One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him. Booker T Washington
Recently America again discussed racial tensions between Whites and Blacks, sparked by Jesse Jackson’s use of the word “niggers” to describe the Black community.
Something like that tends to spark “random acts of sociology,” like this faux smack-down between Whoopi Goldberg and Elizabeth Hasselbeck.
As usual, discussions like that lead to no answer for ending racial tension. Rather, you just get an acknowledgement that there is a problem. I’m unclear why some think that alone helps.
Sometimes you’ll find folks who say they aren’t even trying to offer an answer, like this guy. Art Gallagher claims he only wants to start the conversation, without the guarantee of a solution.
Well, that’s not good enough for me. I’d rather find the root cause of the racial tension and offer the solution to get rid of it.
The cause of racial tension between Black and White people lies within our schools, which teach incorrectly the history of America regarding slavery.
In High School, as I sat in the Asbury Park school system as a minority White student, I along with the majority Black students would listen to teachers tell us of the history of slavery, and they got it all wrong.
The incorrect story taught by teachers was that this was "American" slavery. American White people did it to Black people. The remnants of it are still around. Whites are still keeping Black people down with the same prejudices that caused slavery.
You might guess that it was a tough walk home for me through Asbury Park’s Black neighborhoods after history class when the bell rang.
Can you blame Blacks for ill feelings when this is all they are taught? No, you can’t. As Mr. Miyagi said in the Karate Kid movie, “There are no bad students, only bad teachers. Teacher say, student do.”
There would be no lingering animosity between Whites and Blacks if teachers simply taught the truth about America’s glorious history AGAINST slavery.
The heroes of that truth are White and Black Americans together.
If we want no racial tensions between White and Black Americans, then all of us have a responsibility to counter our public school system with the truth, which is as follows:
- Slavery existed between most peoples for 10,000 years before America was born.
- Slavery on our soil started two centuries before America existed, so it was not an American policy that started it.
- African Kings sold slaves to Europeans for centuries, shipping them through Islamic controlled trade routes.
- It was primarily four European countries that bought slaves from African Kings and sent them to the Caribbean and North America – the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and British (so the USA had NOTHING to do with it starting).
- When America declared her Independence, she did so while being subject to the economy controlled by Europeans, particularly King George, which included slave labor. America did not choose slavery; it existed the day she was born.
- In her founding documents, America declared the equality of all people with no exceptions – being the first modern nation to have done so. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
- The Founding Fathers, some slaveholders, by accepting the above set the bar for the nation of America higher than they personally reached themselves – the first ever people in modern history to declare a morality for their nation that was higher than their own.
- America immediately set out to end slavery within her borders, with White people in ten states outlawing slave trade.
- Stating in the Constitution that Black Slaves were 3/5ths of a person was to HELP slaves, not hurt them. That is in the part of the Constitution that holds each state gets more congresspersons (and thus more power) based upon a higher population. This was the Free States telling the Slave States, “Set your slaves free and you will get more power in Congress. Keep slaves and be penalized.”
- The abolition movement in America continued to grow stronger and stronger.
- In the 1850’s 3 civil rights groups met in Ripon, Wisconsin and formed a new organization whose purpose was to end slavery in America – the Republican Party.
- In 1860, White people elected an anti-slavery candidate in Republican Abraham Lincoln, in hopes that he would dilute their own political power by empowering Black people. No other people in the history of the world worked so hard to dilute their own power to raise the power of others as did American White people.
- The Civil War represents a unique place in the history of warfare – the White Americans who started that war are to this day the only group of people in the history of planet Earth to fight a war against themselves to dilute their own power while increasing the political power of others. No other group of people in the world hold that distinction
- Whites and Blacks fought TOGETHER in the Civil War to help America achieve her goal of racial equality as stated in the Declaration of Independence.
- Only 80 years after her birth, less then a tick of the clock in human history, America made illegal what humans were doing for 10,000 years before her - Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which started the process to free all slaves.
- To their GREAT CREDIT, Blacks in America did not try to conquer or leave America after the Civil War – rather they wished to assimilate into the country that fought for them, and for whom they fought. Black people became stakeholders in America – it’s their country.
- In 1865, American White people ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, ending slavery for good.
- In 1866 the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified to ensure the federal protections of equality of the races would apply to the states. In doing so, American White people passed a law guaranteeing political power to people of other races, diluting their own political power in the process.
- In 1964, with the passage of the Civil Rights Act (filibustered by Democrats, with a higher percentage of Republicans voting for it) America became the first nation to penalize private depravations of liberties, as opposed to just public deprivations of liberty. Again, American White people acted to guarantee the Freedoms of Black people and other ancestral nationalities.
- Since then, America has also fought to end slavery around the world, being responsible for freeing more people from the bonds of oppressive governments than any other nation in human history.
The point of the above is that children in school should be taught this truth:
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA HAS A GLORIOUS HISTORY AGAINST SLAVERY, AND CONTINUES TO LEAD THE WORLD IN FIGHTING TO FREE OPPRESSED PEOPLE.
I suspect my walks home from school as a White boy through Black neighborhoods might have been a whole lot easier after history class had the truth been taught in schools.
Imagine White and Black children walking together, chests swelled with pride because as Americans they are equal partners in having showed the highest morality the world has ever known in wiping out slavery.
Instead, children are only told America has a “sad, embarrassing, unfortunate history” when it comes to slavery, and Blacks are still affected by it today. No wonder there is animosity.
Consequently, Whites and Blacks see each other not as Americans, but multicultural antagonists, each an outsider to the other’s group.
I don’t blame Black people because they are taught incorrect American history. I blame the America-loathing liberals who control the curriculum, and who think Blacks are better off seeing themselves as victims instead or what they are, which is stakeholders in the greatest Country the world as ever known – a country that has obliterated slavery all over the globe.
The United States of America would have no racial tensions between Blacks and Whites if we simply honor our own glorious American history by teaching it in our schools.
