White men don’t have to reach a bar of excellence; the bar will find white men wherever they already are.

A repost
Before you read the excellent article below. Let me explain a two or three things that happened a couple of weeks ago.

I

A white co-worker of mine said something to me not long before Trump's speech that I've heard other white people say about him. These white people look sad then say "He has no filter." What these white people are inadvertently telling me is, "I am like Trump. I don't say it out loud. And I think all white people are like me and Trump. We just know better than to say it out loud." 

White people like this are comfortable saying such things directly to my black face because they think protesting racism and simply mentioning race at all are the same as the white racism they have against THOSE PEOPLE echoing in their own heads.

So I think I understand what "Trump sounds more presidential" means when it comes out of a white face.

II

Trump managed to keep much of his white ethnoracism behind his teeth for a whole 20 minutes, whatever the duration of his first speech to congress was.  He was able to do it because he was reading it and did not deviate (sounds like)

After that one speech he was applauded and called "more presidential" by white run news outlets everywhere. The press's retreat into normalizing that thing in the White House made my stomach contents start to rise...had to cover my mouth and run to the bathroom.

Believe me. I understood that the bar for white men is low before this year. But now I know understand that bar to be on the ground, below sea level, buried in dog crap and mud.

III

Trump, Affleck, ‘La La Land’ And The Unendingly Low Bar For White Men

by David Dennis Jr. at StillCrew.com

• "Here’s what the La La Land crew, Casey Affleck and Donald Trump have in common: they found the most basic ground-levels of human decency and are waiting for society’s bar to take the elevator down to meet them."

 

I’ve spent the last eight years pretty confident that George W. Bush would be the dumbest president I’d see in my lifetime. His sartorial blunders, which seem pretty tame now, were legendary and pop culture cornerstones for years. The “fool me once” bit or the “put food on your family” quotes struck America as much as, oh, say, faking reasons to start a disastrous war or ignoring floating black bodies in New Orleans.

Bush, however, resurfaced last week with some quotes about the current administration, lambasting Trump for his racist policies, Muslim ban and attacks on the media. One quote, however, stood out to me the most:

“I consider the media to be indispensable to democracy.”

One word stayed with me.

Indispensable....

This caused me to go back and look at George W. Bush’s speeches. And for as dumb as we’ve pretty much accepted him to be, he sounds infinitely more qualified to be president than Donald Trump. The same Donald Trump who, on Tuesday, blamed former President Obama for current White House leaks, Jews for anti-Semitic abuses and soldiers for their own demise...  

I read this whole thing thinking. "Yes. Yes. Yes. Me too."
So read more
 https://stillcrew.com/trump-affleck-la-la-land-and-the-unendlingly-low-bar-for-white-men-3027225600bb#.7awifcsq2 

A SERMON TO WHITE AMERICA

A Dr. Michael Eric Dyson Interview

 

12 minutes

On Dyson's book: TEARS WE CANNOT STOP

"Written in only 188 pages, Dyson incisively takes “beloved” (white people) through the 360° lesson on race and understanding it from a black person’s point of view. He leaves no stone unturned. He demystifies whiteness in exactitude and with unflinching truth. Yes it’s uncomfortable, which he states right from the beginning, but it’s necessary. Dyson utilizes pop culture, expressions, lyrics, tv shows, famous people, and most of all real examples from his own life. He uses all of this to demonstrate white America’s inability to accept their part in racism still exiting so strongly today. Despite sounding negative, Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America is not all gloom and doom."

~BrownGirlReading

Read More:https://browngirlreading.com/2017/01/17/tears-we-cannot-stop-a-sermon-to-white-america/

Michael Eric Dyson and Cornell West
in better days

REAL WHITE ALLIES READ

People of color can't afford to be draggin' any pseudo-white-ally dead weight in the age of The Orange Dragon.

White folks don't have to go as far in allyship as actor Michael Shannon who said, "If you're voting for Trump, it's time for the Urn."    But better that than try to defend white Trump voters as this newly minted "White Working Class," these mythical white voters who voted for working classed-ness OR "White Christians" voting for Christianity when it's clear that all Trump voters voted for was WHITEness.

If that weren't true non-white working class and the non-white Christians would have voted their wallets too. Black and brown people always have some piece of ethnoracism to ignore inside every white candidate since this country was conceived as an idea. There's no reason to see 2016 election as different.

If 60% of black and brown folks had been worried their homes would be foreclosed on if they FAILED to vote for working class hero Trump, then Trump would have gotten a landslide's worth of black votes -- no matter what the heck he said or didn't say. 

For so long as Trump knows whiteness better than white allies do, white allies are kinda worthless. And for so long as white allies are kind of worthless, POCs know the wind may blow them the right way politically speaking or it might not 

And that's why the white woman vote going to Trump shouldn't have been THAT surprising.
 

Feeling Rebloggy 
from 2015

America loves teachable moments, those real-life Very Special Episodes of supposed cross-cultural exchange and transracial learning.

The problem with those teachable moments is that the same people always end up doing all the teaching.

 In matters of race (and sex, disability, gender and sexuality, but let’s stick to race right now), the marginalized are tasked with being educators. That is, people of color (POC), are expected to be patient and polite racial and cultural ambassadors who provide white people new to this whole “thinking critically about race” thing with a “way in.” The role entails charitably and unselfishly engaging questions, assertions and doubts from white people who’ve previously done precious little thinking about racism and privilege, but often have quite a bit to say on the topic.

When POC refuse to take on this dual role of spokesperson and resource library, they’re often accused of having shirked an assumed responsibility. The idea seems to be that we’ve missed an opportunity, that it’s our duty to hold white people’s hands and educate them, that we’re condemning some poor white person to a continued life of ignorance.

~SALON 

Read More:

http://www.salon.com/2015/04/14/black_people_are_not_here_to_teach_you_what_so_many_white_americans_just_cant_grasp_partner/

Governor Uses Emergency Order to Bring Out-of-State Police to Dakota Access Pipeline Protest

Feeling Rebloggy
NORTH DAKOTA VS STANDING ROCK TRIBE

"The origins of the state's overreaction can be traced to a lawsuit filed by the oil pipeline company—Dakota Access—against protesters in federal court to stop demonstrations near its construction sites. To sway the court's decision and likely public opinion, too, the pipeline company claimed it feared violence from protesters was imminent because of a few vague threats posted on social media and an anonymous email. Protesters have been arrested for pushing through police lines to stop construction equipment, but incidents like these in no way support declaring a state of emergency and militarizing the state's response."

Read More:

http://www.ecowatch.com/dakota-access-pipeline-emergency-order-2063073522.html

DAPL CONFRONTATION:   TRIGGER WARNING - DISTURBING VIDEO WITHIN

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2016/10/28/trigger-warning-disturbing-video-dapl-confrontation-166262


Read More on the 1877 origins of this dispute between Whites and First Nations people here.
http://blackchickrocked.blogspot.com/2016/10/a-summaryon-battle-between-standing.html

BLACK WOMEN'S SOLIDARITY PHOTO IS A PROBLEM AT WEST POINT

I kid you not. 

These women are actually being investigated because of this photo. This fists in the air are "a problem."



Black West Point cadets under scrutiny for raised fists in photo

"(CNN)It's a time-honored tradition at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York -- graduating seniors in small groups don their ceremonial high-collared uniforms and pose for a photo in front of historic Nininger Hall.

Their poses are typically stern and stoic, mimicking sepia-toned editions that date back to the 1800s.

They do not typically raise a clenched fist in the air.

So when a photo of 16 female, African-American cadets making the gesture was posted online last month, it raised eyebrows at the elite training academy, which produces many of the nation's future military leaders...."

Read More
http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/08/us/west-point-cadets-photo/


Message: Anything we, as white people feel outside of is political, possibly racist, against us. 

Got it.

Got it in the 1960s too
 - - - - -
Dear White People,

This photo means our success is your success. It is a message to oppressed black and brown people in this country-- where higher rates of poverty among black and brown people, higher rates of unemployment among black and brown people, and higher rates of death at hands of police (when unarmed) among black and brown people are not an accident but signs of that oppression.

These problems of the black community are solved by political action but they are are not "political" issues, they are empathy, ethical, and moral issues.

The raised fist in solidarity is good to see anywhere and everywhere, always.

Some people, need to listen to President Obama's commencement speech to Howard University, especially that section on what links us together as African Americans.

http://blackchickrocked.blogspot.com/2016/05/president-obama-at-howard-university.html

West Point's "scrutiny" is a good way to intimidate, to keep up that "us" vs "them" war too many of you have going on in your heads. Good way to keep that white supremacy in place and unacknowledged as real.

 - - - - -

In essence, the black power fist
HAS ALWAYS MEANT
" BLACK LIVES MATTER
TOO! "

I think we should write West Point and let them know how we feel about their "inquiry"

E-mail: USAGWestPoint@usma.army.mil

LEADED AND UNLEADED

SCHOLASTIC'S CONTRIBUTION TO INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM PUBLISHED JUST IN TIME FOR MLK DAY

BELIEVE IT OR NOT, 
THIS SCHOLASTIC BOOK  
ON THE HAPPINESS OF SLAVERY 
WAS WRITTEN FOR PUBLICATION....LIKE YESTERDAY

IT IS FOR SMALL SCHOOL CHILDREN.

AND IT WAS PUBLISHED IN 2016

White Guilt Alleviating
U.S. Happy Slave Image
#98,984,623,815

Read More:https://campbele.wordpress.com/2016/01/13/book-review-a-birthday-cake-for-george-washington/


And this is what J.W. White-Person had to say about the book:  

"I get why people think these books are racist. What I don't get is why people are acting like people who were slaves were never happy, or never proud. People who are unhappy all the time tend to wind up DEAD. Humans struggle toward a full human experience even under the worst conditions. Because life is complicated."

You know she thought she was dropping patient and profound wisdom on the reactionary folk right? You know that, right?



(Sing-song voice) Sooo, this was my response: 

I'm sure Jews in the concentration camp had their happy moments. 

And I'm actually wondering if one Nazi and one Jew in a concentration camp didn't share a smoke one day and a smile and understand that it was just circumstances that brought them to where they were-- on opposite sides. 

There had to have been one odd couple that lasted for a 3 minute smoke during all of WWII. But the horror of genocide never left the Jewish person long enough for an entire children's book to be written about the happy times in the concentration camp. 

Nobody has written a book that makes an effort to show that life is sooo complicated that these WWII enemies as friends could be REPRESENTATIVE. 

Nobody has written a children's book where the Jewish person has his arms around the Nazi on his way into the shower. 

Nobody has written a book trying to make concentration camp life look like it was just complicated life, some good, some bad, some joy, some pain. But white racists in this country have been trying to depict the happy slave over and over and over again -- especially for their children

White racists trying to justify their parents, grandparents, great grandparents evil bullsh** do that....as if they think the evil is genetic. 

If you don't think these books are racist, you need to look in a mirror and see just how much racist superiority has been passed down to you-- not via DNA but via passive teaching every day of your life. 

I'll bet Dylann Roof's parents or grandparents or cousins are trying to figure out where he learned all that racism from-- not knowing it was them all along.

---------------

Generally speaking, I try not to rip white people a new one for white ignorance because I know they live in 95% white neighborhoods, telling one another how white great-great grandma and grandpa "just didn't know any better and how they were really good people....BUT that's just the way things were back then. Besides, they didn't actually own slaves themselves.,," (Poor, non-slave owning whites just participated in the institution of slavery, they just turned runaways in feeling really good about themselves when a foot got cut off for daring to try to run.)

I have deep knowledge of white ignorance after all these years on the planet. But I kinda lost it.

It happens.  


I bring all this up this in order to point out one thing: The Dylann Roofs and pillow-case-headed fools are not the foundation of  the persistent white racism problem in this country.

Mr. and Mrs. J. W. White-Person are the foundation of racism in this country. They are the roots, the trunk, and the leaves of racism in this country. They are damn near the entire tree.

The KKK, skin heads, and Dylann Roofs are a couple of bright red, dying leaves at the very top of the tree that you can't even see from a distance. That's all these overt racists are - few in relative number and fairly irrelevant most days. Racism persists in this country because Mr. and Mrs. J W White-Person won't look in the mirror.

Mr. and Mrs. White-Person construct, disassemble, and reconstruct racism on the regular. The coded language changes here and there. But the happy black slave depiction is consistent as hell.

I just cannot believe this book was published in 2016 without even a hint of what one person owning another really means. 




Different groups of people of color have to come together if our outnumbering Mr. and Mrs J.W. White Person is going to mean one doggone thing in 2050 or 2060. Know why? The problem is not that Mr. and Mrs. J W White Person hate people of color, it is that they love themselves (hidden racism or no hidden racism) just the way they are. There for we, people of color, are going to have to get know and appreciate one another and push forward.

Mr. and Mrs. White Person loved themselves the way they were in 1860, 1960, and they still do in 2016-- unacknowledged racism at varying levels but embraced tightly to the breast all the same.

Every now and again I get through to a white person and they can see that their joy over the progress their people have made each year from 1863 to now are minuscule yearly amounts of progress as compared to what one would expect from "good people" who live in a country that supposedly believe:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal....

Abraham Lincoln 

 
IT IS 2016. And this book was written in the last year or two. 
It got past proof readers, editors,  and advertisers. Do you know how many people had to have tacitly approved this book, how many levels of approval it passed through before it made it to market? 

Did white people really have the audacity to suggest racism might be close to over when President Obama was first elected? Really? Was that just 7 years ago? 


SIGN A PETITION

LET SCHOLASTIC KNOW HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT THIS BOOK

https://www.change.org/p/scholastic-tell-scholastic-stop-promoting-racist-happy-slave-book-to-children?recruiter=435046062&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink

* * * * *
P.S.

Dear White People,

If you're going to depict the slave that's happy because of being a house negro instead of the field negro or happy because of the massa's status  --as if that white status will rub off and penetrate black enslaved skin-- then at least do a Quentin Tarentino. Show a G-rated version of how being an internalized-racism suffering, Uncle-Ruckus-like person is a bad thing, then let Django shoot him dead by the end of the book. 

That's all we're asking of you. If you simply must hang on to your visions of the happy slave and put him in a children's book every now and again, make sure that happy slave gets suddenly dead by the end of the story. 

MISSOURI STATE REPS AND THE ONLY RACE CARD THAT COUNTS

And the only race card that counts in this country is the white one.

Consider what you read below Slave Master Mentality in it's most political form.

Rep Kurt Bahr

Infuriated that black football players upended white supremacy by supporting  the hunger strike begun by Jonathan Butler at Missouri University(?) after the school's president and various white others failed to respond, yet again, to attacks by white racist students on campus, a couple of white republican Missouri legislators, let their slave master mentality  all the way out of the box.

Rep Rick Brattin 

Kurt Bahr and Rick Brattin  proposed a bill that would allow schools to take away scholarships from any players that participate in strikes or protests in the future. The bill also calls for punishing coaches that support players that strike or protest.

It'll likely never come to pass, due to freedom of speech issues and the fact that the idiots that wrote the bill assume that players are employees of the school (they aren't). But the white-racist-like attempt to limit black and brown people from having the same rights as other (read: white) students might hurt Missouri's colleges recruiting efforts in the future -- or maybe I just hope it does. 

"The bill proposed by Republican Rep. Rick Brattin last week in the Missouri House of Representatives would strip scholarships from any athlete who "calls, incites, supports or participates in any strike." Colleges and universities would be required to fine coaching staff members who encourage or enable such student protests...

Rep. Kurt Bahr, the co-sponsor of the bill, said his goal is to show that some state lawmakers don't approve of how University of Missouri administrators handled student unrest. Bahr said he hopes this bill fosters discussion between the legislature and university leadership"

~ESPN 

Hear More Of The Discussion Here
http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/14369127/missouri-legislator-proposes-bill-revoke-student-athlete-scholarships-strike

TWIN SOULS: THE AMERICAN SLAVE HOLDER AND THE GERMAN NAZI

I've known for a long time that white people experimented on black people. Who hasn't heard of the Tuskegee experiment? But the devil is in the details, as described in the article below. 

Statue Of J Marion Sims in Central Park

Feeling Rebloggy

Without anesthesia, Lucy was the first to bear the operation on her hands and knees while 12 visiting doctors watched Sims’ experimental procedure. According to Sims, her bladder had fallen, leaving an opening between the bladder and vagina approximately 2 inches in diameter. He referred to the operation as being on the “…eve of a great discovery…,” and said it was, “… tedious and difficult…” (237).

Sims made improvements on the instruments he constructed as he worked. Eventually, he inserted a piece of sponge inside the neck of Lucy’s bladder and sewed it up. Naturally, within days she developed what Sims referred to as “blood poisoning” (238), and became deathly ill. After 5 days, he cut open her sutures to remove the sponge, but it had hardened. Suffering from inflammation and infection, Sims wrote that he thought, “Lucy’s agony was extreme,” and “She was going to die.” (238). However, Lucy lived and Sims continued his experimentation. 

Afterwards, Sims then moved on to the other women, Anarcha and Betsy, allowing Lucy time to heal in between surgeries. The process of experimentation continued for four years with the women solely under Sims’ care....

A 2006 article by L.L. Wall in the Journal of Medical Ethics defends Sims....

READ MORE: http://hubpages.com/politics/Slave-Women-and-the-Birth-of-Gynecology#

MISTAKING HERO LESSONS FOR HISTORY LESSONS

Do you think race relations would be much improved if schools taught the actual true history of this country?

*******
This question was asked in a group I belong to. It's been asked many times. 

So let's skip over the part where we discuss the fact that there isn't one true history. This question is not about differing perspectives anyway. The question is really about making an attempt to stop telling blatant lies, deliberately leaving out the deadliest parts of racism, and minimizing genocide into something called "manifest destiny" within children's history books in the United States.

********
I don't know how it would get done, as dedicated as people are to seeing "me and mine" in the best possible light and white people have too much power as compared to others for now. But if it could get done, there's no doubt in my mind that there would be a positive difference.


I don't know what form that positive difference would take. However, I see so clearly the link between...


1) not knowing your own history and the survival white supremacy
2) not knowing your own history and thriving of male supremacy



 ...that it seems obvious that breaking those links would necessarily have an effect.      


Most people would agree that an individual person's history and knowledge of that history makes that individual person who they are.  All your experiences create who you are, create your personality. What's in a person's memory, what an individual chooses to remember and chooses to repress (pieces of their personal history) also shapes a person into who they are because what you choose to hold in your memory and choose to erase enhances or limits the effect of your experiences.   
      

  

And I don't think the basic principles of this changes much when you move from talking about individuals to talking about groups.      


A group's history and retained knowledge of that history makes a group who they are. White people, and many other Americans, like to believe in a kind of individuality that isn't real. We are social. We do have group habits formed by our shared history.      


For example, the white individual has a racial identity and acts out race just like everybody else that's not white. White people have white experience. But white individuals collectively, their group, tends to think of their own raced experience as "normal" with everybody else too focused on their skin color/ethnicity -- which is why (history-less) colorblind ideology was only ever popular with this group now called "white people." (You can only believe you are blind to race when it never really existed for you in the first place. )   


Individuals honest about who they are, good or bad, are often decent human beings if they make efforts in that direction. Let's assume for now that this describes a kind of personal transparency that breeds integrity. It follows then that groups of individuals like this, who are honest about who they are, good or bad, will be comprised of decent human beings.

On the flip side...

--if you lie to yourself about how good your group is then there's no effort that needs to be made; We're the good people. --if lie to yourself about how good your group is then the individuals within that group have to lie and cover up in order to fit in. 

--If you lie to yourself about how good your group is then you have to lie for your ancestors as well--- ala Ben Affleck   

These truths are most evident when you look at the current behavior or white people and compare it to the accuracy of white history as taught in school history books. Yet, the more I read black history written by black people, especially black history as written by black women, the more I'm realizing that black people have the very same tendency to mistake hero lessons for history lessons.  



Black women writers seem to write more intimately than black male writers, probably due to gender expectations. They have taught me so many things about Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King, Josephine Baker, Walter White, Booker T Washington, and Ida B Wells that made me sad and sometimes angry.   


These historical figures had their flaws, motives, and personal interactions revealed and examined by the women writers I've been reading lately. It's crystal clear to me that the books that I've read on black history before were more dedicated to making heroes out of these flawed human beings than creating an accurate picture of these human beings.  That means the writers of these black history books of mine aren't so very different in mindset from Ben Affleck.  

Again, if you lie to yourself about how good your group is then the individuals within that group have to lie and cover up in order to fit in. If you lie to yourself about how good your group is then you have to lie for your ancestors as well. And once you start lying collectively about your ancestors you have dishonest history books in school.    

  
It's a simple fact that people like to paint pretty pictures of me and mine. But this damages us long into adulthood and damages the collective us for multiple generations.  


 Recently I read a black history book that was in part about Walter White, head of the NAACP from 1931 to 1955, a black man who wasn't just light-skinned but looked completely white. In fact, he use to pass for white while spying on KKK meetings -- then get run out of town by white people trying to kill him when they found out. Not more than a few weeks had passed before I read an article about how White married a white woman then announced in "Look" magazine that he thought some sort of skin bleaching system was going to be the end of racism -- a fact completely omitted when talking about Walter White by most magazines and black history book writers ala Affleck.    


When you choose having history over having heroes you might wind up having discussions about the gap between Walter White's obviously heroic decision to be black instead of deciding to pass, even putting his life in danger then Walter White's apparent desire to want blacks to be able to pass into whiteness like he could/did(?) nearer the end of his life. 

  Colorism, class, and light-skin were very much connected long before Walter White and the NAACP's birth through the height of the NAACP's influence in the 1950s and 60s.  And what was going on in the NAACP was a reflection of what was going on throughout most sections of that smallish section of middle-class black America in the early 20th century.  If we, as black people knew our black history and especially black female history that involves colorism and class, we wouldn't have been surprised by the multiple black attempts to absolve Rachel Dolezal.    


There are  many discussions black people don't have due to our dedication to having hero lessons instead of history lessons.    


For example, I've seen discussions of Booker T Washington's accomplishments and influence, the building of Tuskegee being one of the most significant. I've read some discussion of his accommodationist attitudes toward white people. But there is virtually no discussion of how his accommodationist and classist attitudes may have manifested itself years after his death in the black doctors of the Tuskegee Institute, the ones who knowingly participating in the Tuskegee Experiment for years after they knew rural black men had been infected with syphilis while being denied treatment just to study how they suffered and died.


Black people want hero lessons instead of history lessons as badly as white people do, if not more so.     


Some of us have become so ashamed of poverty and the outcomes of poverty and want shining examples of black worthiness. We have become so dedicated to this craving for heroes that Bill Cosby can say the vilest things about the poorest and weakest of us and we continue to worship him because of the positive things he images he presented of us in a sitcom.  But the worship of Cosby is probably less about his accomplishments and twice as much about the fact that he is high up, shiny gold, rich, and black. Long before it became clear that he's very, very likely a rapist, we did let go of his achievements. Collectively, we could no more easily give Cosby up than white feminists want to give up Margaret Sanger.
     

from Charles Blow's 2010

"Let's Rescue The Race Debate"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/20/opinion/20blow.html?_r=0

  
If we mistake hero lessons for history lessons, we will surely repeat our mistakes. And we cannot afford to repeat mistakes. White people repeat their mistakes too. However, socially, they are sitting on top. They can afford to make the same mistakes to a certain extent (The 1%, mostly white, may destroy the planet with fracking...but other than that and maybe serial killing, whites are sitting prettier than we are)   


  All this is why I conclude that telling the truth about our collective history isn't just about reducing oppressiveness of white people or the oppressiveness of men, it's about building our own self-awareness, individually and collectively. Building that self-awareness may reduce oppressiveness but it stops a large segment of the oppressed from agreeing with the oppressor be the majority of white people or the majority of male people.  

 If we are HONEST about those we claim
as "us"  and as heroes both
we can be honest about ourselves.  
If we can see heroes as people
just like us
we can be braver.
That is,
if I can accept that Ida B Wells
was imperfect just like I am fairly imperfect 
then my ability to do heroic things
just like Ida B Wells
won't seem so far fetched, right?
We'll be more willing to step out, take
chances, and take action
in anti-sexism and anti-racism struggles, both  


If we are honest about heroes having flaws  
then we can be honestly decide
that someone we thought of as a hero
really doesn't deserve to be called "hero" 
Achievements or no acheivement
some things don't allow a person   
to be called "hero" anymore.  
We may still see and still talk 
about an ex-hero's contributions as contributions  
even if those contributions came from an ugly soul  
OR  
we can talk about the contributions
while not speaking of the person at all    

  

Booker T Washington

Yes choices will always have to be made about how we tell ourselves our collective memories, our history. Still, there is nothing but gain to be had from telling versions of the truth as best you can in school history books.      


If you don't know your individual history, you don't know who you are. If you don't know your collective history, you still don't know who you are. Some people read more history after they are grown, but that reading list is selective. In school you are supposed to be getting the big picture painted for you. And most of us should have the same base in addition to the oral histories we are taught at home.      

We, as Americans, need a common history to work from if we're going to be a less fragmented society. If we're going to be a pluralistic society where groups respect one another's differences, we have to know what the differences are and how those differences came to be despite our having a shared history. 

   
That means the shameful parts of our history will have to be discussed.   People, including children, should feel bad on and off during the process of learning our history. History is a mixed bag. The history of humans is not predominantly filled with glory unless you lie about it a lot.     


When I was in school, I felt bad when hearing about black history, which consisted of slavery and suffering for civil rights. I think white kids felt slightly embarrassed until that fifteen minutes in 12 years of schooling was over. The white kids might have felt equally embarrassed or awkward for another 15 minutes when discussing Native Americans. If history in school is taught more honestly, white children will join the rest of us in that what white kids hear about **them and theirs** will go from 90% glory and triumph down to 50% or less glory and triumph.     


Racial/ethnic history isn't the only adjustment that needs to be made in school history books though.  


 Reading the same black history written by black women has made me realize how much black men write about themselves to the exclusion of all else too, just like white people do.       


Oppressors need push back. If they don't get it, they erase you. You have to push to get your share of the space that's available. Oppressors are taking up too much space, that's what "oppressor" kinda means.  One of the most important forms of push back, one of the most important ways of claiming  ~a space that should always have been yours~ is by getting accurate history books into schools.