Oct 12, 2015 04:47 PM
FEATURE ARTICLE: Attempts To Rewrite Black History Are Deleting Identity
EXCERPT: ‘This,” says Roni Dean-Burren, “is what erasure looks like.” She’s talking about something you might otherwise have thought innocuous: a page from World Geography, a high school textbook. A few days ago, you see, Dean-Burren, a former teacher and a doctoral candidate at the University of Houston, was texted a caption from that book by her son Coby, who is 15. It said that the Atlantic slave trade “brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.” This was in a section called “Patterns of Immigration.”
She says the words jumped out at her. After all, a “worker,” is usually someone who gets paid to do a job. An immigrant is usually someone who chooses to come to a new country. Neither of which describes the millions of kidnapping victims who cleared America’s fields and endured its depravities in lives of unending bondage that afforded them no more rights under the law than a dog or a chair. As the Trail of Tears was not a nature walk and the Normandy invasion not a day at the beach, black people were neither workers nor immigrants, but slaves. Dean-Burren, who is black, took to social media to explain that.
You can guess what happened next. The story went viral, and the embarrassed publisher, McGraw-Hill Education, scrambled to apologize and fix the mess. That’s all well and good. But let no one think this was incidental or accidental.
No, there is purpose here. There is intent. In recent years, we’ve seen Arizona outlaw ethnic studies, Texas teach that slavery was a “side issue” to the Civil War, a Colorado school board require a “positive” spin on American history, and Glenn Beck claim the mantle of the Civil Rights Movement.
We are witness to the vandalism of African-American memory, to acts of radical revision and wholesale theft that strike at the core of black identity. Once your past is gone, who are you? What anchor holds you...
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=WITCH TRIALS (Halloween Focus)=
The Salem Witch Trial Victims: Who Were They?
Martha Corey: Gospel Woman or Gospel Witch?
Reverend Samuel Parris: Was He to Blame for the Salem Witch Trials?
Elizabeth Howe: Innocent Mother or Horse Witch?
Abigail Williams: The Mysterious Afflicted Girl
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=MISC=
Archaeologists Claim to have Discovered the Location of the Biblical City of Sodom
Exploring The True Origins of Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs
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EXCERPT: ‘This,” says Roni Dean-Burren, “is what erasure looks like.” She’s talking about something you might otherwise have thought innocuous: a page from World Geography, a high school textbook. A few days ago, you see, Dean-Burren, a former teacher and a doctoral candidate at the University of Houston, was texted a caption from that book by her son Coby, who is 15. It said that the Atlantic slave trade “brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.” This was in a section called “Patterns of Immigration.”
She says the words jumped out at her. After all, a “worker,” is usually someone who gets paid to do a job. An immigrant is usually someone who chooses to come to a new country. Neither of which describes the millions of kidnapping victims who cleared America’s fields and endured its depravities in lives of unending bondage that afforded them no more rights under the law than a dog or a chair. As the Trail of Tears was not a nature walk and the Normandy invasion not a day at the beach, black people were neither workers nor immigrants, but slaves. Dean-Burren, who is black, took to social media to explain that.
You can guess what happened next. The story went viral, and the embarrassed publisher, McGraw-Hill Education, scrambled to apologize and fix the mess. That’s all well and good. But let no one think this was incidental or accidental.
No, there is purpose here. There is intent. In recent years, we’ve seen Arizona outlaw ethnic studies, Texas teach that slavery was a “side issue” to the Civil War, a Colorado school board require a “positive” spin on American history, and Glenn Beck claim the mantle of the Civil Rights Movement.
We are witness to the vandalism of African-American memory, to acts of radical revision and wholesale theft that strike at the core of black identity. Once your past is gone, who are you? What anchor holds you...
- - - - - - -
=WITCH TRIALS (Halloween Focus)=
The Salem Witch Trial Victims: Who Were They?
Martha Corey: Gospel Woman or Gospel Witch?
Reverend Samuel Parris: Was He to Blame for the Salem Witch Trials?
Elizabeth Howe: Innocent Mother or Horse Witch?
Abigail Williams: The Mysterious Afflicted Girl
- - - - - - -
=MISC=
Archaeologists Claim to have Discovered the Location of the Biblical City of Sodom
Exploring The True Origins of Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs
- - - - - - -
