Revenge of the Colonies

Revenge of the Colonies November 7, 2012

 Results of the US presidential election showed that the changing demographics of America had catapulted Obama to his second term despite seemingly insurmountable odds of unemployment above 7.9%, numbing budget deficits, ongoing wars, terrorism threat, the Chinese, not to mention views of his impotence as a leader in failing to break legislature gridlock, and the alleged scandal and cover up about Benghazi. The coalition his team stitched together are the Latinos and Blacks and ethnic minorities, women and youth. The White majority, the descendants of the original English colonists, and descendants of the first wave of European immigrants, are shrinking in numbers. The peoples from the New World has come of age.

 In the century of exploration and maritime adventures into the unknown world, in the time of Amerigo Vespucci, Columbus, Magellan, Vasco da Gama, the world was once divided between Portugal and Spain. Later, the Dutch, the French and the English caught up and began competing for new territories and divided among themselves, Africa, the Middle East, South America, the Caribbean, the Far East. They ruled these colonies with an iron hand and pillaged their natural resources, and enslaved the native populations, and created a society of unequals which eventually became unsustainable and fomented revolutions. It took about 300 years before the boiling point was reached. The colonies have sequentially achieved self rule in various forms, from dictatorships, military governments, democracy, communism, beginning in the 19th century. The English colony in North America had a different experience. It had its revolution in its infancy as a colony, and became a nation ahead of all the other colonies of other European powers. However it was a revolt of the colonizers against their own people who ruled from the mother country. It did not include the native inhabitants, the Indians and the African slaves. The colony became the United States by conquering the Indian nation and continuing the enslavement of Africans and foraging into war with Spain and claiming its territories. That’s how the Philippines became a US possession after the Spanish-American War. The United States had become a colonizer, and ruled its subjects like it was ruled in the beginning, unequally. Like the other New World colonies, these subjugated peoples did not achieve equality legally until the 19th century. Inequality is still practiced, and prejudice is alive, but the protection of the law exists, and in the polls, is the reckoning.