A lot of people that claim that MLK jr was somehow loved by all and better than today's civil rights leaders, are just lying.
A lot of people claiming that "Black Lives Matter" or "Defund the Police" are bad marketing, and that they would support these movements if they were named something better like "Non-violent march," are just lying. It's not the phrase that these people object to. It's the underlying principle. They do not accept that current US policing is a negative on reducing crime.
@JizzelEtBass@mekkaokereke
Not only not remember, but in cases of those of us who were born more than a decade after King's time were never taught/told about it in school. I was born in the late ‘70s and didn't know about any of that until I was near college age. And what was included around the civil rights movement and was cursory at best and strongly implied that civil rights were a settled issue.
@dancast@continuity0@JizzelEtBass@mekkaokereke
That was how it was for me in all-white high school in Michigan. The textbook was current within a couple of years, but we ran out of time around the end of WW2.
@PaulCzege
As somebody who teaches history for a living—albeit at the university level–I’m always confused by the “ran out of time” thing. Like... I have a syllabus, and I stick to it. It’s mapped out week-by-week what topics we’re doing in class. It’s not like I can just get to May and be all “oops, didn’t make it to the Cold War again!”
@tkinias@PaulCzege@dancast@continuity0@JizzelEtBass@mekkaokereke Some teachers don't proceed past a unit in their syllabus until the class has "gotten" it, and there's some validity to that. I've delayed my schedule sometimes because I don't think they're ready for the next part until we've worked on the first part. Also, most textbooks contain way more material than you can do in a semester.
All of which creates the perfect cover for not "getting to" civil rights.
I was kind of blown away by my son's third grade social studies that I saw first hand during pandemic remote learning. I expected it to be like my experience, about voting, and the branches of government, Benjamin Franklin, etc. They did a whole unit about Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez 😯
@continuity0@JizzelEtBass@mekkaokereke@AlSweigart I’ve seen this information many times before but it is only just dawning on me that the specific goal of this propaganda was not merely a reflexive “we are the good guys, we would have been nice to black people” but rather to move the goalposts immediately from “shut up and stop advocating for change, the status quo is fine, segregation is just natural” to “shut up and stop advocating for change, the status quo is fine, segregation is gone”
@mekkaokereke there are groups of white folks trying to squash teaching about slavery because it "makes kids feel bad", so it should be no surprise they want to whitewash and smooth over the legacy of Dr. King. It makes it easier for them to handle if he was a gentle non-violent, hat in hand kind of figure.
Anything else and they have to face their own and their families complicity in systemic racism. And that's a step too far for a lot of white folks. :(
The thing is, the racists know that it's not too far, for kids or for most white folk.🤷🏿♂️
That's the excuse that they use, but kids just roll with it when taught. "Oh man, slavery was messed up! We should not do that again." "Wow, Jim Crow was awful! We should not do that."
And it causes kids to have a more evolved view of racism today. "Whoa... is that why so many Black men are in jail for weed, even though white people smoke more weed? That sucks! I'm voting for the other guy!"
Racism IS taught. It is taught by peers and family. I grew up in a uniracial environment. There were no people other than white in my area. There was a constant drim, drip, drip of racism though. There was a slogun on one of the bus shelters by the BNP that introduced racism to people. The N word was often used despite the fact nobody knew any non-whites.
As it was all so abstract, it has not turned me racist. I had no bad examples to uphold the stereotypes.
@Sablebadger@mekkaokereke In latter years I have been taught by, worked with and dated a smorgasbord of races, creeds and colors. The racism to which I was introduced as a child had zero effect on me. I think the reason for that was because I met no non-whites during that period there were no random bad exampled to uphold steroetypes.
@BritishTechGuru@Sablebadger@mekkaokereke I'm glad it hasn't, but I wonder if the abstractness of it really prevents it from locking in, or if that's a sort of survivor bias? I grew up in a similar situation in parallel ways in which I've seen others who grew up around me still hold on to bigoted views.
@joshg@BritishTechGuru@Sablebadger@mekkaokereke I also grew up in a virtually 100% white NF/BNP stronghold and was surrounded by racism in my childhood. When I return to my hometown, which is a lot more multicultural these days, the old attitudes still prevail and the messaging has hardly changed.
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