On a Facebook discussion about Oklahoma looking to ban A.P. History, a person suggested that every country has blood on its hands, as a precursor to the old-fashioned "American Exceptionalism" argument. I then said, jokingly, "Is this the part where we should be thankful for the horrors of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade?"
She responded with this:
//
Ty, are you personally better off because your ancestors where
brought here in a slave ship? That's only for you to answer. I know
I'm better off because my ancestors escaped disease, tyranny and
persecution from their homeland. However we got here, we are here now.
I
think the real question is today; Are you personally better off than
your relatives in the home of your ancestors? What would your answer be?
//
And this was my answer:
I'm going to attempt to answer this as objectively as possible, without snark or sarcasm.
Your
phrase about your ancestors ESCAPING disease, tyranny, and disease
should tell you about the fundamental differences in our perspectives,
and why the study of REAL, unbiased history is important. Your
ancestors ESCAPED tyranny. MINE were brought INTO tyranny. Everything
in this country that my ancestors and forefathers have, we fought for,
tooth and nail, and shed blood, sweat, and tears.
As
a Black man and as a Christian, I am often confronted with the
over-simplification of being "thankful" for slavery. Pet Negro
Apologists like Jesse Lee Peterson try to minimize the horrors that my
ancestors were subjected to in the belly of the slave ships. They want
the white Conservatives that they are trying to appease to believe that
it was simply a "mere inconvenience" that our people were stuffed into
the hulls of slave ships, because after all, they got a free cruise out
of the deal. You think I'm exaggerating, but I've heard Black
conservatives say terrifyingly similar things.
Then
you say "However we got here, we are here now" which completely
whitewashes (no pun intended) how we GOT here. Part of "however we got
here" included the slavemasters, the government, and even the Pope using
the faith that I profess (Christianity) as a tool of subjugation and
dehumanization. Would you tell the Native Americans "we are here now"
when they were here before ANY of us? "However we got here" included a
United States Supreme Court justice say, from the bench, that a Black
man does not have any rights that white people are obligated to
recognize. "However we got here" includes a long and bloody history of
lynchings for such crimes as looking at white women and voting.
"However we got here" included the bombing of a Black church, killing
four little girls. "However we got here" included the assassinations of
Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and scores of others. "However we
got here" included segregated facilities. "However we got here"
included firehoses and police dogs turned on Black people for fighting
for HUMAN RIGHTS. "However we got here" included the obliteration of
prosperous Black communities like Rosewood and Black Wall Street
(something that, when I was in school, wasn't taught).
Then
you ask if I am better off that my relatives in the home of my
ancestors. This is a question that attempts to over-simplify the
historical significance, and it attempts to say (at least to me) that
the ends justified the means. Oh, we have a Black President now, so
sorry about that whole Jim Crow thing... we good, right? Hey, we have
Colin Powell and Condeleeza Rice! That makes up for the midnight rides
of the Ku Klux Klan, right? Going back to the Native Americans, would
you ask them if they are better off now than they were before we
(collectively) took their homeland and wiped out their people? You're
basically asking if the recipients of genocide would be better off as a
RESULT of that genocide.
And
to answer your question, I don't know if I would be better off than my
relatives in Africa... because I don't know who my "people" are. A lot
of us don't have the luxury of tracing our genealogy back to when they
graced this country's shore. That's because back then, a lot of us were
treated as cargo. As property. As objects. As inventory. Remember,
families were broken up if a slave master wanted a young buck male for
field work, but another master wanted a "little nigger wench" to warm
his bed at night.
This...
ALL of this is why people are upset that conservatives want to rewrite
American History to emphasize just how great the founding fathers were,
and to ignore the bloodshed and sacrifices that it took to get us to
this point. If we want to learn about American History, we need to
learn all of it, and learn it ACCURATELY. When conservatives want to
act as if this country was founded as a Christian one (which it wasn't,
and can be proven both historically and Biblically), we owe it to EVERY
drop of blood dropped to assure that EVERY story gets told CORRECTLY,
warts and all. There's no direct lineage from Moses to Jesus Christ to
St. Ronald of Reagan, despite what Republicans try to tell us. If we
can celebrate D-Day, and think solemnly of Pearl Harbor and 9/11, then
we can also celebrate EVERY nation's contribution to this country, and
how people from different backgrounds succeeded not BECAUSE of America,
but IN SPITE of her.
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tl;dr: Every vote counts, because if you don't vote, you let the winners write the history books, and write you right out of them, because 'Murika.
