The problem is that it isn’t just ancient history. There is a lot of fucked up shit happening today that is directly related to shit that’s been going on during our lifetimes. And that shit is all directly related to shit that has been happening over the last 100, 200, 300 years.
When I was a child in a large modern “liberal” city in the US, adults would get up in the morning to throw bricks at school buses of children because they didn’t want black children attending their neighborhood schools. This wasn’t in some tiny southern backwater where everyone was some convenient stereotype and this wasn’t 100 years ago. My parents lived through segregation. The last known child of enslaved black Americans died 4 years ago. There are people alive today whose grandparents were slaves.
People here like to pretend that “Lincoln freed the slaves and then it was all better and everyone needs to move on”. The fact of the matter is that the US is not very old, it’s been super fucked up since day one (really, since before day one), we have made a lot of progress but that progress is very recent and no where close to sufficient. No one is saying to punish random white people. But we should absolutely call bullshit when gaslighters try to tell us that there is no systemic racism in the US and knowing our recent history can help inform those conversations.
The problem is that it isn’t just ancient history. There is a lot of fucked up shit happening today that is directly related to shit that’s been going on during our lifetimes. And that shit is all directly related to shit that has been happening over the last 100, 200, 300 years.
When I was a child in a large modern “liberal” city in the US, adults would get up in the morning to throw bricks at school buses of children because they didn’t want black children attending their neighborhood schools. This wasn’t in some tiny southern backwater where everyone was some convenient stereotype and this wasn’t 100 years ago. My parents lived through segregation. The last known child of enslaved black Americans died 4 years ago. There are people alive today whose grandparents were slaves.
People here like to pretend that “Lincoln freed the slaves and then it was all better and everyone needs to move on”. The fact of the matter is that the US is not very old, it’s been super fucked up since day one (really, since before day one), we have made a lot of progress but that progress is very recent and no where close to sufficient. No one is saying to punish random white people. But we should absolutely call bullshit when gaslighters try to tell us that there is no systemic racism in the US and knowing our recent history can help inform those conversations.