Language

English (en)

Prize Year

2018

Document Type

Unrestricted

Abstract

Settler-invader colonialism is a type of colonization in which the colonizer displaces those indigenous to the region and then settles in the area, claiming it as their own. In their paper on settler-invader colonies, Johnston and Lawson argue: A key element in settler postcolonial theory is an examination of the processes by which emigrant European settlers ‘displaced’ the indigenous occupants. This displacement took many different forms. It was physical, geographical, spiritual, cultural, and symbolic. Indigenous peoples were characteristically moved from their traditional lands onto less desirable tracts of country…the displacement was, almost as importantly, cultural and symbolic as well as physical… Increasingly, the white settlers referred to themselves and their culture as indigenous; they cultivated native attributes and skills…and in this way cemented their legitimacy, their own increasingly secure sense of moral, spiritual, and cultural belonging in the place they commonly described as ‘new’ (Johnston and Lawson 363). Usurping the cultural traditions of the colonized, the settler-invader colonists displaced indigenous communities both physically and symbolically. The settler-invaders seize the culture of the colonized to legitimize their invasion, but in doing so they represent themselves as native thus erasing the indigenous population. This notion of invasion and displacement is not unique to settler-invader colonies. In fact, America has a long tradition of displacement and usurpation; from genocide of Native Americans to today’s modes of urban revitalization there is one thing. more American than the star-spangled banner: race motivated invasion. A country built on the backs of an indigenous population and the enslavement of Africans has been unable to escapethis pattern. Today, even those who pride themselves as being liberal thinkers continue the invasion under the guise of urban redevelopment. Like settler-invader colonialism, neoliberal urban redevelopment uproots an original, often African American, population. As seen through the types of restaurants in these invaded areas, the gentrifiers, like settler-invaders, “go native”— opening relabeled restaurants in the traditions of the displaced community. In St. Louis, Missouri neoliberal urban redevelopment strategie s displace African American communities. The restaurants in these neighborhoods reflect this reality. Soul and Southern restaurants in St. Louis fall on red-lines, as both neoliberal urban redevelopment and Southern food restaurants usurp, exploit, and then entirely deny the existence of African Americans.

Instructor/Course

Grady, College Writing

Comments

Honorable Mention, Dean James E. McLeod Freshman Writing Prize, 2018

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