Don't Know Much About History

 

WATCH >> Ron DeSantis defends new curriculum that will teach children how slaves *benefited* from slavery.

"They're probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into, into doing things later in life." pic.twitter.com/Ls1wyk3tr4

— Ammar Moussa (@ammarmufasa) July 22, 2023

They parlayed: only AFTER SLAVERY ENDED WHICH WAS NOT A GUARANTEE! Generations of unpaid skilled workers labored under the yoke of slavery incapable of seeking other opportunities because they were not treated as people, but property, with little post-slavery option outside of running for it and possible death or recapture. In the meanwhile, they were denied literacy, they were in a segregated church, they had their families sold away from them, they were heritable to other members of their owners' families.  (No, stop everything and read about slave law.)

And they could be abused to within an inch of their lives or past it including sexual abuse. They were used in medical experiments. They were believed to be less capable of pain, a belief that persists in medical practice sometimes even today. They made a straight face in front of white people to preserve their dignity before God and others. 

I know Ron DeSantis taught history--and that's a damn shame. This man has no iota of an idea about what this appalling practice was or why we should be deploring it. He wants to tout his state as being a "Free State" but doesn't want to acknowledge what a "Slave State" once was. The massacre of Seminoles or the race riot against Rosewood aren't a part of the history he wants young Floridians to learn, either. 

He wants to retcon US history into how white folks just kept on keeping on doing great things and every boat rose. The reality was a struggle for people to get their rights, sometimes very begrudgingly and not without blood. 

We can't have a successful republic if we don't acknowledge the contention among people, the struggle, as being real. The original sin of America, bondage slavery of African descendants, was a part of our founding and it shaped how we as a nation grew. Denying it is foolish, and unnecessary. We--all of the US, can overcome. Someday.

But we don't do it by denying the bad parts of history or ignoring the work we still have to do. And I am deeply concerned that the process of "forgetting" facilitates "reliving". We forget where we came from only to make a wretched return. Laws regarding memory should preserve history, not try to sinkhole it. 

We need to remember to know how to move on.