Last Wednesday, I attended Professor Eric Cheyfitz’s talk about American Indians and their rights (or lack of rights) in the United States. He spoke about the three types of hegemonial genocides the Indians experienced: genocide in the form of violence, genocide in the form of disease, and genocide in the form of cultural repression. He also spoke about the principles of sovereignty and the oxymoron that is the term “domestically-dependent nation,” used to describe the Indian nations on (supposedly) American ground.

However, what most caught my interest during the talk was when Professor Cheyfitz mentioned what he called the “Black-White binary” that exists in our culture today. You know what I’m talking about. The ever-present Black-vs-White war going on that we all automatically think of when we think “racism.” It’s been engrained in us ever since kindergarten history story time, when we learned, and I quote from my five-year-old little sister, “Martin Luther King, Jr. made the world fair.”

While I do agree that the institutionalized racism that Black people experience must be brought to attention in order to be minimalized, I also agree with Professor Cheyfitz in that focusing on this as the “main” form of racism sweeps other minorities’ problems under the carpet in a way. The cultural marginalization experienced by the American Indians, the comments about immigration and how “you speak so well” experienced by Latino Americans, the “model minority” pressure experienced by Asian Americans are easily-ignored microagressions  when compared to the events that occurred in Ferguson, Baltimore, and Charleston this past year. But why must we compare? Why must we categorize between “racism” and “not-so-bad racism”? Are we not all fighting for the same equality?

Professir Cheyfitz thinks we can combat this by educating. Focus on more than the African American Civil Rights Movement when teaching about racial history. Expand the lesson plan to incorporate the genocide experienced by the American Indians, the cultural oppression they faced. And speak not just of the bad, but the good as well. Talk about their culture in a new light; mention the medicinal knowledge they house and their deeply rooted connection to the land. And do this not just for American Indian history, but for the histories of other minorities as well. Teach our children that the world isn’t fair, not yet, but it can be.