You Can Opt Out Of Studying Black History, But You Can't Opt Out Of Living It

The school in Utah that made headlines allowing parents to opt out of their children learning about Black History Month has backpedaled. Public outcry and the state's curriculum standards apparently caused them to rethink the decision to let ignorant parents extend their family's ignorance of history into the classroom.

We're all part of Black history, this month and every month. Our wealth as a nation is rooted in the stolen labor of Black people.

Some of us own homes and got to attend college due to our white privilege protecting us in every encounter with police. And protecting our parents, who lived to raise us. Who got their GI benefits when Black GI's did not. Is it unfair that we all benefit from the inventions, innovations, and art created by Black people in the U.S. and beyond?

I'm engaged in a delightful education project with two bright 3 year olds in Oakland, California who watched firsthand last summer's massive demonstrations demanding that Black Lives Matter. Police violence is somewhat abstract to my students, but the rage and determination of BLM supporters is not. Occasionally one of the kids will pick up a sign on a stick and tell me they are protesting adding "Black Lives Matter" or "No justice, no peace."

So they have the motivation and the context for studying some of the key Black people in our nation's history. They are old enough to understand when something is not fair, but not old enough to have heard of civil rights leaders MLK, Rosa Parks, Ruby Bridges, or even former 49er Colin Kaepernick.

Yesterday a new book, Young Kap, arrived in the mail and was read with interest. Last week a book on the Negro Leagues in baseball that I borrowed from the local library was a hit; most of the text is over their head, but not the excellent paintings by Kadir Nelson that accompany it. 

Also popular with my students: picture book Touch the Sky about the first Black woman to bring home gold from the Olympics. Ever heard of her? Alice Coachman is also on the cover of a book by that name that I wrote surveying the stories of women whose names ought to go down in U.S. history for their achievements. It was illustrated by Ruby Pfeiffle, and her portrait of Coachman is on the cover.

I used to teach older students about Black history including African civilizations of ancient times, slavery in the Americas, Jim Crow, the Northern Migration,  and the long struggle for civil rights. But since Michael Brown's murder sparked Black Lives Matter rising up to define the struggle against white supremacist violence supported by government I've been a reading specialist working with much younger kids. Still, I've continued educating myself e.g. watching the documentary Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution and reading books by Black authors including a recent holiday gift from a family member, The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett.

So this opportunity to teach Black history is especially welcome. It's not just confined to the month of February, either.

As a mother many years ago I helped one of my sons who has Black ancestry prepare for a book day presentation in 5th grade. He had chosen to read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and he dressed as Malcolm to deliver the historic speech, "We didn't land on Plymouth Rock. The rock was landed on us." The white judges gave the prize to a girl dressed as Pippi Longstocking which made my son's teacher mad. She felt the consensus of teachers and students was that my son had given the best presentation.

I felt my son learned a lot more by being penalized for appearing as a righteously angry, articulate Black leader. 

It was a teachable moment.

Corporate Grip On Media Tightens As I Break My WaPo Boycott For A Moment

I heard from a journalist friend today that her work to bring light to the darkness of corporate government has been noticed, with the result that her local NPR station called and said: turn in your recording equipment -- due to views you have expressed, you are no longer welcome to report for NPR (which my other friends call National Pentagon Radio.) The views this reporter has expressed tend to be critical of the increasing role of corporations in directing the actions of local and state government officials.

That was sad, but what happened next was downright creepy.

The head of a major news organization in her state immediately approached and offered her a job paying $50k to be a full time reporter if she would "tone it down." This was after saying that nobody is doing better reporting than she is.

She turned him down.

Source: The Root "The New Lynching Memorial and Legacy Museum Force Us to Bear Witness to Our Whole American Truth -- Dirt taken from the sites of lynching. Some of the victims are named, some will forever remain anonymous."
Photo: Human Images (Equal Justice Initiative)

I was reminded of this story this morning when I temporarily broke my vow to boycott the Washington Post, well known stenographer for corporate government (and owned by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, by the way). I won't link to stories in the corporate press anymore. Why help them drive up their ad revenues? But a friend who I'm writing a book with sent me a link to a post by the Rev. Traci Blackmon who was on her way to view the lynching memorial in Montgomery, Alambama; it is the first such monument commemorating the many, many black people killed by vigilante violence.


And WaPo had a virtual tour of the chilling installation of hundreds of steel columns hanging from the roof, engraved with the names of victims.

Source: The Root "Lynching memorial, corridor 3" Photo: Human Pictures (EJI)

I was was watching as a videographer walked through the monument, unpeopled, and silent except for her footsteps. It was early morning here in Maine, and birdsong outside my windows provided a sound track for my solemn consideration of white people's history of racial violence.

Imagine my surprise when the loud sound of a jet tore through my quiet morning. WaPo was serving up an ad for Lockheed fighter jets in a probably unintentional juxtaposition of state-sanctioned violence that we are meant to admire even while condemning quasi-historical violence (quasi because black people are killed every day in extrajudicial assassinations, often by police or other state actors).

This is the type of content I have come to expect from NPR: sanctimonious condemnations of historical violence side by side with cheerleading for whichever current expenditure of weaponry is making shareholders wealthy.

So maybe it should properly be called National Propaganda Radio? I've written recently on the tightening grip of corporate control over information, and there is one more example I'll end with today.

At the gathering of people who organized to oppose the state of Maine's corporate welfare tax giveaway to General Dynamics,

Professor Orlando Delogu told us that he had just been denied publication in The Forecaster, a weekly newspaper he's been a contributor to for the last five years.

His content is no longer welcome, for unspecified reasons. Maybe because his interview bashing the corporate welfare bill played widely on Maine's community t.v. stations? Maybe his editors also got a call from General Dynamics or one of their lackeys?

The local daily Times-Record had already cancelled its monthly opinion piece by Peaceworks of Greater Brunswick, and rejected a submission from Bruce Gagnon on his hunger strike against the bill.

This after repeated objections by the editor of the opinion page, John Swincoceck, that columns submitted were not local enough in focus i.e. don't write about resistance to military bases despoiling Jeju Island, Korea or Okinawa. Even if Mainers go there to join the local people's efforts to save their coastlines. Only write about things that happen locally.

The fact that five ships built in Bath by General Dynamics were used to launch missiles at Damascus does not make war on Syria a local story. Right?

Celebrate Black Women By Learning (And Teaching) More About Their History

https://store.urbanintellectuals.com/shop/black-history-flashcards-vol-2/

Black Women is trending on Twitter this morning as those are the voters in Alabama who defeated the pedophile Senate candidate supported by the demagogue with bad hair.

Doug Jones will be the newest U.S. senator instead, another white man, but one with a legacy of civil rights significance for prosecuting the white supremacists who murdered four black girls in Alabama by the infamous bombing of the 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham.

I imagine that made a compelling case for voting for Jones and not just against the pedophile.

Many of my retweets of this news were along these lines:

Thank black women by supporting black women. Pay us. Vote with us. Hire us. Read our writing. Fund our projects and ministries. Vote us into office. Purchase from our businesses. Amplify us. Stand against racism and sexism.

— Austin Channing (@austinchanning) December 13, 2017

One way you can join me in doing some of these things is to purchase and share the terrific new history resource from Urban Intellectuals, Volume 2 of their Black History Flashcards, devoted entirely to women.

This history major was humbled but not surprised by how many important black women I did not know of before reading through the deck. Because the history of black women has been suppressed for my entire lifetime!

By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29665457

Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, Carole Robertsone and Cynthia Wesley never grew up to vote. They did become part of the shameful history of racism in this country though. 

Educating ourselves about black women is part of the work we white people must be doing at this moment in time.

We can also educate ourselves about the dire legacy of systemic racism and economic exploitation of black women and their families. This stretches from Alabama to Maine.

The Boston Globe is running an investigative series "Boston. Racism. Image. Reality." exploring the legacy of racism, which includes data on the average net worth of black people in that wealthy northern city: $8. Yup, that's eight dollars and no cents. 

Blocked from access to quality education and home ownership has taken its toll on generations of black folks. WTF? America, we can do better.