Recently, the Lake Oswego School District (home to yours truly) wasn’t able to come to terms with the family of a black boy who was hit and called racial epithets on a school bus. I couldn’t help but be reminded of grade school when my kindergarten teacher refused to teach me how to read or when subsequent teachers tried to deny me access to advanced math and reading groups even though I outperformed the people in them.
It’s unfortunate that nothing has changed in my hometown, but I’m surprised, since the policy of the U.S. is to gloss over, if not omit the ugly parts of this country’s history to prevent some people from feeling uncomfortable. It shouldn’t be a surprise that we still have blatant racism when pundits, politicians and even some educators are pushing the myth of “post-racial” America.
Talking heads can keep espousing the “post-racial” myth until their faces turn blue, but that won’t erase the embarrassing history of this country and the effects it has on the present.
Running away from this ugly history only sets the scene for racism, and history, to repeat itself.
A father in Michigan recently sued a Detroit-area school district because the students read a book during Black History Month that contained the word “nigger” and negative descriptions of slaves on the trading block. He took his daughter out of the district and ultimately forced her to repeat the fifth grade.
It makes you wonder if anyone learned anything from the incident. The father stunted his daughter’s education and an entire school district was taught that history could be disregarded if it has the possibility to offend.
The word nigger is just as much a part of black history as Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr.
It is the ugliest word in the English language, but it’s nonetheless a documented obstacle that black people are still wrestling with. We have no reason to be ashamed of that or any part of our struggle.
As black people, we wear our struggles as medals of honor. Is it a wonder some people call cars “whips” when police use our vehicles to harass us for nothing more than driving while black? Why not wear a chain when the school system disproportionately creates a pipeline to prison, and thus slave labor, for black and brown youth?
It’s hard to look down on someone for using the word “nigga” when black people still get treated like niggers on a daily basis. When a white woman grabs her purse as I pass, she doesn’t have to say the magic word to let me know how she feels. When a police car follows me for no reason, I don’t have to be a psychic to know what’s going through the officers’ minds.
Trying to sugarcoat the history of this behavior or pretend like it’s something of the past does nothing to help reality. In fact, constantly trying to block out the truth is liable to drive a person insane.
The quiet racism of today is just the latest installment in history reinventing itself. Suggesting that we should let go of the past is an invitation for someone else to own the rights to our story.
That’s why the media and standard classroom procedure constantly reduce black history to Martin Luther King Jr. and an overview of slavery. We don’t learn about how blacks built the pyramids in Egypt or how Imhotep was the father of medicine or how Toussaint L’Ouverture liberated Haiti from Napoleon. Malcolm X and the Black Panthers are still portrayed as racists and extremists despite the COINTELPRO nature of this propaganda. What does it say when the rich and empowering history of black people is suppressed in favor of generalizations from a white perspective and glorification of slave owners?
The lack of teaching from a genuine black point of view creates the atmosphere where subjects like the word nigger can’t be discussed in depth and children (and adults) are forced to formulate their opinion based on the media and advertising, which rely heavily on stereotypes to sell their products.
Instead of any profound discussion, we have one side that says, “Well, black people can say it so why can’t we?” and another side that wants to “abolish the n-word.”
Meanwhile, earlier this month Bay Area Rapid Transit officer Johannes Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter (he was facing murder) for shooting and killing Oscar Grant, an unarmed black man, in 2009. He received a sentence of two years but will likely serve seven months, or a third of the 21-month sentence Mike Vick served for running a dog-fighting ring.
It’s hard to pretend we’re not seen as niggers when the justice system says a dog’s life is worth more than a black man’s.
If we don’t know our history, we’ll continue to get blindsided by these flashbacks. We can’t build on our future without knowing our past, and we won’t know our past if we let others control our story.
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Poinsette: America still reducing black history
Daily Emerald
November 22, 2010
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