On a plane and thinking about the Florida Blk History curriculum news. It's not incorrect to say that blk ppl suffered, endured, and overcame many hardships to grow stronger or acquire skills, or find faith. We did and we continue to do this. The question is why is that the primary lesson of just blk history in the curriculum and not other histories?
Because no one would dare to teach other ppl's slavery, genocide, and suffering with a self-help msg aimed at fragile white conservatives and their kids.
No one would dare teach about the Irish Potato famine by leading with 'thank GOD 20 million ppl died and entire towns were wiped out b/c a few million got to come to America.' No German school would say 'wow, Jewish ppl...thank GOD all 'that stuff' happened to you (*ahem that we did*) b/c then you got to become stronger and, and...look at you now!' No one would say about the Chinese Exclusion Act of the Native American Trail of Tears 'this is definitely a trust-building, community bonding moment for y'all. You learned how to sow clothes from rotten sacks of flour we fed you? Wow....that's a skill you can parlay into a cool business.'
Black history and its focus has and continues to be primarily about adjusting the dials to the lowest temperature, and blandest inoffensive flavors possible for white palates, even at the expense of actual history.
And the self-help motivation of turning a positive into a negative? Blk ppl do that ANYWAY. We don't need a lesson from Karen about perseverance. When you watch Hollywood movies about race, the mistaken assumption is that micro racism and racial incidents was like some sort of big event in blk ppl's lives back then. Being called the 'n word' or being denied opportunities wasn't an event. My Florida relatives grew up walking to school while white farmers would drive by and pelt them with oranges and rotten fruit. For fun. This was a good time for the white farmers... of course while calling blk kids the 'n word' and threatening to beat and kill little boys and girls for walking to school. The world didn't stop, angels didn't faint from the horrors. This wasn't an event. You know what it was? It was just another Tuesday on their way to school. That is how deep and pernicious the dehumanization was and continues to be: it's just another day of ducking, dodging, and moving on. Teach your lil' Billy that and let them process the everyday reality and horror millions of ppl were subjected to by their ancestors...for casual amusement. And blk ppl had to just keep it moving, pray, bite their tongue, joke about it, turn it into the blues, whisper under their breath and continue onward.
So how is the fragile Fox News crowd triggered by a Barbie movie going to lecture my kith and kin about 'perseverance' when your organizing social construct is petty tribal grievances against blk history, LGBT trying to use the bathroom, Walmart cashiers not saying "Merry Christmas" to you from August until January 15th. Your entire MO is to seek out the most insignificant flag pin, hand of heart during the pledge of allegiance, dogwhistle and blow it up into WW 3. You spent days agonizing over the first black president wearing a tanned suit. You are not the Irish ancestors or Italians who came here on a boat. You are not the plucky and persevering kind and certainly not the one to be changing the curriculum of Blk history.
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