Steward Pickett

thumb|Steward Pickett Steward Pickett (born 1950) is an American plant ecologist and a distinguished senior scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. Quotes In the United States, racism expressed as differentiation and exclusion (or worse!) of Native Americans, Chinese, Japanese, African Americans, Latinxs, or recent immigrants is part of the national DNA. Emerging from a settler-colonial project, the United States was built, first, on dispossession or extermination of Native Americans and, second, on the importation of Africans and breeding generations of their descendants to supply slave labor to work the appropriated lands. The racist system of the U.S. is cleverly hidden. The constitution does not mention slavery but embodies compromises between slaveholders and other stakeholders in the new government that were designed to ensure the survival and expansion of slavery. The New Deal looks like a boon for working-class Americans but it established lending practices that advantaged white people over African Americans for decades. The war on drugs of the 1990s, although it seems superficially colorblind, thinly veils racist assumptions about Black people and embodies punitive practices that result in seemingly rational mass incarceration and a growing private prison industry... Early slave rebellions engaged working whites as well. To break up that coalition, adjustments were made to privilege poor whites so as to enlist their help in subjugating Blacks... Reconstruction was replaced by a so-called Redemption movement, which re-enshrined white supremacy, often on the heels of terrorism by the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan (KKK)... No amount of good behavior by individuals of whatever “color” will, in and of itself, dismantle the fundamental, resilient system of racism in the U.S. The existence, complexity, and adaptive nature of the racist system must be recognized. 2020 External links Category:1950 births Category:Living people