Capitol Hill Blue Forums Life and Moral Issues Morality & Society Of National Lies and Racial Amnesia

Julia the ranter:

Issodhos - your education may be more extensive than the average American's, I can't say for certain. But I can tell you that my American history ended somewhere around World War II, and just about all the history I did have was from a single perspective.

It wasn't until I was in college that I found myself developing an interest in a more varied perspective on how and why things happened (particularly in this country.)

Which is to say that while schools are better, now, about including the non-white and non-male perspectives in history, those perspectives did not exist in American education until after the Baby Boom was out of school (I am at the very end of the Baby Boom.)

So, while those who come after us will have access to more information, there's a huge part of the population who went through school without any idea that other stories ever existed.

Julia the mod: All posters will please watch the personal comments.

Or, perhaps your exposure to the 'anti-racism movement' enables you to see words that no one else can see - for instance, I did not see any suggestion that if you're white you should 'shut up and sit down' - only that you shouldn't be surprised when black preachers don't. And specifically, Obama is calling for the opposite - that we need to sit UP and pay attention, and ask ourselves and others the hard questions, and be prepared for surprising answers.

You may be right about one thing though: growing up in Iowa, I have had very few situations for 'real' race discussions (whatever that means!); I didn't even meet my second black person (there was one in high school) until college, and then most of the discussion was about equal opportunity - and I saw people of both races argue both sides (and none of them used P+P=R which I think is far too simplistic to be true or useful). Also, I was in engineering where discussions of minorities were as much about asians, persians, arabs and indians as about blacks...


Some of that was mentioned in my education; a lot of it was not. I had never heard of the 'Tuskogee Syphilis Study', for instance, even though I was in the 8th grade when it was brought to light and stopped. I know we never talked about it in school (I would have remembered that), and I suspect it was buried in the local paper, if it appeared at all.

We certainly were fed the line that the nukes we used were necessary; it wasn't until more recently that it has even been suggested it was not.

But as far as blacks being 'angry', yes I know that; and also that they have good reason. But if that is true of the majority of whites such that Mr. Wise doesn't need to rehash it, then why the big deal about Pastor Wright's sermons? In light of all the history and that inequities continue today, what is so surprising about Wright's sermons, and what is so wrong with Obama condemning the divisiveness of them but asking people, both white and black, to each try to understand each side more and start from there as a basis for unity in working together?

And yes I know that is cause for many to belittle such sentiment as a 'kumbayah' moment, but the fact is that the reaction to Wright fairly proves that there is an undercurrent of a racial issue that has yet to be addressed - and the ONLY way to put it to rest is to take it out, examine it, discuss it, and deal with it... and, as Obama said, blacks need to do this just as much as whites, not only to admit their own prejudice but to understand why it is rational for whites to have some feelings of resentment as well.


I agree that this is a false notion. I've only heard of the concept (and not the 'equation') by the more extreme, simplistic arguments, and not taken seriously in any 'real' race discussions I've been involved in. Is this what you consider 'real'??


You are arguing now about something that is not part of the article; I know there are people that suggest something pretty similar, but they are not many, and in any event that is not what Wise wrote in this article, or Wright preached in his sermon, and certainly not what Obama said in his speech.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears you see this as a pretty common thought process, not only by blacks but also 'apologist' whites? If so, then that may be something that I should discuss in my 'real' race discussions. Ignorance, in any form, serves no one's interests.

That is, after all, the point of the article and the reason for it, as well as this thread.

It is the nature of all nation states to control and run government schools systems and to use them to propaghandize students with myth, misinformation, omission, and distortion that is favorable to the state. I was by no means limiting the sources of information to government controlled schools. The information was and is available in books, magazines, movies, television, radio, the internet, art, and even song (e.g. Forbidden Fruit sung by Billie Holliday).
Yours,
Issodhos

With the exception of the National Basketball Association, males of European ancestry (white men) dominate to this day school administrations (public and private), publishing houses, movie studios and distribution companies, television networks (including cable companies), radio station holding companies, art museum boards and curatorial staffs, recording studios and the companies that produce and distribute music in all its forms, and even the companies that dominate the internet, from the companies that give us connection to it to the companies that support it with advertising and electronic commerce. We "find" what they want us to find.

We find a great deal more today than we did when I was in school. But we are 143 years since the Emancipation Proclamation and only now is this nation seeing serious candidacy of people who are not white men for the office of President. We have a Congress dominated by white men, and most state governments are lead by and otherwise dominated by white men.

It is folly to believe that this is cream rising to the top. There are as many incompetent white men pro rata as there are incompetent members of any other segment of the population. Yet they continue to occupy disproportionately the roles of power and control of access.

It is not accidental.

Ever hear of Langston Hughes? It is there for those with open eyes.;-)

Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Langston Hughes

Or Native Son, Black Boy by Richard Wright.
Or pretty much anything by August Wilson.
Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver.
And on a different continent, Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton.

There is no shortage of great literature documenting the nature or racism, past and present. It is a shame it is not all fading into the past as ancient history but rather remains as testimony to how long the sin has been out in the open yet not resolved; not even really addressed in "proper" company.

I believe that the complaint was that the Black perspective and the history in general was "hidden"? I am glad to see you acknowledge that, in reality, there is "no shortage" of it.:-)
Yours,
Issodhos
P.s. For a grittier view, might I suggest, Imamu Amiri Baraka? Gee, aren't us whiteys having fun discussin' race in America?:-)

I know there are mice in my attic too, but as long as I pretend they aren't there, I don't have to buy any traps.

Because the article came to me with several "forwarding messages," I included only the original message with the article in this thread.

Another message attached to that email was actually responsible for this thread:


I was interested to see whether a serious discussion of race would be possible in this politically-oriented, fairly well-educated group. It took three pages for us to start sniping.

We are a fairly homogenous bunch here - our language skills are similar, we all seem to be financially "comfortable" enough to have regular Internet access, and the majority of us identify as white. But we have real problems discussing this article. I was hoping we could identify a point we didn't understand or didn't agree with and talk about it, or identify a point we do agree with and thinking about how to change it in our own lives.

But if we aren't able to do that here - relatively anonymously - then I think that email message is right, and it would be "somewhat difficult" to discuss this article in an interracial setting. For one thing, we'd all need to pay more attention to what we don't know than to what we do.

Here is an example:

Wise says "Indeed, what seems to bother white people more than anything, whether in the recent episode, or at any other time, is being confronted with the recognition that black people do not, by and large, see the world like we do; that black people, by and large, do not view America as white people view it. "

Do you see this statement as being essentially true?

If you think it IS true, do you think that black people and white people see the world differently because the world (or, more specifically, the US) is actually quite different depending on the skin you are wearing?

Or do you think that our society has changed so much that any perceived difference is just that - more perceived than real?