Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

Home / Community Bloggers / Black History That We Were Not Taught: Another Perspective for Black History Month

Black History That We Were Not Taught: Another Perspective for Black History Month

/
/
ad-mania

Growing up in a Northern suburban school system, there was so much about Black history that we were not taught. After all, it was the 1950s.

We were not taught that Southern churches espoused that Blacks had no souls. A lie created in order to justify the enslavement of a whole race of people, but to still feel comfortable facing God each Sunday morning.

We were not taught that there were thriving cities within the countries of Africa.  The so-called dark continent was not all about savages running half-naked through the jungle. 

We were not taught that white Europeans and black Africans engaged in commerce with each other as equals. That the image of an inferior race was perpetuated in order to provide free labor for building the economy of what would become the southern United States.

We were not taught that George Washington, the revered “Father” or our country, himself owned slaves.

We were not taught that it was common for the masters of Southern plantations to creep down to the slave quarters and sire little brown babies.  When their mulatto sons and daughters were of working age, they were often brought into the mansion as house slaves. A slap in the face not only to the female rape victim, but also to the black male head-of-household. A slap in the face to the white mistress of the manor who, on a daily basis, was confronted with her husband’s golden-brown offspring.

We were not taught about Northern institutional racism.  The term was not yet part of our vocabulary. We were brainwashed into believing that the only true racists were in the South.  After all, in the North, there were no actual laws against Blacks living in certain neighborhoods, attending certain schools, or being excluded from a whole host of private sector jobs. Yet there was covert racial discrimination in those societal institutions. Years back, this went under the heading of that’s just the way things are and we should be grateful that we did not live in the South, the land of Jim Crow and lynchings.

We were not taught that there was a systematic brainwashing creating Blacks as an inferior race through the depiction of savages worshiping totems, or images of pickaninnies and black-faced minstrels.

We were not taught that the misrepresentations and omissions of our childhood education would spawn generations of Americans whose misguided views of race, lingering into adulthood, shape attitudes and polices even now in 2020.

written by Amy Bryant, Safety Harbor Resident Blogger
Author of “You Can Go Home Again

5 Comments

  1. This truly tells us through a few paragraphs how we were degraded as a race, from the female to the man, to the child to the adult, and unfortunately to woman of the house. The total disregard of blacks as a people was and is still a disgrace to our nation.

    I wish this could be added to the text books, the true feeling of what the slaves went through and endured as a wife, husband, and a child…all in the name of survival to not be lynched, killed, or raped. So there is no way I can ever just “get over it, that happened so long ago”, as I was told by a white co-worker.

    So thank you, Ms. Bryant for your insightful, straight to the point post.

    Paula

  2. Amy thanks for your synopsis on slavery and the impact on African Americans in our current times. The history taught in schools is so much more than
    “Lincoln freed the slaves. “

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This div height required for enabling the sticky sidebar
Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views :