Dear Real Americans:
I regret to inform you — no, that's not right. That's the opening line of certain letters expressing real regrets. And I have no regrets of any kind here; but "I gleefully inform you" seems somewhat excessive. I'll start over.
Without any preamble, it's time to admit that your greatn-grandfather was indeed, at times, an asshole. It matters little whether he was a true believer in Manifest Destiny, or an actual slaveholder, or a political boss or landowner, or a Klansbacterium (there's no thought process there so ascribing a central nervous system seems excessive), or some loser who believed in the Lost Cause and somehow — like Braxton Bragg — convinced people he was worthy of veneration, or just a garden-variety bigot in daily life and especially at the ballot box. We'll neglect for the moment that greatn-grandmother probably was, too, but she couldn't vote. The statistics are pretty compelling: Someone in a Real American's ancestry was like this (even in the Old Country, wherever that was).
This had consequences then. It has continuing consequences now. But you don't have to be an asshole by continuing in that family tradition — you're supposed to have learned from the mistakes of the past, even in a public school that white-protestant-washed the mistakes of the past. (Mine did and it wasn't in a red state!).
Two of those continuing consequences formed the context of yesterday's Supreme Court opinions. Both opinions result from a chain of consequences — however one might argue that they weren't "inevitable" or "proximately causal" — from your collective greatn-grandfathers' assholery. This leaves the obvious question: What would be a better way to pay for the consequences of the past — better including both "more just" and "at least equally administrable"?
- On principle, I'm thoroughly against ancestry as the dominant factor in determining who is a proper parent for a child. That, however, is an argument I'm not going to win… especially when the nature of that ancestry has been distorted by the assholery that led to any perceived need for the Indian Child Welfare Act. There is no perfect here. There probably isn't even a good here; on available evidence, there is only a least-bad-on-the-whole here. And that is always, always going to result in some individual distress, disappointment, and "suboptimal outcomes."
I would rather that a child's tribal status be entirely irrelevant to determining an appropriate parental placement. At best, that preference necessarily would ignore several centuries of history; at worst, it is itself tinged with the undertones of "White (or Western) Savior" and often less-cocktail-party-civilized ills (which is not to minimize the ills of cocktail-party civilization). In technical terms, the ICWA sucks… but just objecting that "it sucks" is insufficient. Show me something better that is both achievable and administrable… and doesn't implicitly define "better" to mean "everyone has to defer to my personal interests/ideology/theology." And then get our elected representatives to pass it without undermining it, without grandstanding, without themselves being White Saviors (an attitude against which the ICWA is, in part, supposed to protect).
- The less said about the context of tribal-nation loansharkery, perhaps the better. That this opinion directly concerned "consequences" of "nonpayment," and attempts to claim priority for "repayment" by ignoring the rules imposed on everyone else for "repayment," just proves that some Native American tribal/sovereign authorities can learn well from the examples of political corruption, organized criminal enterprises, and passive capital accretion off the reservation. Which is not, on balance, a good thing — for anyone; the elliptical description of the context says more than the Court really wants to, hidden between the lines (slip op. at 4 log.):
In 2019, one of the Band’s businesses, Lendgreen, allowed respondent Brian Coughlin to borrow $1,100 in the form of a high-interest, short-term loan. But Coughlin filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy before he fully repaid the loan.
That is literally the only hint anywhere in the opinion of what was actually in dispute. Saying it was about "tribal sovereign immunity" skips over the entire context — and notwithstanding the way law-school exam questions (and bar exam questions) are written, context always matters in resolving disputes (whether short of bloodshed, as the law attempts, or otherwise). In particular, we know nothing whatsoever about the circumstances that led Mr Coughlin to seek out that loan in the first place, or what alternatives had already been foreclosed to him before he contracted with Lendgreen… or what outside pressures Lendgreen may (or may not) have been under from silent partners to, umm, ensure timely repayment for the benefit of undisclosed real parties in interest, or the "enhanced repayment-incentivization methods"1 to be engaged in.
So please stop inflicting — or at least rationalizing as rightful because it has benefited you personally — your greatn-grandfathers' assholery on me. Or on anyone else.
- <SARCASM> I have no direct, personal knowledge regarding Lendgreen. I do have direct, personal knowledge — and substantial documentation — regarding the practices rampant among those who provide "high-interest, short-term loan[s]." These are more "sophisticated" now than of-course-hypothetical visits by a couple of large gentlemen whose middle names are "The" (Johnny the Squirrel, Jimmy the Fish, and so on) who offer to introduce nonpayers' kneecaps to baseball bats. That "sophistication" is just about as morally defensible as the increased sophistication in "enhanced interrogation methods" that refrain from the rack. Whether Lendgreen goes this far is beside the point; it's relevant context, as is apparent from the other allegations in Coughlin's complaint (see slip op. at 5 log.). </SARCASM>