in the end, it was decided that it was not okay to treat African people like property. It wasn't okay to sell or buy or slaughter them anymore.

It was even eventually decided that they were whole people!

But that didn't mean that they had rights like the white men did.

That had to be kept separate and hidden away, out of sight and away from the good white citizenry.

Meanwhile, many, many years later, women in the United States realized that it seemed silly that they weren't allowed to vote for the President, the Senators, the laws that would rule over them, or anything at all!

Many women felt like the white men in charge would see their point and agree that they had been silly to exclude women, around half of the population of the United States, from having any say in the laws and elected legislators of the country.

But the women were wrong!

The men in charge did not think that it had been silly to exclude women. In fact, they thought the women were being silly to even bring up such a silly topic!

Silly women!

But the women, we'll call them Suffragettes, fought and protested and rallied until finally, after a long struggle, it was decided that it was silly to exclude women from voting after all!

From then on, women were allowed to vote for all kinds of things!

But then another war came and times got hard.

And times also got scary.

The United States tried not to become embroiled in the war that was sweeping across Europe, but it was no use.

The Japanese airplanes flew into a place called Pearl Harbor and killed many, many people.

This frightened the white men in charge of the United States, and a man named Franklin, who was in charge of all the people of the United States, said that anyone who was Japanese and inside the United States had to go into what were called "internment camps."

These were places where the white men could safely keep an eye on all the Japanese people at once. That way, none of the scary Japanese people could hurt any more people in the United States.

The war continued and several countries called "The Allies" eventually defeated the Japanese and the Germans, freeing the Jewish people in Europe from the camps that they were kept in, and using a new weapon against Japan called the "Atom Bomb."

Franklin had two Atom Bombs dropped onto Japan and killed around 200,000 people.

That put an end to the war for good!

After that, Franklin decided it was probably time to let the Japanese people come back out of the concentration camps in the United States, so he freed them, too!

But even after all of that, there were still many people in the United States who were not happy with how they were treated every day.

First, after a long, hard, painful struggle, black people in the United States were finally allowed to be in the same places as the white people and were no longer forced to keep themselves separate and hidden away!

Then, there was a new law called "The Civil Rights Act" that said no one in the United States is allowed to be discriminated against based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin!

That meant that all women, all Japanese and black people, even all Latinos, Muslims, Jews, and anyone else were all equal under the law of the United States!

Well, almost...

Many of the southern United States didn't like this new law. They created sneaky ways to keep black people from being allowed to vote in elections! They used taxes, tests, even violence and other tricks to make sure black people didn't vote.

But then, a new law came called the "Voting Rights Act" that said that all these tricks weren't allowed anymore, and the white men who were being so sneaky had to stop that and let the black people vote because, remember, no one in the United States could be discriminated against based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin!

It wasn't long at all before women, and even people of different colors, races, national origins, and religions began working in the government!

People of color were elected!

Women were elected!

Several people with non-heterosexual orientation were elected!

It took a while longer, but eventually same-sex couples were even allowed to get married!

But uh-oh! We've forgotten someone in all of this celebrating.

We've left someone out, someone who's been oppressed all this time and has not once been helped by anyone else.

We've excluded one group from getting to have everything they want realized!

White men!

Oh no, oh no, oh golly gosh no!

After all of these trials and tribulations...

After freeing blacks from slavery...

After granting women the right to vote...

After freeing the Japanese people from the concentration camps the United States government put them into in the first place...

After disallowing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin...

After allowing same-sex couples the same rights in marriage as every other type of couple in the United States...

After electing a black President of the United States twice...

The white men have truly been left out.

How can they feel like they're being heard while all these people of color are screaming about racial injustice when a white cop guns down an unarmed black teenager?

How can they feel like they can protect their homes and families from Israeli extremist terrorist factions when the United States government says they can't own guns that have an ammunition capacity capable of wiping out a kindergarten classroom?

How can they feel equal when a black man tells them that they have to make health insurance available to their employees?

So as Thanksgiving draws near, take a moment think back to the first Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims (right before they annihilated the native population of this continent and later tucked them away in designated land separate from the rest of the population) and remember to be thankful to all the white men who remind us daily through sexual assault, public harassment, and political euphemisms that they, too, deserve to have an equal chance to make everyone else subordinate to them.

Happy Thanksgiving!