The Irish and the Choctaw

As I stated in my last post, there are many facts that we have been taught that, while true, are not truly presented. One of those is the famine that occurred in Ireland between 1845 and 1852. I remember learning about the Irish Famine in school. A potato blight was generally blamed, potatoes being the food staple of the rural Irish of the time. 

I don't recall ever asking the obvious question "why couldn't they eat something else", although I wonder if the answer might have been that while the potato was the food mostly effected, other crops also failed, an answer I probably would have accepted. After all, why would a poor harvest of one crop cause over 1.5 million people to die?

Anyone who has spent any time researching this disaster knows a significantly different truth, unfortunately. It was that truth which was referred to in an article I just read in the September/October edition of the Smithsonian Magazine.

The Irish famine was not caused by just a potato blight. As I stated above, how could a poor harvest of one crop cause so many people to starve? You see, the Irish farmers of the time grew many other crops, mostly to sell to pay rent, buy clothes, etc. The potato was the staple of their diet because it was easy to grow and so could provide the basis for their meals. 

Remember, at the time, Ireland was a British possession. To that extent, most Irish farmers did not own the land they farmed, they rented that land from their (mostly) English landlords, who then sold the foodstuffs produced by these tenants. 

So, the real truth is that the Irish famine was not caused by a lack of potatoes, but a lack of food. Food that was readily being produced by those same farmers but was turned over (sometimes at gun point) to be sold by the landowners from whom they rented.

How awful, you might say. I guess it is no surprise that this inconvenient fact was left out of the history lesson taught to elementary and middle school students. 

How could so many people be left to die when there was actually food available? Well, when you do not consider certain people human, when you have been indoctrinated all your life, your parents life, your grandparents life, etc, to consider the Irish farmer as not worth considering, then their death, even of their children, does not register. 

When empathy for other is lost, all sorts of disasters and travesties follow. One might even say that a lack of empathy, whether from an overt refusal or merely a lack of reflection, is the cause of all of the genocides that humans have perpetrated upon each other.

It always begins with code words like "them", or "others", or perhaps we label them as barbaric or illegals or lacking in adoration of a certain deity, but in the end, once we dehumanize a person or group of people, horrific treatment follows.

Sadly, we are are not immune to our own versions of this behavior. The story of a certain Florida governor who tricked immigrants from Texas into boarding planes so he could make some sick kind of political point, is one such example. And, the fact that more than one TV personality on that "news" channel that rhymes with Pox, laughed about it and thought it was a great ploy to own the libs, or whatever crazy justification they posited, makes it even sadder, because whether the pundits agreed with treating other humans so shabbily or not, they knew that their audience would applaud such an action, never even considering how they would feel if someone treated them with such callousness.

Or those who stand behind the American flag and decry providing arms and money to the Ukrainians in their fight against an invading army. So what if civilians, children, the elderly, pregnant women, are being killed, we should take care of our own first. As if working against bullies who try to take whatever they want is not a shared belief that makes us human, makes us "great". 

For all those who revere the greatest generation for defeating Hitler, sounds like they are ignorant to what makes a generation or country great.

Which brings me back to the Smithsonian article. You see, its focus wasn't about the real causes of the Irish Famine. It was about a little known story about how the Choctaw nation, upon hearing about the starvation in Ireland, sent money to the impoverished people to assist. 

Talk about self sacrifice! The Choctaw themselves lived in poverty, having been forced to leave their land via the Trail of Tears. They barely had enough for themselves, yet donated precious money to help another people, people they had absolutely no connection to. 

So, add this little tidbit to the history that most people don't know about.

Perhaps it is better that we not know how horribly we have treated the indigenous people who were here before the arrival of the Europeans, or how we enslaved generations of Black people to work our plantations. That way it is easier for us to consider suggestions about rounding up immigrants who have come here for a better life, and expelling them, violently, if need be. Or even better, arm American citizens and line the border, shooting anyone who tries to cross.

After all, once we cross the line of dehumanization, there is nothing we can't due to "those" people. Once we have jettisoned all aspects of empathy, no inhumane treatment is off the board.

The truly incredible thing about our current immigration morass, is that so many of those who are the loudest about the dangers of these "others", are very recent descendants of those who were the others in the late 19th and early 20th century. 

Unlike the Choctaw and the Irish people who still celebrate the incredible gift that was sent to Ireland when they were in such terrible need, far too many Americans have forgotten their own personal history, as well as our national history so well stated on the Statue of Liberty.

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

As emblematic of the meaning of empathy as anything I could conceive of or write.

Here are four other posts discussing Empathy.   

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2023/02/bo-knowsempathy.html

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2022/10/empathy-and-evolution.html

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7395038039066334365/4086742329331846297?hl=en

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2012/01/farewell-peewee.html