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Supply a 2 sentence answer for each of the following questions.1. In what ways does discrimination against Asians parallel Anti-Semitism (discrimination against Jews)?2. In what ways is discrimination against Asians similar to discrimination against American Indians and against Mexicans?
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Critical Thinking Assignment: Jews perceived to have too much Power & Game Theory
The explanation of ideology and extracts on anti-Semitism below, along with the notes for
lectures 10 and 11, will help to answer the following question: What is the common ideological
impetus behind Jews being blamed for the Black Death (1348-1351), “Harvard’s Jewish
problem” (1922), Henry Ford’s critique of Jews in the Dearborn Independent (1920-21), the
Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and the Jewish “Doctor’s Plot” of 1953? What were the
obstacles to assessing the evidence that would disconfirm the storylines (generally arguing that
Jews had too much power) in each of these situations? How does game theory help to explain
why Jews were viewed as a threat then and why they are viewed differently today in the U.S. and
Europe?
What is “ideology?” Although there are several competing definitions, ideologies commonly refer to
systems of ideas that legitimate claims to propriety, power, or privilege (Domhoff, 1983; Sartori, 1969).
As such, ideologies are indispensable and ubiquitous, underlying and guiding all aspects of human
endeavor. They are cognitive maps that simplify “a reality too huge and complicated to be
comprehended, evaluated, and dealt with in any purely factual, scientific, or other disinterested way”
(Higgs, 1987, pp. 37-38). In bestowing legitimacy to a position or vantage point where there may be
conflicting interests, ideologies typically provide justification for “what is good, who gets what, and who
rules” (Hinich & Munger, 1994, p. 11). This justification is inevitably imbued with moral and ethical
judgments (North, 1981; Lodge, 1976). Although shaped by interests, the most successful ideologies
become so ingrained in our lives that they are not questioned or even recognized as ideologies
(Anthony, 2003). (Extracted from Chris Girard and Guillermo Grenier. 2008. “Insulating an Ideology: The
Enclave Effect on South Florida’s Cuban-Americans.” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 30: 530-43.)
More on Ideology
Below are extracts from Melvin Hinich and Michael C. Munger 1994. Ideology and the theory of
Political Choice. University of Michigan Press.
Ideologies are collections of ideas with intellectually derivable normative implications for behavior and
how society should be organized (Higgs and Twight 1987; Reichley 1981; North 1981, 1990a, 1994;
Lodge 1976).
Ideologies are complex, dogmatic belief systems by which individuals interpret, rationalize, and justify
behavior and institutions (Higgs 1987, 1990; Domhoff 1983; Jaravsky 1970; North 1990a, 1994; Sartori
1969, 1976). (Hinich and Munger, 1994: 10)
“Ideologies perform an important psychological service because without them people cannot know,
assess, and respond to much of the vast world of social relations. Ideology simplifies a reality too huge
and complicated to be comprehended, evaluated, and dealt with in any purely factual, scientific, or
other disinterested way.” (Higgs 1987: 37-38).
How can we explain the origin of ideologies? The most basic human disputes are over property rights,
rights to food, shelter, and protection of the family from aggression. . . . In the earlier examples of
robbers in the forest, the wealthy traveler would tell you he was attacked by unprincipled thugs. The
“thugs” themselves, however, may assert, and even believe, their right to redistribute income from the
rich to the poor. We will argue that, while ideologies are used strategically in this fashion, they are
created out of culture, history, and emotion. (Hinich and Munger, 1994: 13)
Life of its own: Once an ideology is seized upon and popularized, however, it takes on a life of its own,
and politicians, clerics, or monarchs can contradict its precepts only at significant cost to themselves.
(Hinich and Munger, 1994: 63)
As Patricia Marchak* (1988:2) notes, “Ideologies are screens through which we perceive the world. . .
They are seldom taught explicitly and systematically. They are rather transmitted through example,
conversations, and casual observation.” (cited in Anthony, Peter D. 2003. The ideology of Work.
London: Routledge., p. 27) . . . .dominant ideologies become ingrained in everyday discourse. They
become rationalized as ‘common-sense’ assumptions about the way things are and the way things
should be. (Paul Simpson. (1993) Language, Ideology, and Point of View. London: Routledge, p. 6)
*Marchak, Patricia. (1988) Ideological Perspectives on Canada. 3rd edition. Toronto: McGraw HillRyerson.
Stereotypes as a component of ideology (Massey, 2007, Categorically Unequal, p. 11): “In making
stereotypical judgments about others, human beings appear to evaluate people along two basic
psychological dimensions: warmth and competence (Fisk et al. 2002). . . . In addition to subjective feelings
of attraction and like [warmth], we also evaluate people in terms of competency and efficiency—their
ability to act in a purposeful manner to get things done. . . . These two dimensions of social perception
come together in the stereotype content model, which argues that human social cognition and
stereotyping involve the cognitive placement of groups and individuals in two-dimensional social space
defined by the independent axes of warmth and competence (Fiske et al. 2002). . . . Naturally, we think
of members of our own social group as warm and competent, and hence, approachable and worthy of
respect. The relevant emotion associated with in-group social perceptions is esteem or pride.”
Apply the analysis of ideology to the extracts below:
Extract below is from Jewish Virtual Library (A Division of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise):
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/harvard.html
Harvard’s Jewish Problem
During and after World War I, American Jewry became the target of anti-Semitism. . . . Ivy League
universities were no exception, and several of these venerable schools moved to restrict Jewish
enrollment during the 1920s. . . .
Nativism and intolerance among segments of the white Protestant population were aimed at both
Eastern European Jews and Southern European Catholics. In higher education, Jews were particularly
resented. By 1919, about 80% of the students at New York’s Hunter and City colleges were Jews, and
40% at Columbia. Jews at Harvard tripled to 21% of the freshman class in 1922 from about 7% in 1900.
Ivy League Jews won a disproportionate share of academic prizes and election to Phi Beta Kappa but
were widely regarded as competitive, eager to excel academically and less interested in extra-curricular
activities such as organized sports. Non-Jews accused them of being clannish, socially unskilled and
either unwilling or unable to “fit in.”
In 1922, Harvard’s president, A. Lawrence Lowell, proposed a quota on the number of Jews gaining
admission to the university. Lowell was convinced that Harvard could only survive if the majority of its
students came from old American stock. . . . Lowell argued that cutting the number of Jews at Harvard
to a maximum of 15% would be good for the Jews, because limits would prevent further anti-Semitism.
Lowell reasoned, “The anti-Semitic feeling among the students is increasing, and it grows in proportion
to the increase in the number of Jews. If their number should become 40% of the student body, the race
feeling would become intense.”
Harvard’s overseers appointed a 13-member committee, which included three Jews, to study the
university’s “Jewish problem.” The committee rejected a Jewish quota but agreed that “geographic
diversity” in the student body was desirable. Harvard had been using a competitive exam to determine
who was admitted, and urban Jewish students were scoring highly on the exam. . . .The special
committee recommended that the competitive exam be replaced by an admissions policy that accepted
top-ranking students from around the nation, regardless of exam scores. By 1931, because students
from urban states were replaced by students from Wyoming and North Dakota who ranked in the top of
their high school classes, Harvard’s Jewish ranks were cut back to 15% of the student body.
In the late 1930s, James Bryant Conant, Lowell’s successor as president, eased the geographic
distribution requirements, and Jewish students were once again admitted primarily on the basis of
merit.
——————————————————————————-Source: American Jewish Historical Society
Henry Ford [founder of Ford Motor Company] was . . .an anti-Semite, who railed incessantly against “the
Jewish plan to control the world” in his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent (circulation allegedly
700,000), which Ford dealerships distributed free of charge. A collection of Ford’s ghostwritten columns
was published as The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem — a best-seller in Germany.
(From “Masterpiece” on PBS: http://www.pbs.org/perilousfight/social/antisemitism/ )
Power, Ignorance, and Anti-Semitism:
Henry Ford and His War on Jews
by Jonathan R. Logsdon (Hanover Historical Review 1999)
http://history.hanover.edu/hhr/99/hhr99_2.html
On May 22, 1920 . . . the front page of Ford’s newspaper [The Dearborn Independent] carried
the headline: “The International Jew: The World’s Problem.” It was the first in a series of
articles which were to last for 91 consecutive issues. Ford assigned the writing to William J.
Cameron, [a] veteran of the Detroit News, [whom he had hired] to ghostwrite.[Ford appears as
author]
[William] Cameron soon found a source for his anti-Jewish articles in the form of “The Protocols
of the Learned Elders of Zion.” The Protocols was a work that purported to be a transcription of
plans concocted at an 1897 Zionist conclave. At this secret meeting, high ranking Jewish
officials, the “Elders of Zion,” came up with 24 Protocols which were designed to enslave the
Christian world through various sinister means. The Tenth Protocol represents a typical excerpt,
proclaiming that it was the duty of Jews to wear everyone out by dissentions, animosities, feuds,
famines, inoculation of diseases, want, until the Gentiles see no other way of escape except to
appeal to our money and power.25
If The Protocols appeared outlandish, it may have been because they were a Russian
forgery plagiarized from a 1869 German novel which, itself, was plagiarized from a 1864 French
political satire. The original French work, entitled Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavelli et
Montesquieu, was intended by its author; journalist Maurice Joly, to be a savage indictment of
Napoleon III. 26 The German novel, To Sedan by Herman Goedsche, replaced Joly’s world
domination plan of Napoleon III with one schemed by a group of Jews in Prague. Eventually,
Czarist agent, Sergei Nilius incorporated this work into his 1905 effort entitled The Great in the
Small. Nilius’ work was designed to deflect the misery of Nicholas IIs policies onto a scapegoat,
the Jews of Russia. This work was, in turn, further elaborated on in 1917 by a group of Czarist
officers living in Berlin and re-titled The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.27 . . . . By mid
1921, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion had been publicly exposed as a forgery. Philip
Graves had researched the subject for The London Times and Herman Bernstein had written a
book on the subject entitled The History of a Lie.78
More significant and damaging, however; was the publishing of a number of articles from the
1920-1921 campaign in book form. Collectively titled The International Jew, the articles were
spread over four volumes which averaged 250 pages and which sold for $0.25 apiece. Volume I
was subtitled “The World’s Foremost Problem,” Volume II: “Jewish Activities in the United
States,” Volume III: “Jewish Influences in American Life,” and Volume IV: “Aspects of Jewish
Power in the United States.” The books would eventually be condensed into a single volume
also entitled The International Jew. It was through these publications that Ford’s message was
able to reach an enormously large global audience.
In March of 1923, a reporter from Ford’s old nemesis, The Chicago Tribune, interviewed
Hitler himself concerning the matter. When the subject came to Ford’s possible presidential run,
Hitler commented, “I wish I could send some of my shock troops to Chicago and other big
American cities to help in the elections. We look on Heinrich Ford as the leader of the growing
fascist movement in America. We admire particularly his anti-Jewish policy which is the
Bavarian fascist platform. We have just had his anti-Jewish articles translated and published. The
book is being circulated to millions throughout Germany.”152 The newsman, upon investigation,
found that Ford’s books were, indeed, being distributed “by the car loads” and were “displayed
in every bookshop in southern Germany.”
References
25. Henry Ford (Introduction by Gerald L.K. Smith), The International Jew: The World’s Foremost
Problem (Los Angeles: Christian Nationalist Crusade, 1964), 144
26. Howard M. Sachar, A History of Jews in America, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 312.
27. Howard M. Sachar, A History of Jews in America, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 312.
78. Howard M. Sachar, A History of Jews in America, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 313.
152. Chicago Tribune, 8 March 1923, 2.
BELOW IS ARTICLE FROM: ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/167427/Doctors-Plot
Doctors’ Plot, (1953), alleged conspiracy of prominent Soviet medical specialists to murder leading
government and party officials; the prevailing opinion of many scholars outside the Soviet Union is
that Joseph Stalin intended to use the resulting doctors’ trial to launch a massive party purge.
On Jan. 13, 1953, the newspapers Pravda and Izvestiya announced that nine doctors, who had
attended major Soviet leaders, had been arrested. They were charged with poisoning Andrey A.
Zhdanov, Central Committee secretary, who had died in 1948, and Alexander S. Shcherbakov (d.
1945), who had been head of the Main Political Administration of the Soviet army, and with
attempting to murder several marshals of the Soviet army. The doctors, at least six of whom were
Jewish, also were accused of being in the employ of U.S. and British intelligence services, as well as
of serving the interests of international Jewry. The Soviet press reported that all of the doctors had
confessed their guilt.
The trial and the rumoured purge that was to follow did not occur because the death of Stalin (March
5, 1953) intervened. In April Pravda announced that a reexamination of the case showed the
charges against the doctors to be false and their confessions to have been obtained by torture. The
doctors (except for two who had died during the course of the investigation) were exonerated. In
1954 an official in the Ministry of State Security and some police officers were executed for their
participation in fabricating the cases against the doctors.
In his secret speech at the 20th Party Congress (February 1956), Nikita S. Khrushchev asserted that
Stalin had personally ordered that the cases be developed and confessions elicited, the “doctors’
plot” then to signal the beginning of a new purge. Khrushchev revealed that Stalin had intended to
include members of the Politburo in the list of victims of the planned purge.
FROM: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/167427/Doctors-Plot
Fordham University’s
Jewish History Sourcebook:
The Black Death and the Jews 1348-1349 CE
In 1348 there appeared in Europe a devastating plague which is reported to have killed off
ultimately twenty-five million people. By the fall of that year the rumor was current that these
deaths were due to an international conspiracy of Jewry to poison Christendom. It was reported
that the leaders in the Jewish metropolis of Toledo had initiated the plot and that one of the chief
conspirators was a Rabbi Peyret who had his headquarters in Chambéry, Savoy, whence he
dispatched his poisoners to France, Switzerland, and Italy.
(http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/jewish/1348-jewsblackdeath.asp )
Excerpt below is from JewishEncylopedia.com: (unedited full-text of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia)
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3349-black-death
BLACK DEATH:
Myth of Well-Poisoning.
A violent pestilence which ravaged Europe between March, 1348, and the spring of 1351, and is said to
have carried off nearly half the population. It was brought by sailors to Genoa from south Russia,
whither it had come from central Asia. During March and April, 1348, it spread through Italy, Spain, and
southern France; and by May of that year it had reached southwest England. Though the Jews appear to
have suffered quite as much as their Christian neighbors (Höniger, “Der Schwarze Tod in Deutschland,”
1882; Häser, “Lehrbuch der Gesch. der Medizin,” iii. 156), a myth arose, especially in Germany, that the
spread of the disease was due to a plot of the Jews to destroy Christians by poisoning the wells from
which they obtained water for drinking purposes.
At Strasburg . . . more than 2,000 Jews of the city were put to death (Feb. 16, 1349). The deeds
belonging to the latter were seized and destroyed (showing the real motive of the act); and the debtors
of the Jews gave assurances to the citizens of protection from the consequences of the massacre
(Stobbe, “Juden in Deutschland,” p. 189). . . . The largest number of victims is recorded at Mayence,
where no less than 6,000 are said to have been slain Aug. 22, 1349. Here the Jews for the first time took
active measures against their oppressors, and killed 200 of the populace; but finding the task of freeing
themselves hopeless, they barricaded themselves in their dwellings, and when the alternative of
starvation or baptism faced them, set fire to their houses and perished in the flames. Two days
afterward the same fate befell the Jews of Cologne; and, seemingly in the same month (though other
records assign March 21 as the date), the Jewish inhabitants of Erfurt, 3,000 in number, fell victims to
the popular superstition and hatred.
(http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3349-black-death )
Voigtlander, Nico and Hans – JoachimVoth (2012). “Persecution perpetuated: the medieval origins of antisemitic violence in Nazi Germany.”
Quarterly Journal of Economics 127(3): 1339-64.
Pogroms and Jewish Settlements in the Middle Ages Jews first settled in Germany during the Roman
period. The documentary record begins around 1000, when there are confirmed settlements in major
cities like Worms, Speyer, Cologne, and Mainz (Haverkamp 2002). By the fourteenth century, there were
almost 400 confirmed localities with Jewish communities. Pogroms against Jews began not long after
the earliest confirmed settlements were established. The crusades in 1096, 1146, and 1309 witnessed
mass killings of Jews in towns along the Rhine (1346).
By far the most widespread and violent pogroms occurred at the time of the Black Death. One of the
deadliest epidemics in history, the plague spread from the Crimea to southern Italy, France, Switzerland,
and into Central Europe. The disease killed between a third and half of Europe’s population between
1348 and 1350 (McNeill 1975). Faced with a mass epidemic of unprecedented proportions, Christians
were quick to blame Jews for poisoning wells. Once confessions were extracted under torture, the
allegations spread from town to town. (1346)
VI. Conclusion
At the time of the Black Death, Jews were burned in many (but not all) towns and cities across Germany.
. . . .The same places that witnessed violent attacks on Jews during the plague in 1349 also showed more
anti-Semitic attitudes more than half a millennium later: their inhabitants engaged in more anti-Semitic
violence in the 1920s, were more (1385) likely to vote for the Nazi Party before 1930, wrote more letters
to the country’s most anti-Semitic newspaper, organized more deportations of Jews, and engaged in
more attacks on synagogues during the Reichskristallnacht in 1938. We also present evidence that
towns and cities that attacked their Jews in 1349 had more pogroms before the Black Death; they were
also more likely to display anti-Semitic sculptures in public and attack Jews in the early nineteenth
century. Violent hatred of Jews persisted at the local level despite their virtual disappearance from
Germany for centuries after 1550. By the same token, tolerance also persisted over the long term.
(1386)
We show that not only initial Jewish settlement patterns but also Black Death pogroms were partly
influenced by medieval economic factors. However, the same factors do not explain twentieth-century
anti-Semitism. We find no evidence that geographical isolation—as proxied by ruggedness, access to
river transport, and the distance to larger cities—is a predictor of the stability of anti-Semitic actions and
beliefs. There is also no evidence that eastern versus western locales, large cities versus small towns, or
Protestant versus Catholic areas witnessed strongly different degrees of persistence. Instead of
reinforcing persistence, we argue that economic factors had the potential to undermine it. In our data,
persistence disappears in locations where the costs of discriminating against outsiders was high—among
members of the Hanseatic League in northern Germany, which specialized in long-distance trade. The
same is true for towns and cities in southern Germany that were more open to trade. In contrast to
other papers documenting the effect of deep-rooted cultural factors on present-day economic
outcomes (such as the slave trade’s impact on trust and economic performance in Africa today), we find
evidence for the link also operating in the opposite direction: economic incentives modified the extent
to which attitudes stayed the same. We cannot be certain that vertical transmission from parents to
children was crucial, yet the decline in persistence of anti-Semitism in trading cities is more in line with
models of parental investment in children’s attitudes that emphasize utilitarian motives (Doepke and
Zilibotti 2008; Tabellini 2008). Our results also lend qualified support to Montesquieu’s famous dictum
that trade encourages ‘‘civility.’’ Results from the Hanseatic cities demonstrate a link between trade
openness and growing tolerance on average. (1387)
References
Aly, Gӧtz, and Susanne Heim, Architects of Annihilation: Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction.
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003).
Botticini, Maristella, and Zvi Eckstein, ‘‘From Farmers to Merchants, Conversions and Diaspora: Human
Capital and Jewish History,’’ Journal of the European Economic Association, 5 (2007), 885–926.
Brustein, William, and Ryan King, ‘‘Anti-Semitism in Europe before the Holocaust,’’ International Political
Science Review, 25 (2004), 35–53. Bullock, Alan, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. (New York: Harper
Perennial, 1991).
Bundesarchiv, Gedenkbuch Opfer der Verfolgung der Juden unter der Nationalsozialistischen
Gewaltherrschaft in Deutschland, 1933–1945. (Koblenz: Bundesarchiv, 2007).
Burnett, Stephen, ‘‘Jews and Anti-Semitism in Early Modern Germany,’’ Sixteenth Century Journal, 27
(1996), 1057–1064.
Cohn, Samuel K., ‘‘The Black Death and the Burning of Jews,’’ Past & Present, 196 (2007), 3–36.
Cohn-Sherbok, Dan, Anti-Semitism: A History (Stroud: Sutton, 2002).
Doepke, Matthias, and Fabrizio Zilibotti, ‘‘Occupational Choice and the Spirit of Capitalism,’’ Quarterly
Journal of Economics, 123 (2008), 747–793.
Eley, Geoff, The Goldhagen Effect: History, Memory, Nazism—Facing the German Past (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2000).
Ettinger, Shmuel, ‘‘Jew-Hatred in its Historical Context,’’ in Antisemitism through the Ages, ed. Almog,
Shmuel (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1980).
Fein, Helen, ‘‘Explanations of the Origin and Evolution of Anti-Semitism,’’ in The Persistent Question:
Sociological Perspectives and Social Context of Modern Anti-Semitism, ed. Fein, Helen (Berlin:
de Gruyter, 1987).
Foa, Anna, ‘‘The Jews of Europe after the Black Death,’’ European Review,9 (2000), 237–238.
Glaeser, Edward, ‘‘The Political Economy of Hatred,’’ Quarterly Journal of Economics, 120 (2005), 45–86.
Glassman, Bernard, Anti-Semitic Stereotypes without Jews: Images of the Jews in England, 1290–1700.
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1975).
Goldhagen, Daniel, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Knopf,
1996).
Gottfried, Robert Steven, The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe (New York:
Free Press, 1985)
Haverkamp, Alfred, Geschichte der Juden im Mittelalter von der Nordsee bis zu den Su¨dalpen.
Kommentiertes Kartenwerk (Hannover: Hahn, 2002).
Lindemann, Albert, Anti-Semitism before the Holocaust. (Harlow: Longman, 2000).
McNeill, William Hardy, Plagues and People (New York: Anchor, 1975).
Oberman, Heiko A. The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1984).
Perednik, Gustavo, ‘‘Nӓıve Spanish Judeophobia,’’ Jewish Political Studies Review, 15 (2003), 87–110.
Shachar, Isaiah, The Judensau: A Medieval Anti-Jewish Motif and Its History. (London: Warburg Institute,
1974).
Sterling, Eleonore, ‘‘Anti-Jewish Riots in Germany in 1819: A Displacement of Social Protest,’’ Historia
Judaica, 12 (1950), 105–142.
Tabellini, Guido, ‘‘The Scope of Cooperation: Norms and Incentives,’’ Quarterly Journal of Economics,
123 (2008), 905–950.
Critical Thinking Assignment:
Paternalism and Perceptions of Fairness in Light of Game Theory
How does being on the side with a power advantage in a zero-sum game affect the “framing” of
judgments of fairness in the “Trail of Tears,” the Battle of Little Bighorn, and the Dawes Allotment Act of
1887? How does paternalism (seeing the ultimate losers of a game as children) enter into the framing?
In answering this question, apply the explanation of judgments of fairness, the explication of the causes
of ethnic conflict, and the definition of a zero-sum game, all shown in the three paragraphs below.
Would the framing of judgments of fairness be different in a non-zero sum game (in which all
participants gain from cooperation and total wealth is increased)?
If we examine the Causes of Ethnic Conflict and Stratification, three elements are evident: (1)
conflict over scarce resources, (2) power protecting privilege and (3) ideological legitimation.
Lets start with conflict over scarce resources: There is never enough to go around when sources
of wealth are land-based. In particular, there is always of a scarcity land itself, wildlife, crops,
natural resources such as oil and gold, and even strategic advantage that comes with control over
territory. Significantly, none of these resources are infinitely expandable, hence competition for
them is often a zero-sum game. For every winner there is also a loser. Accordingly, there will
be conflict between groups for dominance and control of these scarce resources. (Chris Girard,
lecture 25)
Zero-sum game: “A situation in which one participant’s gains result only from another participant’s equivalent
losses. The net change in total wealth among participants is zero; the wealth is just shifted from one to another.”
(http://www.investopedia.com/terms/z/zero-sumgame.asp )
It is a commonplace that the fairness of an action depends in large part on the signs of its
outcomes for the agent and for the individuals affected by it. The cardinal rule of fair behavior is
surely that one person should not achieve a gain by simply imposing an equivalent loss on
another. . . . [Yet] judgments of fairness are also susceptible to framing effects, in which form
appears to overwhelm substance. (p. 731) (Daniel Kahneman, Jack L. Knetsch, Richard Thaler.
“Fairness as a constraint on profit seeking: Entitlements in the market.” American Economic
Review, 76 (1986), pp. 728–741
The Trail of Tears
Early in the 19th century, while the rapidly-growing United States expanded into the lower South, white
settlers faced what they considered an obstacle. This area was home to the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw,
Chicasaw and Seminole nations [known as the “Five Civilized Tribes”]. These Indian nations, in the view
of the settlers and many other white Americans, were standing in the way of progress.
(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html )
. . . [The land of the “Five Civilized Tribes.” . . . . was valuable. . . . Many . . . whites yearned to make their fortunes by
growing cotton, and they did not care how “civilized” their native neighbors were: They wanted that land and they
would do almost anything to get it. They stole livestock; burned and looted houses and towns, and squatted on land
that did not belong to them. (http://www.history.com/topics/trail-of-tears )
In 1828 Georgia passed a law pronouncing all laws of the Cherokee Nation to be null and void after June
1, 1830, forcing the issue of states’ rights with the federal government. Because the state no longer
recognized the rights of the Cherokees, tribal meetings had to be held just across the state line at Red
Clay, Tennessee. . . . When gold was discovered on Cherokee land in northern Georgia in 1829, efforts to
dislodge the Cherokees from their lands were intensified. (http://www.nationaltota.org/the-story/ )
In 1830, just a year after taking office, [President Andrew] Jackson pushed a new piece of legislation
called the “Indian Removal Act” through both houses of Congress. It gave the president power to
negotiate removal treaties with Indian tribes living east of the Mississippi. Under these treaties, the
Indians were to give up their lands east of the Mississippi in exchange for lands to the west. Those
wishing to remain in the east would become citizens of their home state. This act affected not only the
southeastern nations, but many others further north. The removal was supposed to be voluntary and
peaceful, and it was that way for the tribes that agreed to the conditions. But the southeastern nations
resisted, and Jackson forced them to leave. . . . Jackson’s attitude toward Native Americans was
paternalistic and patronizing — he described them as children in need of guidance and believed the
removal policy was beneficial to the Indians. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html )
The Cherokees in 1828. . . had . . . many European-style customs, including the wearing of
gowns by Cherokee women. They built roads, schools and churches, had a system of
representational government and were farmers and cattle ranchers. A Cherokee alphabet, the
“Talking Leaves” was created by Sequoyah.
(http://www.aboutnorthgeorgia.com/ang/Cherokee_Trail_of_Tears )
In 1832, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Cherokee on
the . . . issue in Worcester v. Georgia. In this case Chief Justice John
Marshall ruled that the Cherokee Nation was sovereign, making the
removal laws invalid. The Cherokee would have to agree to removal
in a treaty. The treaty then would have to be
ratified by the Senate.
(http://www.aboutnorthgeorgia.com/ang/Cherokee_Trail_of_Tears )
But Georgia officials simply ignored the decision, and President Jackson refused to enforce it. Jackson
was furious and personally affronted by the Marshall ruling, stating, “Mr. Marshall has made his
decision. Now let him enforce it!” (http://www.ushistory.org/us/24f.asp )
In the winter of 1831, under threat of invasion by the U.S. Army, the Choctaw became the first nation to be expelled
from its land altogether. They made the journey to Indian territory on foot (some “bound in chains and marched
double file,” one historian writes) and without any food, supplies or other help from the government. Thousands of
people died along the way. . . . In 1836, the federal government drove the Creeks from their land for the last time:
3,500 of the 15,000 Creeks who set out for Oklahoma did not survive the trip. (http://www.history.com/topics/trail-oftears )
By 1838, only about 2,000 Cherokees had left their Georgia homeland for Indian territory. President Martin Van Buren
sent General Winfield Scott and 7,000 soldiers to expedite the removal process. Scott and his troops forced the
Cherokee into stockades at bayonet point while whites looted their homes and belongings. Then, they marched the
Indians more than 1,200 miles to Indian territory. Whooping cough, typhus, dysentery, cholera and starvation were
epidemic along the way . . . (http://www.history.com/topics/trail-of-tears )
Painting by Robert Lindneux
In one of the saddest episodes of our brief history,
men, women, and children were taken from their
land, herded into makeshift forts with minimal
facilities and fo
