The American educational system does not teach slavery (or history for that matter) in an unbiased manner. History is written by the victors, and with American History, white people in this country have watered down the atrocities that came with “settling” the US to such an extent that the vast majority of us do not have an accurate picture of what American slavery entailed. Here’s a perspective you were probably never taught:
…slaves, for example, were money in the antebellum South—currency and credit—which led to the enforced, systematic break-up of black families in generation after generation. There was no national currency, and little silver or gold, but there was paper tied to slaves bought on credit whose offspring were seen as a dividend that grew over time.
(cont. RawStory)
We were MONEY to this country – not people. We were currency, cattle, property, and economic capital – not workers. University of Houston doctoral candidate (and concerned mother) Roni Dean-Burren is one woman who, outraged over the white revisionist history of slavery in a McGraw Hill World Geography textbook, isn’t standing on the sidelines letting it happen.
Roni Dean-Burren, who taught English for more than a decade and is now a doctoral candidate at the University of Houston, pointed out that the language of “worker” suggests compensation and “immigration” suggests that people weren’t kidnapped and brought to North America against their will. She first learned about the textbook section when her son sent her a photo of the text.
(cont. ThinkProgress)
Dean-Burren posted the photo on Facebook and a followup video has been seen by 1.4 million people. In response to the building outrage, McGraw Hill has moved to make edits on its website and correct the text in hardcopy for the next edition, so once again, the Internet Outrage Machine worked.
It’s important to note here that McGraw Hill is based in Texas, as are the majority of school textbook manufacturers. Texas is also the state where the board of education voted to (further) de-emphasize slavery’s severity and impact, where social studies requirements no longer make note of the KKK or Jim Crow, and where a Republican on the board of education said slavery was a side issue of the Civil War. Texas is garbage, yes, but they’ve only taken the American educational system’s watered down version of slavery and watered it down a bit more. Honestly, I can tell you more about what I remember from studying Ancient Greece in school than anything that was taught to me about slavery. Black history as a part of American history was pretty much white people brought Africans over in chains, they picked cotton for a couple of centuries and got a few whippings if they tried to run away, Lincoln freed them, there was some struggle for equal rights, and then MLK made everything OK in the 60s and we lived happily ever after. If you’re a white person who feels guilty for viewing slavery the same way, it’s not totally your fault because nobody taught you any differently.
Ned and Constance Sublette want Americans to know the truth and they’ve written a new book called The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave Breeding Industry. I haven’t read it yet, but I’m about to go find it as soon as I get off work today – not so I can just be mad at white people some more, but so I can have this knowledge to teach my children their history since nobody else is going to. The book is over 600 pages (!!!) but just from the short overview on Rawstory, I’ve learned:
*** South Carolina preferred to import slaves while Virginia opted for an elaborate breeding program (Virginia obviously came out on top since the US made importing slaves illegal long before slavery itself was outlawed)
*** The US didn’t receive nearly as many Africans as the Caribbean and South America (especially Brazil) but treatment was much harsher here.
*** Native Americans were exported in favor of taking in more African slaves.
*** The Second Amendment and many of our founding documents are a response to the fear of (by Thomas Jefferson’s own hand) slaves and freedmen rising up in revolt against whites.
*** Thomas Jefferson (the founding father modern politicians like to quote all the while not realizing (or acknowledging) he believed Africans should never be freed but instead deported) was the OG White Supremacist who, referring to Africans, wrote: “Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions… are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them. In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection.”
Where’s that in our history textbooks? Not only does our curriculum gloss over the truth, it totally omits it and instead posits these men who “built” the country as paragons of truth and righteousness who could do no wrong when they set the building blocks for the racial disparity we are STILL dealing with!
Roni Dean-Burren is my spirit because I would have done the same thing. I don’t think the public school system is ready for me when I have kids because I’m going to be a bulldog. You think being a helicopter parent is bad. I’m coming with grenades and I can’t wait to raise militant little Black babies who are not here for the bullshit.
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