I question whether the '5% of lefties' strangling themselves because the right became the pro-oxygen party is too low; this stupidity is far more prevalent, and on the right too. How else can you explain so much resistance to clear, experiential evidence of climate change, and scientists who've been ignored for decades continuing to soun…
I question whether the '5% of lefties' strangling themselves because the right became the pro-oxygen party is too low; this stupidity is far more prevalent, and on the right too. How else can you explain so much resistance to clear, experiential evidence of climate change, and scientists who've been ignored for decades continuing to sound the alarm, and the right, who have to live here too, argue it's a 'hoax' as they write off anything they don't want to believe in?
I haven't been to public school for a very long time but I started first grade a few years after the centennial anniversary of the end of the Civil War, in Florida, a state that is clearly doing what my mother said they did fifty-odd years ago, "still fighting the Civil War". We learned NOTHING about the Civil War. We *did* get together and sing songs sometimes in the afternoons, including 'Dixie'. I wonder how our black teacher thought about that (she wasn't mine, she was in the next room). I finished my junior high and high school years in Ohio and I don't remember much about the Civil War or slavery, although we sometimes spent time on black history during Black History Month. My public school education was pretty whitewashed, and anything I learned about slavery I found out on my own through library books.
I wonder why we even have a Black History Month, as though black history is something we should pay attention to outside 'real' American history, when in fact black people are every bit as much a part of American history as the Chinese, the Irish, the Asians, the Latinos, and all the other patchwork of nationalities here in North America. Why not teach a more integrated history in which black peoples' histories and stories are woven into it? Not so much, "Slavery 101" but American history as a lot less white (since it wasn't as white as we think), and weave in, instead, the role of black slaves who did a lot of the work of building this nation unpaid, and often abused. After I read your article I Googled on the history of slaves in New Amsterdam since that's where my first familial line landed in the New World (my Dutch ancestors) and no one else from my parents' family got here until my English great-great grandfather landed in New York (formerly New Amsterdam) in 1850, and he owned no slaves (it would have been repugnant to him). If any of my ancestors did it would be the Dutch, but I probably will never learn if anyone in *my* family did because it was so long ago.
It would not bother me to know that some ancestors here owned slaves. It wouldnt' even bother me if my multiple-great grandfather owned your multiple-great grandfathers. Embarrassing ancestors are common for everyone, if we even find out about them. At the Tower of London, I'm related by blood or marriage to something like four out of the ten big names on a plaque of Famous People Who Were Executed Here. The ones they didn't execute had to flee to the New World to escape the same fate (now that I think about it, they got here before my great-great-grandfather!)
I do wonder whether maybe there's a way to counteract white resistance from those who *do*, on some fundamental level, feel guilty about what happened. Maybe we can emphasize countering the negative identity obsession of both sides and note it doesn't matter what your ancestors did, who are *you* today as a person? But also, tell a more *honest* history like all the black slaveowners in the antebellum South and the enthusiastic role Africans played in selling their rival countrymen to the newest and certainly not the first market for African slaves.
I'm quite sure the left isn't ready for *those* stories. Nor would the Native Americans be keen on a focus of their pre-contact history in which they were guilty of all the shit whites became guilty of later. The point is not to say, "See, your ancestors were no better,"--well actually, yet it is. Let's acknowledge that humans are ratbastards all around, note what we did right and what we did wrong, and vow to to better now and in the future.
I question whether the '5% of lefties' strangling themselves because the right became the pro-oxygen party is too low; this stupidity is far more prevalent, and on the right too. How else can you explain so much resistance to clear, experiential evidence of climate change, and scientists who've been ignored for decades continuing to sound the alarm, and the right, who have to live here too, argue it's a 'hoax' as they write off anything they don't want to believe in?
I haven't been to public school for a very long time but I started first grade a few years after the centennial anniversary of the end of the Civil War, in Florida, a state that is clearly doing what my mother said they did fifty-odd years ago, "still fighting the Civil War". We learned NOTHING about the Civil War. We *did* get together and sing songs sometimes in the afternoons, including 'Dixie'. I wonder how our black teacher thought about that (she wasn't mine, she was in the next room). I finished my junior high and high school years in Ohio and I don't remember much about the Civil War or slavery, although we sometimes spent time on black history during Black History Month. My public school education was pretty whitewashed, and anything I learned about slavery I found out on my own through library books.
I wonder why we even have a Black History Month, as though black history is something we should pay attention to outside 'real' American history, when in fact black people are every bit as much a part of American history as the Chinese, the Irish, the Asians, the Latinos, and all the other patchwork of nationalities here in North America. Why not teach a more integrated history in which black peoples' histories and stories are woven into it? Not so much, "Slavery 101" but American history as a lot less white (since it wasn't as white as we think), and weave in, instead, the role of black slaves who did a lot of the work of building this nation unpaid, and often abused. After I read your article I Googled on the history of slaves in New Amsterdam since that's where my first familial line landed in the New World (my Dutch ancestors) and no one else from my parents' family got here until my English great-great grandfather landed in New York (formerly New Amsterdam) in 1850, and he owned no slaves (it would have been repugnant to him). If any of my ancestors did it would be the Dutch, but I probably will never learn if anyone in *my* family did because it was so long ago.
It would not bother me to know that some ancestors here owned slaves. It wouldnt' even bother me if my multiple-great grandfather owned your multiple-great grandfathers. Embarrassing ancestors are common for everyone, if we even find out about them. At the Tower of London, I'm related by blood or marriage to something like four out of the ten big names on a plaque of Famous People Who Were Executed Here. The ones they didn't execute had to flee to the New World to escape the same fate (now that I think about it, they got here before my great-great-grandfather!)
I do wonder whether maybe there's a way to counteract white resistance from those who *do*, on some fundamental level, feel guilty about what happened. Maybe we can emphasize countering the negative identity obsession of both sides and note it doesn't matter what your ancestors did, who are *you* today as a person? But also, tell a more *honest* history like all the black slaveowners in the antebellum South and the enthusiastic role Africans played in selling their rival countrymen to the newest and certainly not the first market for African slaves.
I'm quite sure the left isn't ready for *those* stories. Nor would the Native Americans be keen on a focus of their pre-contact history in which they were guilty of all the shit whites became guilty of later. The point is not to say, "See, your ancestors were no better,"--well actually, yet it is. Let's acknowledge that humans are ratbastards all around, note what we did right and what we did wrong, and vow to to better now and in the future.