Let’s talk
about erasing history for a hot minute, shall we? I can’t be the only one who
is all the way over hearing about how taking down monuments of murderers is “erasing
history.” The way I see it, what people are actually working for is correcting
history.
We all know
who writes the history books. They say that “the indigenous people of the
United States shared turkey and popcorn with the pilgrims and kindly moved to a
different place to give them space.” They say that, “yeah, slavery happened for
centuries but the important part is that Abraham Lincoln saved the slaves, hey now
that we’re talking about Lincoln, did you know he was assassinated? What were
we talking about?” Slavery, McGraw-Hill. We were talking about slavery. Anytime
Black History is mentioned, they nail down the most basic of basics and keep it
pushing to the next white accomplishment. As the great J. Cole says in his song
“BRACKETS,” they “got us learning about the heroes with the whitest of skin.
One thing about the men that’s controlling the pen that write history, they always
seem to white out their sins.”
So yes, we
want Rosa Parks or (AND) Harriet Tubman on the ten dollar bill, let’s also get
rid of the guy on the twenties, too, being that he forced the indigenous people out of their homes and
made them walk 2,200 miles. The guy on the ones owned slaves, so lets toss him,
too. They call us disrespectful for asking for the removal of tributes to
murderers, but seem to forget that it was more disrespectful to own people.
And yes, we
want the monuments to come down. Let’s put up new ones of people who were not
murderers and slave owners (even though those terms are synonymous). We don’t
want to erase history, we want to tell it right this time. We want to
commemorate the people who really built
this country.
There is no way that we can earse history because it has already happened. All we can control is how it is told, the right way, and what we do in the future. I agree that when people talk of the wrongs that the United States did they then bring up that it is "ok" because we "fixed" it. Having people that were murders and did wrong for our country be honored is horrible. It is showing that you can do wrong, but if you something right everything wrong you did can be earsed and that is simplying not true.
ReplyDeleteI think you are completely right. I remember looking back to grade school, and realizing that this very thing happened throughout my history classes. It really was like black history was very condensed, and all teachers were just "pushing to the next white achievement." I cannot agree more that history needs to be told in the correct way rather than continuing the never ending trend of trying to "erase" it.
ReplyDeleteBy "condensed", I think you mean "excluded". Talking for one class out of the year in AP U.S. History about Martin Luther King and having to learn the names of Frederick Douglass and Harriett Tubman is not black history. It's white history that somehow a black person managed to cause enough of a disturbance to white people that they were forced to be included. History is learning about the causes of events, the events themselves, and the results of those events. Black people are only included in American history education when they are the causes of white events and white results - and most of the time, not even then.
DeleteAfrican American history is a huge part in America's history if not the biggest part. I think what you point out in this blog of how history should be told correctly is something that we have all learned in this class (or something we have a passion about now if we did not have it before). If schools start teaching the correct history and not just white history, some problems would be solved for sure.
ReplyDelete