“That Conversation about Race” category archive
“Reconstruction Required” 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Lawrence Samuel argues persuasively that American school textbooks present an unbalanced view of American history and of black persons’ role in and contributions to it.
I’m not going to try to excerpt or summarize his piece; it has too many moving parts. Just go read it for yourself.
Addendum:
That was certainly the case with my elementary and high school text books at my all-white schools under Jim Crow. Realizing that as I got a broader view in college was one of the factors that led me to pursue a degree in history with a focus on U. S. Southern.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Monumental mayhem in the Tar Heel state. Here’s a bit from the report:
Competing demonstrations over a Confederate monument in Alamance County ended after two supporters of the statue were arrested for assault and disorderly conduct, according to police and media reports.
Police said one of the men, 39-year-old Christopher Overman, hit Elon University professor Megan Squire, who was protesting a statue in Graham, about 55 miles northwest of Raleigh. Squire researches online right-wing extremism at the university, according to the school.
And, in more news of still rising again . . . .
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
In Maine, you might expect to see a moose, but a noose?
The Discovery 0
Thom and Joe Madison discuss Donald Trump’s “discovery” of Juneteenth, the Tulsa riots, and related issues.
Afterthought:
It occurs to me that much of what is commonly referred to as “white fragility” results from white folks’ reluctance/refusal/unwillingness to face up to what their ancestors and fellow white folks and even they themselves have done to the various “others” in our society.
So they pretend it never happened or if it happened didn’t/doesn’t matter or happened so long ago that it doesn’t matter any more, even as it continues to happen every day.
“Systemic” Explored 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, The Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research has posted an article discussing an upcoming paper that explores the elements of racism in American society. The post starts out by pointing out that racism in much more than liking or disliking persons because of the color of their skins. Here’s a bit (emphasis added); follow the link for the rest.
“The New South” 0
When I was in grad school for history, I wanted to concentrate on the ante bellum South.
I had several reasons for this, including an interest in the causes of the Civil War; the disconnect between history that happened and the “Virginia Cavalier” mythology I was taught in my all-white Jim Crow elementary school; a Virginia heritage that dates to the 1600s; and an ancestry that includes slaveholders, Confederate officers, and proponents of slavery.
In our first meeting, my faculty advisor, whose interest was “the New South,” asked me why I was interested in a society that was–I can still see him say it–“gone with the wind”
But, as we see every day, it was not gone with the wind.
It has not even gone.
And, ironically, that novel to which said adviser so sarcastically alluded was without question one of the most poisonous and effective works of political and social propaganda ever propagated.