DDR: The Chosen and the Damned: Native Americans and the Making of Race in the United States by David J. Silverman

Day 1 (DDRD 3,074) April 1, 2026)

Read to page 27. 

I had my doubts about going to this book next. Was I really prepared to read about the ignominious treatment of native Americans? Not a head in the sand reaction, but a keeping my head above water one. But it's a library book, and I knew that if I didn't start it now, it would go back unread. So....

x + 501 = 601 pages.

Go.

"...behind the American celebration of the self-made man is the reality that too many of those figures were and are mere hucksters and blowhards." (2)

Reference American Indians adapting to life after the invasion of whites by becoming ranchers, etc., Silverman says that "White civilization had no room for actual Indians adapting to modernity. Therefore, the White public either ignored them or dismissed them as inauthentic. Recognition as real Indians required playing to the stereotype." (4)

"...scholars no longer view race as real in a biological sense. Rather, they see it as a product of history, of human beings categorizing one another as discrete descent groups and giving those categories social, cultural, economic, and political meaning based on struggles for power. That is to say, scholars agree that race is not a matter of skin color, blood, or some other physical essence, but is purely a human construct for human purposes." (25)

Day 2 (DDRD 3,075) April 2, 2026)

Read to page 

I think I'm up the first person to read this book.  The "received" stamp is for February 18th 2026, which is pretty close to the date I picked it up from the library. Also, there's this:

https://youtube.com/shohttps://youtube.com/shorts/KOYi82Y6uPQ?feature=sharerts/KOYi82Y6uPQ?feature=share

Is that a These Pages Have Not Been Turned Previously sound, or what?

Reference the deaths of many Native Americans from smallpox in the early 17th century, Governor John Winthrop said, "...so the Lord hath cleared our title to what we possess." (35) How's that for a Good Christian Man?

After discussing the atrocities committed by Nathaniel Bacon and his followers, we're told that even after "Bacon was long dead...the fear, hatred, and greed that drove his movement continued to animate the colony's vicious exploitation of Native people for decades to come." (50)

Which makes me wonder.