You know the drill by now. I don't like talking about Black history. Americans know Black history. I want to talk about white American history. In other words, racism, and the erasure of both positive achievements of, and injustices suffered by, non-white people. That's what people don't know.
Try this: Ask your white US friends what the statue of liberty celebrates.
Now ask your Black friends. Or French folk of any color.
@mekkaokereke
People "Remember the Alamo!" but don't remember that the reason Texans wanted independence from Mexico was because Mexico had prohibited slavery.
I grew up in Texas schools in the 70's, 80's, and graduated in 91. We were required to take whole history classes in middle and high school that was nothing but "Texas history". Stephen F. Austin and the old 300 (which included one of my ancestors) James Bowie, the last stand at the Alamo and the defeat of "Santy Anny", on and on. I even went on to win a whole-ass state level UIL history competition for a play I wrote about it.
I did not learn until I was a big grown up girl the real reason.
@TheJen class of '94 chiming in, my Bay Area, CA US history class included the whole story of TX v MEX... I had a really great teacher. Now it seems like the kids are lucky if they get US History at all. cc @bobwyman@mekkaokereke
@bobwyman@mekkaokereke Today I learned and am horrified. Until 15 years ago, I thought I received a proper education that prepared me for life. I grew up in an original colony northern state. How could they get this so wrong? When I read the confederate states’ declarations of succession for myself was when they wall began crumbling. Today, another piece crumbled.
@stopthatgirl7@raederle@bobwyman@mekkaokereke
I was just going to mention that - it really shows the Texas attitude. I had no idea until I think 2 years ago, and that means 60 years I didn't know: "When Texas sought to enter the Union in 1845 as a slave state, federal law in the United States, based on the Missouri Compromise, prohibited slavery north of 36°30' parallel north. Under the Compromise of 1850, Texas surrendered its lands north of 36°30' latitude." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_Panhandle
@bobwyman@mekkaokereke I knew. That's why freed and escaped slaves fled across the border to Mexico. Some of them fought alongside the Mexicans against France in the Battle of Puebla on Cinco de Mayo.
THAT'S something they never talk about in Texas history or even in most Black history classes.
An abolitionist designed the statue. A group of abolitionists paid for the statue. There's a plaque at the feet telling everyone what it's for. They named it the Statue of Liberty. It's arguably the largest anti-racism monument in the US, and the most recognizable anti-racism monument in the world...
Except people don't even know it's an anti-racism monument. They think it celebrates the huge influx of white immigrants from Europe that came to the US.
@mekkaokereke Yes, you are right, but given that we have a guy running for president using Hitler's language about poisoning the blood to demonize immigrants, I will still strongly support the Emma Lazarus poem even if it is a different message than the creators intended. Give me your tired, your poor, your retched masses yearning to be free.
You can't fight anti-Black racism by ignoring the suffering of Black people and replacing anti-racism with something else. And we can't defeat the current wave of hate without fighting anti-Black racism.
We have to just do the direct thing in front of our faces, asked of us by the checks notes 305 foot tall, 225 ton statue. 🗽
We can't "huddled masses" poem our way out of this truth. That's how we got here in the first place.
@mekkaokereke I am torn on this. I acknowledge that the poem hijacked the original meaning of the statue. But we are also dealing with a wave of fanatic anti-immigrant (particularly from Latin America and Asia) racism and the poem may have some value in dealing with that.
@not2b No one is saying you can't have the poem, or speak out against anti-immigrant sentiment, or xenophobia. I speak out against anti-immigrant sentiment and xenophobia every single day. It's not hard to do. At all.
What I'm saying explicitly is trash, is erasing a symbol meant to speak up for Black people to do so. It's a garbage move, is anti-Black, and is entirely unnecessary.
It's the worst form of anti-Blackness because it comes from inside the house, from people that should be allies.
People that got "As" in AP history, that didn't know this, are running to their favorite search engine right now to try and fact check this. Let's wait for them... ⏳
Why do US people not know their own history?
Before folks ask, "Why was I not taught this in school?!" Look at what DeSantis is doing to AP history in Florida. You know exactly why you weren't taught this in school. Because it's easier to get you to accept mistreatment of Black people, if you don't know white American history.
🧔🏿Is the confederate flag racist? Why did the civil war happen? Where were you born?
🧔🏻Not racist! States' rights. Alabama!
🧔🏻Super racist! Slavery, murder of Black folk. NYC
Can you be mad at Alabama dude when their history textbook (from the same publisher!) lies about this?
The same publisher prints two different versions of the same highschool textbook about the causes of the civil war: one closer to the truth, used in Northern states, and one that lies about the cause, taught in the South🤡
I don't want to talk about Black history yet. I want to talk about why if you grew up in the North or West, your high school history book likely talked about the "Articles of Secession,"
but if you grew up in the South, those parts are removed and lied about.🙂🙃
Disinformation.
You can literally go and read the "Declaration of Causes of Seceding States," primary documents written by confederates themselves, on why they are Seceding.
@mekkaokereke just as a data point i grew up in south mississippi in the 80s and 90s. for most of elementary school i was in catholic school and we learned about them there, though i can clearly remember one teacher in the fifth grade who insisted the civil war wasn’t about slavery (why it was important to make this point so forcefully to a fifth grader is another matter). they were taught in my public high school, but glossed over.
certainly the states’ rights myth was taught more vocally.
Friends ask me why I'm so optimistic about reducing racism given all that's around us. This is why. There are waaaaay more poor + middle class white dudes than millionaire and billionaire white dudes, and those poor + middle class white dudes, are not nearly as racist as the world experiences.
It takes activesustained effort to hide the truth from over 100 million white men! And when they learn the truth, most re-align their behaviour to their core values👍🏿
Some people are anti-DEI, because they are racist and sexist, and hate Black people and women. 🤷🏿♂️
Some people are anti-DEI, because they've been lied to about what DEI is, and how it works. The lie version of DEI, does not align with their core values.
Once they learn the truth about what DEI actually is, many not only accept it, but change their behaviour to align with their pre-existing core values! Some even start volunteering on DEI programs! ♥️👍🏿
@drahardja@kbg@mekkaokereke It was not the case anyway. You can comb through every single Confederate state's secession docs. You'll find "slavery" all over the place. "States rights?" Nowhere.
@kbg@mekkaokereke yeah, this one caught me by surprise when I moved from Colorado to Texas for my Junior year in high school and took American History. I was like “WTF?”
@kbg@mekkaokereke I was taught that it "Wasn't about slavery" in elementary school in Michigan in the 80s or 90s. It was because the South seceded from the Union.
I don't know whether this was a rogue teacher or whether it was part of the local curriculum.
Thankfully I had a historically-minded friend that filled me in.
@mekkaokereke@deirdresm
As these “not ready to talk about Black history yet” posts resurface in my TL, still hoping you’ll publish them as a standalone site or a book or a blog or something. I know for example that my parents would really really appreciate them — but would be just too bollixed by the UI navigating them on Masotodon. If there’s some way I and/or other here more expert in web design can help…please ask! These are too good and too necessary to fade into the social media past.
@mekkaokereke I went to school in northern Virginia, and it definitely depended on your teacher. I remember when my little brother came home from 4th grade saying it was “states’ rights” and being shocked, my 4th grade teacher was honest with us. And then in 7th grade my english and history teachers (who were awesome and who were definitely teaching off book) did a combined class one day where they had us read the full unexpurgated declarations for each state.
@magneticcrow@mekkaokereke I also went to school in northern VA, in the 1980s, but my AP American history teacher was a Mainer who was really clear on this. Clearer than the textbook, which was ye olde "American Pageant".
My daughter is using the current edition of that textbook now in AP American History. She says she's getting one of the highest grades in the class because she doesn't trust it--she checks everything it says against independent sources, primary if possible.
I used to live in Texas. I would get so mad at dudes I knew that downplayed the confederate flag, until I realized that their textbooks literally lied about the reasons for the civil war!
Showing them the articles of secession blew their mind. Some stopped rocking the flag. 👍🏿
Imagine how much less racist the US would feel if 10% of all confederate flags just disappeared. Disappeared!
Imagine spending a whole year of 7th grade in Texas History and NEVER learning that, in La Batalla de Puebla (The Battle of Puebla), Gen. Zaragoza and his Mexican troops defeated the French who were on their way to help defend the Confederacy.
THIS is why we celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Not for tacos and margaritas.
I learned this 30 years after turning in my Texas History book.
A bit off-topic, but I'm ashamed that the French Legion is still celebrating Camerone while never mentioning that they were slaughtering a people's army in the name of a colonialist invasion intended to impose a monarchy to an existing republic.
And I mean complex here. They definitely are full of racists and fascists. Not just "complex". But they also have not really even tried to reckon with the fact their "glorious" years were under Napoleon or in service of colonialism. And the history of the Army as an institution saying nothing in public does not help. It will take time sadly.
Folks don't even know the reasons of the civil war or that the flag designer said "Let this be the flag of white supremacy!"
I bet 50% of them would drop it on learning.
NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Sr removed confederate flags from his car after learning about its true origins from a Black friend. His son, Dale Earnhardt Jr. vocally supported NASCAR banning the confederate flag. 👍🏿
Yes, some racists still like the flag after learning about it. But there are way fewer of them.
I didn't grow up here. I visited the Statue of Liberty and I consider myself fairly well informed about American history. Yet I did not know this. Thank you for sharing this.
@charvaka@mekkaokereke I was today years old when I learned this, too, in spite of not only having visited the Statue myself, but having lived in New York City for 9 years.
@charvaka@mekkaokereke I am completely mind blown that the german wikipedia entry for the Statue of Liberty calls it a monument celebrating the Independence of the United States (presumably from the British crown) and the English Wikipedia calls it an anti-slavery monument. So i didn‘t know that either, thanks for sharing!
@mekkaokereke car and gaming culture has a serious problem with waving off criticism just because the flag appeared on the General Lee car. I was laughed off for mentioning this in the BeamNG game community. Somehow the fact that they even repainted the original movie car is not of any relevance to them and you have to see it in the historical context of the movie!
@mekkaokereke I remember in Ken Burns’ 90s documentary, slavery is posited as the prime cause by a Black scholar, which is framed as a perspective, not the perspective. And it felt controversial to me as a relatively well-educated 23 year old from the south.
@andrewhinton@mekkaokereke controversial which way, as in "how could they say it was slavery" or "how are they unclear that it was totally about slavery"?
@andrewhinton@mekkaokereke@kerileighmerritt
This whole discussion seems a bit weird from the outside (Australia). We don't study too much US history in highschool other than the big wars, but the explanation given for the Civil War is straight up "because slavery".
We get the Tulsa bombing too but not redlining or related things like putting freeways through prosperous black suburbs.
@andrewhinton@mekkaokereke@kerileighmerritt
Of course there is approx nothing in the Australian school curriculum about slavery and genocide conducted in Australia, of which there has been plenty, we just used a different word (blackbirding).
We've had a very coordinated effort from right wing politicians for about 15 years now to whitewash our history nationally, similar to TX & FL, the explicit pretext being "don't make the white kids feel bad".
@mekkaokereke This whole thread! When I moved to Chicago from New England, I learned that folks who grew up in Illinois (look! We have Abe!) learned an entirely different version of American History than I had (look! We're dumping the tea!) and then I moved to Atlanta.... And then the PacNW.... It's honestly fascinating to me how much we can't teach our kids because the country is huge. My favorite thing is asking locals what American history they learned.
@mekkaokereke@Adoxograph this is always been a very nonsensical argument to wherever it's applied. My favorite is when people use them argue against public transit, as if the existence of vast emptiness in Montana has anything to do with why we can't have a good rail transit system in Los Angeles
@mekkaokereke IIRC In 2018 when my kids were in high school, our school district (Frederick MD) finally banned the display of the confederate flag. No more belt buckles. Or whatever. #SoLate
@mekkaokereke
I moved to TX from NJ in 6th grade and I have a vivid memory of my social studies class there - we got TX Hst, not US Hst - where the teacher asked, what was the cause of the civil war, and all these TX kids said slavery! and he literally told the class they were wrong. I was so confused. We were kids and he was an authority figure. To say that from the front of class
@mekkaokereke
I'm going to take you at your word on this because you're clearly better informed on it, but I gotta ask:
I went to school in TEXAS and I was at least told about slavery causing the Civil War. Is this one of those cases where TX wriggles out as a "Western" state? Or has this shit just gotten that much worse since I graduated highschool? Do I need to check in on my nieces and nephew back home?
@mekkaokereke my best friend in middle school had moved to the north from a southern state. She didn't believe me when I mentioned slavery being the reason for the civil war, ended up having an illuminating conversation w her teacher about it. They were not taught it was at all connected to slavery. I remember learning this fact about her education and it changed my whole perspective on education here. She straight up had no idea.
Growing up in South Central Pennsylvania in a town where your preschool took you to tour the town's "old" courthouse to see the bullet holes left from a Confederate unit moving through town to steal shoes from a factory a few towns over, you tended to grow up with a certain view of that conflict.
Still amazes me when I go back home for holidays and see idiots flying Confederate flags: people from this town literally died fighting against that flag.
I remember a similar feeling in Maine. Every little town has a memorial to the young men who gave their lives to preserve the Union. Then I see a pick up truck ( of course) driving down the street on July 4 with a US flag and confederate battle flag waving from the back. Disgusting
@mekkaokereke 'There is an old saying among Civil War historians: "People who don't know much about the Civil War think it was about slavery. People who know some about the Civil War think it was about something else. People who know a lot about the Civil War think it was about slavery."'
from today's electoral-vote.com post; reminded me of this thread!
@dan@mekkaokereke
If I remember right, each seceding state cites slavery as a cause of their secession, though a few used euphemisms to avoid directly stating it.
@mekkaokereke Thanks, I hadn’t seen this document before. Georgia focuses on the value of their “property”, estimating that their African slaves are worth $3 billion in 1861 dollars.
@dascandy42@ColinOatley@mekkaokereke Here in the UK that compensation became part of the national debt. That debt was only finally paid off in 2015. In accounting terms, we finished compensating the slave owners less than 9 years ago.
@mekkaokereke@oceanwave My textbook lied about that. But I’m not in seventh grade any more and have learned better. It’s an engaged adult’s responsibility to overcome the limitations of their upbringing.
Sadly, that can be pretty hard, depending on the limitation. But blatant misinformation should be one of the easier ones, if the person isn’t being motivatedly awful for other reasons.
@mekkaokereke When I learned about the Statue of Liberty in elementary school in Massachusetts in the late 1960s or early 1970s, I learned it was a monument to the end of slavery. Now I want to find out what they are teaching kids today in Massachusetts to make sure we haven’t gone backwards.
@mekkaokereke
I am very sorry to disappoint you but you're seeing us French people much way better than what we are.
I think the confederate flag is considered a nazi flag here, but the Statue of Liberty, I'm pretty sure most of us assume it's about white european immigrants, with Chaplin movie in mind.
And we are now far worse because our books teach us about WW2 (for now, but it will soon change with Bollore, our French Murdoch, controlling the main school publishers) and still France is becoming a fascist State: we have 88 nazi MPs (and i mean it litterally, the National Front was founded by former nazis/waffenSS), Macron is a Petain and Maurras admirer, our Parliament just voted a far-right law about immigration...
I grew up in western Mass, and we were told the Statue of Liberty was about immigration. We weren’t taught about the Articles of Secession. This was in the 70-80s. I did an essay on the Pullman Strike in my favourite history class in 1981. We never heard about the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. I learned about that this morning. I’m ugly crying right now. This is such a better story. I would have loved to hear this story when I was 15. Thanks for sharing this.
@mekkaokereke What they never point out is, slavery is not only evil, it's also stupid.
The South was so backward they could not maintain their own locomotives post-secession. The high tech industry was all in the North.
They did build a powder mill, by commandeering a Northern-made steam engine to power it!
The cotton picking machine was invented in the 1920s but not used until after WW2, because Black people were still effectively indentured before WW2. They were paid in fake money.
@mekkaokereke I really appreciate you taking the time to make this thread. I read it last year and now this year I’m going to start going over and asking these questions to my 12 year old.
After reading the articles of confederation I don’t know how you could think it was about anything else!
@mekkaokereke
The roads of America and the laws around cars were built to destroy black neighborhoods and destroy the 4th and 5th Amendments.
Lots of people don't read the whole 5th Amendment,
" nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
Millions of black people had their homes and businesses destroyed for highways in urban areas and they were not compensated fairly if at all.
Robert Moses, the urban planner, not the civil rights activist, was an example of how urban planning was used to destroy black communities and restrict their movement. Tulsa style firebombing wasn't going to work everywhere, but bulldozers and asphalt had the same effect with less publicity.
@KawaTora@mekkaokereke
Indeed. Some of your roads are super congested because they don’t work as roads. The aim of the road was to generate white jobs and destroy black neighbourhoods. Both one of ‘benefits’ with lifelong problems.
These are the exact opposite of investments and so are in actuality, divestments in America.
America wastes so much life, love and money on racism.
@mekkaokereke Thank you for being a teacher. For caring. For pushing past all the reasons to shy away from doing this. Maybe you’ve done it a million times, and are tired of saying it over and over. There are so many of us that haven’t heard yet; that have been deceived; that are young or naive. Thank you for persevering. I appreciate it and respect you for your heart. (And I value the knowledge itself.)
@mekkaokereke I'm always amazed when I step into random things on the internet and get told AGAIN that we, USA foreigners, know more about the history of the USA than the average white USA citizen.
@mekkaokereke I am French, visited Colmar, celebrated Bartoldi and Eiffel...
and still had no clue the Statue of Liberty had anything to do with slavery
@mekkaokereke French person here 😊 the Statue of Liberty is an interesting symbol of different kinds of freedoms : definitely ideated as a celebration of Lincoln and the victory of the north in the ACW (ie freedom from slavery in the US), but then officially offered to the US to celebrate the 100th anniversary of independance (ie freedom from Britain), and then widely perceived as a symbol to immigrants arriving in NY (ie freedom from oppression in Europe).
"Officially offered" and "Widely perceived" are doing a lot of work.
Let's get out of passive tense. "Officially offered" is passive. Offered by whom? Who did the offering and receiving?
The answer is Bartholdi and Edouard le Boulaye, the head of the Abolitionist Society did the offering. Levi P Morton and William M Evarts did the receiving. When the statue was unveiled, Evarts made a speech to accept the statue. Let's see what Evarts said!
@mekkaokereke
As always, I appreciate your efforts to fill in some of the humongous holes in the education I received growing up in Very White Suburbia.
@mekkaokereke those chains at her feet aren't an accident. Not sure when I learned about it. but it sure as hell wasn't in mississippi public schools in the late 70s-early 80s.
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