God Gave Us Nothing: On Rejecting Colonial Heritage
A Personal Account of Colonial Identity, its Heritage, and Why it should be Abandoned in its Entirety
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Introduction
For many who study colonialism, neo-colonialism, settler colonialism, and the various other connected fields of study, there is a emphasis on understanding the condition of the settled, on the colonized, and how that reality shapes their lives, their identities, and their psychology. Frantz Fanon made a name for himself doing just that, studying the psychology of the colonized as they were actively being colonized. His seminal work, The Wretched of the Earth, had an entire chapter dedicated to first-hand accounts working with Algerians and settler-French during the Algerian War for Independence. Majority of people when they read it focus on the experience of the colonized in the chapter, and rightfully so; the brutality of the settlers on the colonized can never be overshadowed, never be blotted out like an eclipse — the totality of settler-colonial violence is all encompassing, apocalyptic, and oft is a central point of identity for the colonized.
However, this article does not deal with this reality — at least not directly. I am but a person whom, having been awakened to the horrors of the world, is more akin to a toddler first learning to speak compared to those who have spoken of this all-too-familiar systemic violence they have endured their entire lives. As a white american, I have never, nor will I ever, experience the level of violence done to indigenous peoples around the world, majority done in the name of my supposed identity. I can only hope to stand in solidarity with with the indigenous by any means necessary.
And with this disclaimer, a story.
Like most white american families, my father became interested in our families history. He did the work equivalent to a master’s dissertation to trace family members through census, records, and articles. In the end, he had traced our family name all the way back to the late 12th century; well before the last name was a last name. The interesting part, however, is his discovery of our family’s history in what is now called the United States. Supposedly, a distant ancestor came to the former British colonies back in the 1790s after failed attempts to proselytize the Irish in the hopes he could do the same to the indigenous populations of Turtle Island. Eventually, the family also became some-what prominent in proselytizing newly kidnapped Africans for a period of time.
I knew my family’s history went relatively far back in the United States; however, I did not understand the in-your-face connection to the colonial project that is this country. Like most white american families, I was told lies of full-blooded Cherokee great-grandmothers who never existed and how there was a great-grandfather who was an immigrant in the 1910s. Contradictory tales to make ourselves feel more indigenous, to make us feel like we belonged here, all-the-while separating ourselves from the violence of our true heritage. Having an ancestry that built itself in forcing a religion onto others and, eventually, being active participants in the American Slave Trade was a sobering pill to swallow, as the saying goes.
And yet, despite the resentment I felt having gained this knowledge, wishing myself able to believe in the fairy tales of indigenous fore mothers and immigrant great-grandfathers once more, the understanding of our heritage was something that many people (including myself) that have a colonial heritage very rarely rectify with. If it is ever unearthed, such ancestry is ignored, forgotten in favor of a rose-colored version, or even looked at as something to be proud of. I am not the first person who has to rectify with their brutal colonial heritage, and I certainly will not be the last.
And so rectify with it I did, and this article is something akin to my opening thoughts on the matter of colonial heritage for the colonizer/colonial inheritors.
This article, while dealing marginally with the topic of understanding that those with colonizer heritage have benefited from the systems that are built for them, will predominantly focus on the identity building that colonial heritage entails. This will not be a systematic dismantling of the colonizer; there are a plethora of much better writers than I whom have already done so in spades. Instead, I will focus on how having colonial heritage shapes identity in relation to the history, their relationship to the systems our ancestors built and we often help to maintain in relation to identity, and I will relate this to the issue of Zionism’s integration into the Jewish identity. This article focuses predominantly on three ways people rectify with their colonial heritage — through ignorance, white-washing, and full blown acceptance.
I will specify, I am not Jewish religiously nor ethnically. However, I have seen and heard many similar rumblings from Jews in the US when it comes to their identity as a Jew in relation to Zionism and ‘israel.’ I feel this comparison is apt, given the recent young ‘israeli’ protests against the genocide in Gaza and the general protests that have happened in ‘tel aviv’ as of late. I fear, like many Jews who have advocated for justice in Gaza and across Palestine, that Jews are coming to a boiling point when it comes to their heritage and identity; a similar point that the European identity came to in the 15th century. In this case, some questions will be left open-ended as I do not feel it is my place to try to provide answers to them since I am not of that group. Instead, I will focus on the comparisons I see when it comes to western colonial heritage’s affect on identity and what is happening for Jews and their identity vis a vis ‘israel’.
Colonial Heritage: A Foundation of Identity
As stated above, my experience with a personal colonial heritage goes back to the genocidal founding of what would eventually be called the United States. In that heritage, I found no John Browns, only George Washingtons of lesser stature. I found priests and preachers — after having been readily defeated out of their nobility status by the burgeoning British bourgeoisie — gallivanting across what would become the American North East, proselytizing enslaved Africans and Indigenous peoples at the threat of death and eternal torment. It didn’t take long before those ancestors’ children became factory workers in what is now known as the american midwest before and during the Great Depression. For some, this would seemingly be the end of my colonial heritage; a bygone era of the remnants of colonial America in its infancy after having defeated the British.
Unfortunately, this is where many white Americans — leftists, communists, liberals, conservatives, fascists or otherwise — confuse content with form. This colonial mentality, along with its psychological affects, remain quite steadily within the white workers in general. The average white American still hold many colonial viewpoints, beliefs, and uphold these old structures. This is not to say that there is no white working class in what is now known as the United States, let alone a white proletariat; that we are only white colonizers in relation to the wider political economy. It is to say, however, that there are aspects found within the heritage that many share with me of a colonial nature that has shifted and changed into the wider proletariat and working class.
It is understood that after a system is ‘gone’ in favor of another — colonialism in favor of capitalism, in this case — that there are remnants, fragmentary qualitative pieces, of the old system in the new. In the case of Europe, capitalism had the markings of aristocratic feudalism;1 in the Global South, the residue of the combinations of early colonialism and feudalism was akin to a cancerous growth, combining itself with the brutal working conditions made for the production of capital. These residuums are still across the globe, with many states in the Global South still having feudalistic landlord practices , old-school colonialism has been traded in for national bourgeoisie that sell their own people to western capitalists, and Europeans still finding themselves taxed for the lifestyle of their respective royalty.
What is now known as the United States is no different, with its fragments of colonialism finding itself in how we view those of other ethnicities and races, of other sexes and genders, and of other beliefs and faiths, amongst other areas not discussed here.
Especially amongst the white masses, though it can certainly find itself amongst minority groups (an oppressors mentality is certainly enticing, as has been documented ad nauseam by thinkers greater than I and in history), our colonial heritage is one that we often are taught to be proud of.
“Your family has pioneers as ancestors? Well, you come from a line of explorers!”
“Your ancestors started mining facilities out west? Then, you descend from oil barons and gold miners!”
“Your family owned cotton plantations in the south? Your ancestors must’ve been shrewd businessmen!”
“Your ancestors were priests and preachers in Colonial America? Well, they must have saved many ‘indian’ and African souls!”
If we are taught about our heritage in such a way, then we come to believe that those people our ancestors killed, maimed, kept as property, and assisted in these various acts deserved their fates. If only they were as technologically advanced as the Europeans, if only they weren’t so superstitious, if only they weren’t so savage, if only they let the Europeans have their land, if only, if only. Excuses are made, then excuses are turned into explanations, and explanations are turned into hatred for those we ‘other’ in our own lives; whether they be of a different ethnic group, race, religion, sexual orientation, or gender. The excuses for our colonial heritage ALWAYS turn into hate; a hate used to justify atrocities across the globe and at home.
We can see this explanation turning into hate in the almost exclusive support for ‘israel’ by a non-minority of white Christian americans. Many of these supporters are confronted with the horrors in Gaza, the brutalization of Palestinians in the West Bank, and even see obvious abuse done to Christians by ‘israelis’ and argue that America did the same to a multitude of people — ergo, it is deemed morally justified to destroy these ‘new savages.’ Their justifications for their ancestors’ enslaving, killing, maiming, and raping of millions of indigenous peoples has become a deep seated hatred for Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians, amongst others, exactly because this ‘new’ form of violence is qualitatively the same system that their ancestors created and benefited from.
These are the things we are told, if we are told at all. On the other end, if we (or someone we are related to) finds out about said colonial heritage it may be hidden, kept as a family secret that is viewed as shameful; because who wants to know that their family’s lineage is soaked in the blood of the indigenous, the minority, and the enslaved? That is far too inconvenient for us to rectify with. So better to shove it far down, never speak of our ancestors, and find ourselves lost with what feels like no home, no connections to something positive, nothing but a shame that seemingly debilitates whether we know we have it or not.
Of course, to others who are direct victims of these violent systems, taking a “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” approach to ones colonial past is as bad as accepting it. “Silence is violence” has been often repeated over the last few years — especially in connection with the ongoing ‘israeli’ genocide in Gaza — and is applicable here. Discovering ones colonial history, especially when you still occupy stolen land from inhabitants that are fighting for their homeland, is something to feel shame for; such a feeling should be the first emotion that comes up when one discovers their family’s dark past. I know it was for me.
However, that does not mean one should bury said past; not because you should find some small positive thing in it, nor should you learn to cherish it, rather it is so you can learn from it, change from it, and rectify the sins of the system your colonial ancestors made and benefited from through the mass murder and enslavement of others. Discovering your colonial history should never cause you to surrender to obscurity or to the hatred inherent in such a heritage, instead it should embolden you to fight against said history, to destroy the colonial apparatuses that were built on the backs of the enslaved, the imprisoned, and the indigenous. One must never succumb to the sins of your family’s past; however, discovering that history must be done soberly; the shame should never be final, and the positive feelings should be rectified with no mercy.
For others who have learned of their colonial history in some fashion, they may view their ancestry in what is often called ‘rose-tinted glasses.’ In this case, the inheritor of this colonial ancestry knows a version of their history, but they do not know of the true story; whether that is due to them being told a falsehood or them choosing to believe a fantastical version to make themselves feel better about said past. Such idealism is made through a lie, whether through one told by another or by oneself, usually to protect oneself from further discovering said past.
For example, one may be sold a fantasy of a family of poor immigrants who started on Ellis Island in the United States rather than the history of brutal business people who built their wealth on the blood of millions; or they may be told of some hidden indigeneity to create a false sense of connection to the land their family stole. One may create these stories to protect their ego, their vision of themself, their future generations, or they simply were sold the lie by a member of their family. Either out of ignorance or shame, the outcome is the same; an inheritor of a system of violence gets to choose the narrative they sell themselves to make themselves or their family feel better. This luxury is never given to the indigenous, the enslaved, or the colonized; their history, their stories, must fit into the paradigm of the violent systems that determined their place in the world — according to the violent systems themselves. This is why stories are important for many oppressed peoples. It allows themselves to not only combat the narratives and orientalist stories sold by the white supremacist, the colonialist, the capitalist, the fascist, and the westerner, but to build a framework for their peoples true history; one shaped not by their oppressors, but by themselves.
Zionism: A Colonial Heritage for Jews?
This section will be short. As stated above, I am not Jewish and believe this conversation should be had by Jews and for Jews. For this reason, I wish to be brief and focus on the similarities in reaction to Zionism by Jews that I have seen. The similarities to discovering western colonial heritage are strikingly analogous to the reactions I am seeing of Jews (both ‘israeli’ and non-’israeli’) when it comes to the Zionist entity in general and the genocide in Gaza in particular.
In the case of Zionism, it functions as a colonial system to build a supposed ‘Jewish state.’ Some may disagree with this statement, specifically about Zionism being a colonial system; however, they would be arguing against the founders of the ideology itself who explicitly looked to western colonialism as a framework for the political movement. Any cursory glance at the writings and speeches of Herzl or Jabontsky, Ben Gurion or Nordau, or even Netanyahu or Ben Gvir, would show this to be the truth. Their goal, which is the same today, is to build a Jewish colonial state on top of Palestine as a bulwark for western imperialism against the East.
With that truth out of the way, their now comes the question of Jewish identity in an age where Zionism has dominated the spaces of synagogues, Hebrew schools, and the consciousness of Jews in the west. Every Jewish space, according to many anti-Zionist Jews, is dominated by the thought that every Jew has a concerted positive interest in the Zionist state; whether it is true or not that majority of western Jews view ‘israel’ positively matters little to the Zionist ideology. The propaganda can fluctuate between sheer ignorance on the topic — therefore leading to silence on it — slight positive views that are rarely discussed, to full blown admiration for the full-scale destruction of Palestinian lives, homes, and cities.
For some Jews in the west, the uncomfortable truth of Jewish spaces being co-opted in favor of the Zionist state is not fully processed. They function on ‘ignorance is bliss’ when it comes to the death and destruction caused by White Supremacy’s newest child — Jewish Supremacy. This is the ‘non-political’ stance for people who are either too ignorant to what is happening in the spaces they occupy, or they are willfully ignoring what is happening in the name of their ethnicity and/or religion. This is the stance for people who do not want to ‘ruffle any feathers’ between them and their friends and family who hold a more positive view of the Zionist state.
One such friend is the kind that looks at the Zionist project as a positive force that sometimes does bad things. Sure, the entity kills and starves children, but it is the only democratic state in the Middle East; plus they have gay rights!2 The Zionist state should commit to peace, as long as they surround the people they are killing with a deadly military force, have full control over what comes in and out of an enclave, and have a say in what is allowed politically for multiple nations. The history of Zionism for this particular mindset is not one of bloodshed — of coloniality — but of Jewish self-determination, a path forward for one of the most oppressed peoples in the west, that happens to become ‘messy’ or ‘complicated’ due to the inconvenience of other people already inhabiting the supposed ‘rightful land of the Jews’. Such a mindset glosses over the true history of Zionism and what the colonial state is built on — the deaths of millions inside and outside the colony — in favor of a white-washed history that turns the oppressors into complicated heroes who, sure, held not so positive views of Palestinians and actively built the war machine that continues to slaughter countless people to this day, but are supposedly building a self-determining state for the Jews.
And lastly, some may view the destruction of Palestine that the Zionist entity is doing as strictly positive, destroying and killing an inferior people who don’t deserve to live. These are the proud Zionists, the loudest voices in the room, and often are spearheading the move to create every Jewish space into a Zionist one. Unlike the one above, the Jew in this case is not afraid to look at history correctly — admitting to the genocidal and colonial history of Zionism — but views the brutality of Zionism drunkenly. For the proud Zionist Jew, the colonial mentality of Zionism is correct, it shows the might of the Jewish people over non-Jews; more specifically, over Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians, but even over non-Jewish peoples throughout the world, even western whites. They may have different degrees of how they view the genocidal intent of the Zionist state; some will make excuses, some will blame the victims of genocide for why they are being killed, and some will simply outright state they believe themselves superior to all other ‘races and religions.’ Whatever their reasoning, these Jews are the loudest and proudest supporters of the Zionist state, often calling themselves Zionist Jews, and will stop at nothing until Judaism is a one-to-one with their colonial ideology.
What To Do With Colonial Heritage
As detailed above, many will ignore their colonial heritage outright, some will create a much prettier — and yet still false — version of history, while others will endorse their lineage and desire to continue on the path their ancestors began. We see similar beliefs in many western Jewish communities at this moment when in relation to the Zionist state. Some Jews do not think much about the Zionist state and its wrongdoing while others choose to ignore it, others will pink-wash/white-wash the crimes of the colonial state to make their belief in said state more palatable for themselves, while others are full supporters and would consider themselves Zionists; striving for the colonial apparatus to do what it does best — mass death.
The question then becomes: If we can not ignore, recreate, or accept our colonial heritage, what then should we do with it? It seems as if the only path forward is to to wallow in the grief knowing that everything, even our identity, is built on the backs of enslaved peoples, created by the blood shed of the indigenous, and maintained by the incarcerated. What, then, can we do but stay in grief, the one thing our heritage has given us?
As I spoiled in the subtitle of this article, the sober rejection and acknowledgement of our colonial history must happen if we are to dismantle the colonial and imperial mindset we were born into. Acknowledgement is not simply understanding that something bad happened — an example of this is liberal conferences and universities acknowledging that their institutions are on stolen indigenous land while doing nothing to rectify such a reality — but the complete and total realization of how that history has created the systems of today; how without colonial states of the past we would not have colonial states of the present held up by capitalist imperialism.
It is the realization that the systems in play today, even the ones who understand the colonial history of a place, actively choose to uphold similar systems that have the decrepit foundations of colonialism. Sure, some will admit wrongdoing, but these systems can not — nor will they ever willingly — dismantle these foundations of their society. It is up to those who understand that the full, sober, and all-encompassing rejection of colonial heritage, foundations, and systems is the first step to eventually dismantle said systems. When a populace truly understands their function in a political society — in the case of a colonial populace, it is to be the foot soldiers against indigenous populations to expropriate mass wealth from land and bodies — then they can see that they are nothing more than ignorant, or willing, sacrifices to a system that cares little for themselves, not to mention the indigenous people they have been put up against.
It is through a genuine understanding of the systems of the past and present and the full rejection of said systems that a group of people can begin to militantly appose the very systems they see around them. In this case of the general western colonial inheritor, this means understanding the seemingly long colonial history — not through rose tinted glasses, not through ignoring it, and not by accepting it, but through full rejection of the state of affairs for something better. It is to reject these foundations and building something that is antithetical to the colony, to the capital, to the empire. For Jewish people in particular, this means the full rejection of the genocidal Zionist state for a fully equal society founded in Palestine. It is to reject Zionist ideology, pathology, and the state that it represents in favor of something whole-sale democratic, a state of Palestine.
It is only through concerted effort, action, understanding and rejection of a colonial past — whether old or newly formed — can the indigenous people of today not only be liberated from colonies new and old through their own struggles, but also the colonizer and their inheritors. For the colonial inheritor, the very first step is understanding their connection to the colony and its history, then it is to reject the colonial identity they have inherited, look to the indigenous and their struggles for liberation against colonial systems, and then it is to work to dismantle the very systems, apparatuses, and states that claim to represent the inheritors. Only when the colonial inheritor rejects their inheritance can they be liberated from their bloody history.
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This is not to say that Europe does not have the old markings of colonialism. A quick jaunt into any European country will show that to be wrong.
A statement that is not even true.
this essay spoke to me so much! thank you!
Thanks for this piece ! Translated in French here : https://zanzibar.substack.com/p/dieu-ne-nous-a-rien-donne-rejeter