Orientalism and primitivism influence our day-to-day practices, especially around Halloween, cosplay, and digital storytelling.
Black, brown, beige, and indigenous cultures do not exist for your next literary masterpiece *looks at Frank Herbert* or your Halloween costume or fashion spread.
You can appreciate and celebrate our textile arts, our languages, our histories, and our magic without turning our existence into an opportunity for you to achieve economic, social, or artistic clout.
🥞 A Hottake Hotcake for your afternoon: Kim Kardashian is the "Miss Anne" of the 21st century.
It's right there, in the textbook formerly used in Virginia schools.
Dana Milbank presents excerpts from a] Virginia public school 7th grade history textbook used from the 1950s into the 1970s:Virginia: History, Government, Geography by Francis Butler Simkins et al,
I was raised in New Jersey but I can attest that the textbooks I had back in the 1960s and early 1970s were similarly whitewashed. My guess is this is the kind of American history that the GQP wants to promote in red states through the laws they are passing that ban discussions of racism and that promote a “patriotic” history. 😡
“A feeling of strong affection existed between masters and slaves in a majority of Virginia homes. … It was to [the master’s] own interest to keep his slaves contented and in good health. If he treated them well, he could win their loyalty and cooperation. … The intelligent master found it profitable to discover and develop the talents and abilities of each slave. … The more progressive planters tried to promote loyalty and love of work by gifts and awards.”
“Many Negroes were taught to read and write. Many of them were allowed to meet in groups for preaching, for funerals, and for singing and dancing. They went visiting at night and sometimes owned guns. … Most of them were treated with kindness.”
“The tasks of each [house slave] were light. … They learned much about the finer things of life. The house servants took a great deal of pride in their comfortable positions. …The field hands … were given a rest period at noon, usually from one to three hours. Those who were too old or too sick to work in the fields were not forced to do so. … The ‘task system’ … gave them free hours after they finished their daily tasks. … The planter often kept a close eye upon [the overseer] to see that the slaves were not overworked or badly treated.”
“Each slave was given a weekly ration consisting of three or four pounds of pork and plenty of corn meal and molasses. To this food were added the vegetables, fruits, hogs and chickens which the slaves were allowed to raise for themselves. … When a slave was sick, tempting food was often carried to him from the master’s table. … At [Christmas,] extra rations and presents were given the slaves.”
[....]
“The house servants became almost as much a part of the planter’s family circle as its white members. … A strong tie existed between slave and master because each was dependent on the other. … The regard that master and slaves had for each other made plantation life happy and prosperous.”
"[The slaves] liked Virginia food, Virginia climate, and Virginia ways of living. Those Negroes who went to Liberia … were homesick. Many longed to get back to the plantations. … It must be remembered that Virginia was a home as much beloved by most of its Negroes as by its white people. Negroes did not wish to leave their old masters.”
You cannot discover lands already inhabited. Injustice has plagued American society for centuries. And we cannot move toward being a mor...
“Since Christendom rejected Christ and prostituted itself to empire, when the American church is confronted with systematic, transgenerational, communal sins, there is no theological space to wrestle with such transgressions.” (185-186)
- Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery, Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah
The way some Disney fans treat Home on the Range as offensively bad is ludicrous because...
I finally saw it just a few weeks ago, and...I thought it was cute and it made me laugh. That said, I can understand it not being for everyone, but...it's one of the most inoffensive movies I've ever seen (it's up there with Babe in that regard), and
Disney has a movie depicting a romanticization of European colonialism of the Americas and whitewashing the story of a Native girl who was essentially a human trafficking victim. In a world where that movie exists, people have no fucking right to treat a movie with talking animals and a villain who yodels as the company's biggest mistake.
(And PS, it's not the fault of Home On the Range that Disney doesn't make hand-drawn movies anymore; they don't do that because somehow they think it'll make them less money)
i am angry at the school system. i’m australian, ours isn’t that horrible, but there’s a lot of things that get left out of the education
i have learnt about the devistations that my schools never taught to me. i learnt about the mass murders of australian aboriginals and the stolen generation in australia. this two events were never taught to me as a student. i found these events when we had to research australian culture at the beginning of white settlement until the present day (present day was about 2015-2016, i was in grade 5 i think)
I learnt about aboriginal history in my own time, not in school. That truely shows how whitewashed history classes are in primary/some high school
The ragtime master Scott Joplin and the blues singer Gladys Bentley are among many black men and women whose deaths The New York Times overlooked — until now.
In this guest post, excerpted from an original post at EdWeek and reposted here with permission, author and editor Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz discusses the dehumanizing myths and misconceptions that hurt Native students. Currently, more than 600,000 Native American students attend our nation’s K-12 public schools. In researching and writing “All the Real Indians Died Off,” our book about Native…
During a recent Voice visit to Ghana's Cape Coast Castle, historians and tour guides urge Britain to stop whitewashing its past and teach th
...past and teach the horrors of the slave trade
(Trigger warning: This report contains graphic detail about Ghana’s slave castles and the transatlantic slave trade which some readers may find upsetting)
Leading educators in Ghana are calling for Britain to teach the full truth about its brutal role in the transatlantic slave trade, citing the importance of Ghana’s slave castles as living reminders of the horrors endured by millions of Africans.
History experts say the teaching of slavery should be mandatory in UK schools, so future generations understand Britain’s part in enslaving and trafficking countless African people across the Atlantic.
The call for honest education
Kojo Keelson is a leading tour guide of the Cape Coast Castle – one of the largest former slave castles used to imprison and dehumanise African people before they were enslaved and trafficked across the Atlantic Ocean.
Speaking to The Voice, during a tour of the former slave dungeons in the Cape Coast Castle, he said: “It is good this is still standing because this is empirical evidence of what happened.
“Everybody needs to learn irrespective of race, religion or whatever, we need to learn about slavery.”
-He added: “We need to learn from the past and make sure the present, the future is better, and that the bad thing that happened in the past doesn’t happen again.
“It’s sad, but I believe that we all have to know the history so we can learn from it.”
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I find the "trigger warning" incongruous. You can't teach about Britain's brutal role in the Transatlantic slave trade without those details.
