Bravo! This is exactly right. The idea that studying our history - the choices and actions of those in our past, and how those choices have impacted the road to today - is about blaming people today for the choices of their ancestors is yet another way in which Republicans create manufactured crises and sow division to gain control. The fact they choose to use our children as their wedge makes it all the more emotionally charged. Their "answer" is to not educate at all, but to indoctrinate our unsuspecting youth into their lie - that Whites are not only the victims of reverse racism, but that White American history is wonderful and more worthy than the truth that recognizes those who aren't white, and therefore reinforcing the systemic racism that has existed for decades as the way it should be. 😞
Exactly! If anyone hasn’t read Caste by Isabel Wilkerson I recommend it. The chapter that addresses how Germany has tried to atone for its sins is particularly apropos.
This is the best essay I’ve seen on this topic and I fear that not enough people will read and understand that history will repeat itself when you don’t air the truth of what has happened. We cannot allow Republicans to whitewash what actually happened.
Ugh! CRT is not taught in primary or secondary schools. More lies by Donald’s seditious mob buddies. Why promulgate laws to prevent something that isn’t happening? Because it is another distraction from the Jan 6 commission and investigation of Donald and his children’s other felonies!
Mary, I guess it was when I was so much younger, but I used to have so much hope for America! I no longer find that I hold even a glimmer of that hope anymore and it makes me feel so sad! It could just be that I have so many negative personal issues going on and I’m having a really hard time dealing with them, I hope and pray that that’s what it is, because this country is a damn mess!
As a New Yorker who HAD to come to Florida to help my elderly parents who wanted to die at home, I took care of them never expecting to become so ill myself that I haven’t been able to leave this God awful state since!😳😱
I didn’t even like to visit here, now I’m stuck living here, God help me!🙄
Anyway, you and others like yourself are what help keep my sanity and I can’t thank you enough for your brilliance and your compassion, kindness and understanding!
Some day I’ll tell you about how I knew your grandmother and grandfather (he was a trip🙄), and how all of us made fun of Donald in the 80’s! What a LOSER…and NUTHIN’S changed! He’s still more impressed with himself than ANYONE ELSE IS!😆
First, I don't like like the word HIStory, because when I was teaching at Ivy League Colleges in Western Mass I found that most books about the past were not only racist, but left women out of the picture entirely as subjects and as actors. It has long been the story of men, white men written by themselves. Two women colleagues and I taught in the 70s at Hampshire College ( I also taught at Amherst, Smith, and Mt Holyoke on faculty exchange) a course we codesigned called Political Woman in America using case studies from colonial America ( Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian controversy in Boston...she dared to teach as a woman and was run out of town, Mary Dyer in Rhode Island), Salem " Witch" Trials, Sojourner Truth and so on. I was a feminist political scientist and Penina Glazer was an American historian, Miriam Slater a European historian. It was the 70s and part of The Second Wave which was grossly mischaracterized by people like Joan Didion (a privileged young white Vogue columnist whose husband edited all her work, and who selectively chose a few books written by feminist pioneers, then selectively mischaracterized the contents), ignoring our colleagues and activists of color like Gloria Josephs and Pauli Murray ( to name only 2 of many) and there was loud backlash by a very small white man with the amusing name of Lionel Tiger. We looked at and questioned everything, as two of our husbands had plumb university jobs with good salaries and low teaching loads while we had jobs at the innovative college with high teaching loads, low salaries and lots of adminisrative duties. We were champions for social justice while also having children and starting and running a day care center and lobbying for hiring faculty of color with mixed success. We were tired a lot. So backlash about non white male supremacist scholarship is nothing new to me. White male patriarchy breeds more of the same while women and people of color fight over the crumbs and get abused. WMS does its very best to divide us but if we all realized that both racism and misogny are the usual spinoffs of white male hysteria to retain power ( yes, aided by wierdos like Stephen Miller, Ben Carson and Marjorie Taylor Green who somehow mistakenly think they can blend in?) then we could get somewhere with Ourstory and Herstory and restructure all our neural pathways. Bottom line, WMSupremacy and Fascism are one and the same no matter in what country or century and, sorry to say, most Judeo Christian religious hierarchies are part of the props as much as Eastern religions. Recent publication. of early Buddhist women's writings by and about the founding mothers (such as the aunt/ stepmother Mahaprajapati who brought him up and 500 contemporary nuns making up half of the laity and monastics) shows us that Siddhartha believed in complete equality. No castes either. But the cultural bias in favor of white male academia and publishing has perpetuated a lot of myths and some "queen bees" like Midge Decter and other special members of the New York Intelligentsia rattled by feminism, not to mention Stokely Carmichael's famous line " the only position for a woman in SNCC is prone" come in sideways with their fracturing tactics.
Our heritage does indeed need airing to cleanse our cultural wounds. ( See recent recent Report on year long research project showing current overlap between white male nationalism, misogyny, and gun violence published this last week). Are we ever going to realize in whose interests attacks on women and people of color are? Aren't racism and misogyny both just part of the age old white male power grab?
There are many highly educated people who have commented to make mine that interesting, but I will tell you some things taught or heard by this girl from North Dakota when she was young (It’s late so my grammar may not be perfect):
-my 10th grade history class teaching me the civil war was fought over “state’s rights”;
-When the AZ governor would not allow Martin Luther King Jr Day in his state I didn’t understand why protesting the gov’s speech at our ASU graduation was a big deal;
-apparently standing too close in line to a black man at a McDonald’s in Washington DC, he turned around and spit on the floor in front of me. When I told my new boss how surprised I was he told me that it was “reverse racism”;
-learning after 3 years I was being paid several thousands less than the guy who had just been hired—by same boss.
Slowly, I learned that these things were either not true and/or egregious racism/sexism. I was lucky: I was smart and got the hell out of those places and educated myself (and learned to ask for more money).
There are so many people in my hometown who still believe in or would agree with these things. We need the corrected history along with critical thinking skills taught to our kids and also make sure they are required to take a freaking civics class or two.
In fact, I’d be happy if classes were required for everyone over 40. You want your driver’s license renewed? Here’s your class schedule. Start studying, the final requires answers in essay form.
Now my head is spinning from trying to write clearly so I’m off to bed.
It’s becoming a very scary society! Donald has always felt entitled and I lay you odds he would never break bread with many of his cult loving deplorable people!! Setting us generations back. His continual lies are poisonous and unfortunately so many people believe him! I’m praying the silent majority will bring him and his cohorts down and held accountable!
Am currently reading THE SUM of US by Heather McGhee. She so eloquently reviews the inequities black & brown citizens have faced for decades (centuries) in this country. I highly recommend her book as a reminder of where we’ve been and where we need to go. I also recommend Mary’s book THE RECKONING because it reinforces the premise that we have all been let down by our institutions and our leaders in one way or another.
Since they don't really believe or even feel any discrimination my immediate thought is not valid. Nevertheless, it would be really helpful for whites to experience true discrimination, or at least to fall into a low caste after generations of privilege and protection.
I don’t know how you survived the family but keep your voice going loud and clear . SS Cupp Unfiltered had an excellent article about the ridiculous Sat rally in Az .
Beautiful. Living in Virginia, it's easy to see how this reveals itself. It's good to keep reminding ourselves that there's way more of us than them; they're just louder and more disgusting. Thanks for this, Mary.
Bravo! This is exactly right. The idea that studying our history - the choices and actions of those in our past, and how those choices have impacted the road to today - is about blaming people today for the choices of their ancestors is yet another way in which Republicans create manufactured crises and sow division to gain control. The fact they choose to use our children as their wedge makes it all the more emotionally charged. Their "answer" is to not educate at all, but to indoctrinate our unsuspecting youth into their lie - that Whites are not only the victims of reverse racism, but that White American history is wonderful and more worthy than the truth that recognizes those who aren't white, and therefore reinforcing the systemic racism that has existed for decades as the way it should be. 😞
Thank you for your blunt and truthful article about the non-teaching of American history and the disastrous consequences it will have for our future.
Exactly! If anyone hasn’t read Caste by Isabel Wilkerson I recommend it. The chapter that addresses how Germany has tried to atone for its sins is particularly apropos.
This is the best essay I’ve seen on this topic and I fear that not enough people will read and understand that history will repeat itself when you don’t air the truth of what has happened. We cannot allow Republicans to whitewash what actually happened.
Powerful white men are not going down without a well funded and maniacal plan. I am very concerned about this country.
Ugh! CRT is not taught in primary or secondary schools. More lies by Donald’s seditious mob buddies. Why promulgate laws to prevent something that isn’t happening? Because it is another distraction from the Jan 6 commission and investigation of Donald and his children’s other felonies!
Mary, I guess it was when I was so much younger, but I used to have so much hope for America! I no longer find that I hold even a glimmer of that hope anymore and it makes me feel so sad! It could just be that I have so many negative personal issues going on and I’m having a really hard time dealing with them, I hope and pray that that’s what it is, because this country is a damn mess!
As a New Yorker who HAD to come to Florida to help my elderly parents who wanted to die at home, I took care of them never expecting to become so ill myself that I haven’t been able to leave this God awful state since!😳😱
I didn’t even like to visit here, now I’m stuck living here, God help me!🙄
Anyway, you and others like yourself are what help keep my sanity and I can’t thank you enough for your brilliance and your compassion, kindness and understanding!
Some day I’ll tell you about how I knew your grandmother and grandfather (he was a trip🙄), and how all of us made fun of Donald in the 80’s! What a LOSER…and NUTHIN’S changed! He’s still more impressed with himself than ANYONE ELSE IS!😆
Mary, you ROCK!!! xoxo
First, I don't like like the word HIStory, because when I was teaching at Ivy League Colleges in Western Mass I found that most books about the past were not only racist, but left women out of the picture entirely as subjects and as actors. It has long been the story of men, white men written by themselves. Two women colleagues and I taught in the 70s at Hampshire College ( I also taught at Amherst, Smith, and Mt Holyoke on faculty exchange) a course we codesigned called Political Woman in America using case studies from colonial America ( Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian controversy in Boston...she dared to teach as a woman and was run out of town, Mary Dyer in Rhode Island), Salem " Witch" Trials, Sojourner Truth and so on. I was a feminist political scientist and Penina Glazer was an American historian, Miriam Slater a European historian. It was the 70s and part of The Second Wave which was grossly mischaracterized by people like Joan Didion (a privileged young white Vogue columnist whose husband edited all her work, and who selectively chose a few books written by feminist pioneers, then selectively mischaracterized the contents), ignoring our colleagues and activists of color like Gloria Josephs and Pauli Murray ( to name only 2 of many) and there was loud backlash by a very small white man with the amusing name of Lionel Tiger. We looked at and questioned everything, as two of our husbands had plumb university jobs with good salaries and low teaching loads while we had jobs at the innovative college with high teaching loads, low salaries and lots of adminisrative duties. We were champions for social justice while also having children and starting and running a day care center and lobbying for hiring faculty of color with mixed success. We were tired a lot. So backlash about non white male supremacist scholarship is nothing new to me. White male patriarchy breeds more of the same while women and people of color fight over the crumbs and get abused. WMS does its very best to divide us but if we all realized that both racism and misogny are the usual spinoffs of white male hysteria to retain power ( yes, aided by wierdos like Stephen Miller, Ben Carson and Marjorie Taylor Green who somehow mistakenly think they can blend in?) then we could get somewhere with Ourstory and Herstory and restructure all our neural pathways. Bottom line, WMSupremacy and Fascism are one and the same no matter in what country or century and, sorry to say, most Judeo Christian religious hierarchies are part of the props as much as Eastern religions. Recent publication. of early Buddhist women's writings by and about the founding mothers (such as the aunt/ stepmother Mahaprajapati who brought him up and 500 contemporary nuns making up half of the laity and monastics) shows us that Siddhartha believed in complete equality. No castes either. But the cultural bias in favor of white male academia and publishing has perpetuated a lot of myths and some "queen bees" like Midge Decter and other special members of the New York Intelligentsia rattled by feminism, not to mention Stokely Carmichael's famous line " the only position for a woman in SNCC is prone" come in sideways with their fracturing tactics.
Our heritage does indeed need airing to cleanse our cultural wounds. ( See recent recent Report on year long research project showing current overlap between white male nationalism, misogyny, and gun violence published this last week). Are we ever going to realize in whose interests attacks on women and people of color are? Aren't racism and misogyny both just part of the age old white male power grab?
If this essay resonates with you, read Mary’s book “The Reckoning”. Eye opening.
There are many highly educated people who have commented to make mine that interesting, but I will tell you some things taught or heard by this girl from North Dakota when she was young (It’s late so my grammar may not be perfect):
-my 10th grade history class teaching me the civil war was fought over “state’s rights”;
-When the AZ governor would not allow Martin Luther King Jr Day in his state I didn’t understand why protesting the gov’s speech at our ASU graduation was a big deal;
-apparently standing too close in line to a black man at a McDonald’s in Washington DC, he turned around and spit on the floor in front of me. When I told my new boss how surprised I was he told me that it was “reverse racism”;
-learning after 3 years I was being paid several thousands less than the guy who had just been hired—by same boss.
Slowly, I learned that these things were either not true and/or egregious racism/sexism. I was lucky: I was smart and got the hell out of those places and educated myself (and learned to ask for more money).
There are so many people in my hometown who still believe in or would agree with these things. We need the corrected history along with critical thinking skills taught to our kids and also make sure they are required to take a freaking civics class or two.
In fact, I’d be happy if classes were required for everyone over 40. You want your driver’s license renewed? Here’s your class schedule. Start studying, the final requires answers in essay form.
Now my head is spinning from trying to write clearly so I’m off to bed.
It’s becoming a very scary society! Donald has always felt entitled and I lay you odds he would never break bread with many of his cult loving deplorable people!! Setting us generations back. His continual lies are poisonous and unfortunately so many people believe him! I’m praying the silent majority will bring him and his cohorts down and held accountable!
Am currently reading THE SUM of US by Heather McGhee. She so eloquently reviews the inequities black & brown citizens have faced for decades (centuries) in this country. I highly recommend her book as a reminder of where we’ve been and where we need to go. I also recommend Mary’s book THE RECKONING because it reinforces the premise that we have all been let down by our institutions and our leaders in one way or another.
Linda Baccki. A People's History of the United States. Howard Zinn should have been required reading for over 30 years
Since they don't really believe or even feel any discrimination my immediate thought is not valid. Nevertheless, it would be really helpful for whites to experience true discrimination, or at least to fall into a low caste after generations of privilege and protection.
I don’t know how you survived the family but keep your voice going loud and clear . SS Cupp Unfiltered had an excellent article about the ridiculous Sat rally in Az .
Beautiful. Living in Virginia, it's easy to see how this reveals itself. It's good to keep reminding ourselves that there's way more of us than them; they're just louder and more disgusting. Thanks for this, Mary.