When Racial Discrimination Is Not Just Black and White

September 12, 2003 New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/12/opinion/12FRI3.html

The historian John Hope Franklin is black to the naked eye. A
boulevard named in his honor runs through Greenwood, the black section
of Tulsa, Okla., where he lived as a child. The Franklins are not just
black, however, but also Native American. Milley Franklin, Mr.
Franklin’s grandmother, was one-quarter Choctaw and was raised as
Choctaw, attending Indian schools. Her children - including John Hope
Franklin’s father, the lawyer B. C. Franklin - are clearly listed on
the official tribal rolls that determined who was a member of the
Choctaw Nation. The rolls were important, since tribal members got
land when the reservations were dissolved.

Americans are often shocked to learn that black Indians exist at all -
and that Native Americans actually held slaves. Like the white slave
owners they emulated, Native Americans often fathered children by
enslaved women and occasionally - as in Milley Franklin’s case -
treated those children as family. As a result, millions of black
Americans are descended from black people who were either members of
the tribes during slavery or adopted into them just after
Emancipation.

White families have begun to acknowledge mixed-race connections after
centuries of denial. But the attitudes of some Native Americans have
not evolved in the same way. Both the Seminole and the Cherokee tribes
have employed discriminatory policies to prevent black members from
receiving tribal benefits - and to strip them of the right to vote in
tribal elections.

The Interior Department, which oversees the tribal governments through
the Bureau of Indian Affairs, has historically regarded this kind of
racial discrimination as a violation of 19th-century treaties that
required the Indian nations to treat black members as full citizens.
But the Bush administration could conceivably change course and
actually validate these discriminatory policies.

The relationship between the federal government and the five tribes
that were removed from the East to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears is
governed by several laws and treaties. The most important are the
treaties of 1866, which required the Seminole, the Creek and the
Cherokee to adopt their former slaves as members of the tribes in
return for being recognized as sovereign nations. At the time,
Washington was grappling with its own former slaves, and the federal
government did not want the added burden of those from the Indian
nations. The tribes fought black membership from the very beginning,
but the federal courts have upheld the treaties again and again.

The federal government has not, however, been consistent when it comes
to racial fairness. When it set out to create an authoritative
membership roll of all the Native American tribes in the 1890’s, the
Dawes Commission took the poisonous step of creating segregated rolls,
with so-called Blood Indians on one list and black Indians - called
"Freedmen" - on another. The Freedmen sometimes had clearer Native
American blood lines than nonblack brethren on the Blood Rolls.
The Dawes segregation has been toxic to race relations within the
tribes, which have used the rolls time and again to argue that black
Native Americans are not tribal members at all. The argument that
blacks are not really Indians is ludicrous in the case of the
Seminole, which was a multiracial tribe from its inception. The
Seminoles did not exist when Europeans colonized this country but
coalesced in the mid-1700’s when runaway slaves came together with
refugees from other tribes in the Florida wilderness.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs, with the support of the federal district
court in Washington, refused to recognize a Seminole government that
came to office while black Seminoles were barred from the polls. But
Washington may yet buckle in the face of similar discrimination by the
Cherokees - who are more politically connected than the Seminoles. The
federal government insists that it has not taken a "final position."
But court documents suggest that the Bureau of Indian Affairs might
formally endorse elections in which black Cherokees are barred from
voting.

John Hope Franklin, whose family bridges the black and Indian
communities, takes a dim view of the attempt to divide the two. He
grew up in Oklahoma, where blacks and Indians were "very much involved
with each other, not only in terms of friendship but in terms of
marriage." He adds: "It is perfectly absurd to talk about dividing
Indians and blacks. Any Indians who speak in exclusionary terms do not
represent the historic interests or the historic relationships of
Indians and blacks."

The tribes argue that they are sovereign nations and can do as they
please. But this sounds suspiciously like the "states’ rights" dodge
raised by the South when blacks were being murdered for seeking the
right to vote. Congress placed clear limits on Indian sovereignty in
treaties and laws that also guaranteed minority rights. The question
is whether Congress will act to ensure those rights or look the other
way while they disappear.