In my all white Massachusetts school, NONE of this was ever discussed. Lincoln announced an "emancipation", we fought the Civil War and won. Done. The insane and cruel treatment of fellow humans was never whispered. The incredible slaughter of the war? Nothing. The retaliation in the South after the war and going forward for decade after decade? Not a word.
And the war continues endlessly because we have allowed racism to become part of our cultural DNA. IMO, teaching CRT should not just be a college elective. It should start in grade school. KIds SHOULD BE TAUGHT about the horrors of their ancestors. Start with the European genocide of Native Americans. Teach what Columbus and his crew really did.
Teach that there are really no races - just different colors and different cultural experiences. Teach about bigotry. Teach how Americans have brutalized Blacks, Italians, Irish, Poles and Jews. Teach how as soon as the Irish gained power in Northern cities they did the same stuff that was done to them. Teach them they can be better. Teach them that they must.
And in teaching this cruel aspect of American history, teach our children to THINK! Kids are able to weigh the contradictions of the American story with the facts. Our history is brutal. Our history is glorious. Our history is complicated.
Well... we don't have to be so graphic with little ones. We CAN teach and encourage love, respect, tolerance and appreciation for our diversity and differences. Kids like to just play together. They don't naturally hate other kids who look or talk differently. They learn that.
I didn't learn it in school either. "And that is what the NAACP had done, and would continue to do: highlight that the inequalities in American society were systemic rather than the work of a few bad apples, bearing witness until тАЬthe believers in democracyтАЭ could no longer remain silent."
This is the truth that Florida and other states are fighting so hard to conceal. And they very cleverly have found a way to rally their base around remaining ignorant - get them scared of CRT! I'm remembering MTG's questioning during a House Oversight Committee hearing, of Gene Dodaro, head of the GAO, about COVID funds being illegally used for CRT. When Mr. Dodaro said, "CRT?" she explained, "ItтАЩs a racist curriculum used to teach children that somehow their white skin not equal to black skin and other things." Am I indulging in reverse racism when I cringe at her southern accent as she asked her ridiculous questions?
Thank you Jennifer. Even at 77, old tendencies to self-judgement sneak by my consciousness. I just realized I enjoy a southern accent when the words are kind and/or interesting. And I also just realized that, as a native Long Islander, I love my NY accent (shows up when I'm tired or back in NYC!) and don't enjoy it at all when I hear it from others expressing ignorance and/or racism.
When I post Heather's letters, I give a brief summary of the content. Today I added that here we are in 2023 and are still dealing with racism and in some places are going backwards....looking at you DeSatan and Florida and the use of the buzz initials, CRT, everywhere. Here in Salem, so far, we have two far right types running with help from regressive groups, including those who helped mess up the schools in Newburg, the board of which, had to change their policy about certain items in classrooms when they lost law suits. This is why we all must pay attention to all elections, local and otherwise.
And lawsuits!! Democracy Docket (free substack) will light your hair on fire. Right-wingers are wielding a heavy litigation weapon against democracy, free speech, "liberal arts" education -- you name it!
Chaplain Terry Nicholetti -- "Am I indulging in reverse racism when I cringe at her southern accent as she asked her ridiculous questions?"
She makes a lot of people cringe.
In an act of flagrant racism, representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) have decried the moving performance [ Sheryl Lee RalphтАЩs rendition of тАЬLift Every Voice and SingтАЭ] as an act of тАЬwokeness.тАЭ Thankfully, Twitter wasnтАЩt having it.
Journalist Dennis Perkins immediately put a halt to the representativeтАЩs attempt to spark a culture war, sharing a Taste of Country article that quotes Stapleton on his support for the Black Lives Matter Movement. тАЬЁЭШЛЁЭШ░ ЁЭШР ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШйЁЭШкЁЭШпЁЭШм ЁЭШЙЁЭШнЁЭШвЁЭШдЁЭШм ЁЭШнЁЭШкЁЭШ╖ЁЭШжЁЭШ┤ ЁЭШоЁЭШвЁЭШ╡ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШжЁЭШ│? ЁЭШИЁЭШгЁЭШ┤ЁЭШ░ЁЭШнЁЭШ╢ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШжЁЭШнЁЭШ║. ЁЭШР ЁЭШеЁЭШ░ЁЭШптАЩЁЭШ╡ ЁЭШмЁЭШпЁЭШ░ЁЭШ╕ ЁЭШйЁЭШ░ЁЭШ╕ ЁЭШ║ЁЭШ░ЁЭШ╢ ЁЭШдЁЭШ░ЁЭШ╢ЁЭШнЁЭШе ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШйЁЭШкЁЭШпЁЭШм ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШйЁЭШжЁЭШ║ ЁЭШеЁЭШ░ЁЭШптАЩЁЭШ╡. ЁЭШЫЁЭШйЁЭШжЁЭШ│ЁЭШжтАЩЁЭШ┤ ЁЭШв ЁЭШ╖ЁЭШжЁЭШ│ЁЭШ║ ЁЭШгЁЭШ│ЁЭШ░ЁЭШвЁЭШе ЁЭШвЁЭШ╕ЁЭШвЁЭШмЁЭШжЁЭШпЁЭШкЁЭШпЁЭШи ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШйЁЭШвЁЭШ╡ ЁЭШР ЁЭШиЁЭШ╢ЁЭШжЁЭШ┤ЁЭШ┤ ЁЭШйЁЭШвЁЭШ┤ ЁЭШдЁЭШ░ЁЭШоЁЭШж ЁЭШвЁЭШгЁЭШ░ЁЭШ╢ЁЭШ╡, ЁЭШвЁЭШпЁЭШе ЁЭШкЁЭШ╡тАЩЁЭШ┤ ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШкЁЭШоЁЭШж ЁЭШзЁЭШ░ЁЭШ│ ЁЭШоЁЭШж ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШ░ ЁЭШнЁЭШкЁЭШ┤ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШжЁЭШп. ЁЭШИЁЭШпЁЭШе ЁЭШкЁЭШ╡тАЩЁЭШ┤ ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШкЁЭШоЁЭШж ЁЭШзЁЭШ░ЁЭШ│ ЁЭШ░ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШйЁЭШжЁЭШ│ ЁЭШзЁЭШ░ЁЭШнЁЭШмЁЭШ┤ ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШ░ ЁЭШнЁЭШкЁЭШ┤ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШжЁЭШп,"
And the title of the article: "Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert Lose It Over Sheryl Lee RalphтАЩs Black National Anthem, Are Immediately Roasted by Twitter: тАЬWhy Are You So Scared of Diversity?тАЭ
Story by Raven Brunner
Love the comebacks-- we need to develop volumes of comebacks to these insane and inane spews. Their white hoods are off and we see them, clearly. We need to respond and not be complicit.
Thank you! I don't follow football and none of this showed up in my own feed. I think we are waking up to what has to happen every single time some of this vile, racist ranting shows up.
This reminds me of how brilliantly Rep. Frost handled his questioning time in the House Oversight meeting last week. He tweeted in response to an article praising his performance: "IтАЩve found that these ridiculous and extreme far-right talking points are best met with simple ridicule. Seems to be effective." BTW he ridiculed the idea not the speaker. So skilled!
TerriтАФas I cringe when I listen to LouisianaтАЩs Senator Kennedy (Oxford graduate) hush-my-mouth fifth-grade vocabulary speeches. His biography lists Magdalen College (one of the colleges that make up Oxford) and not Oxford.
I am constraining myself to not write a one thousand word reply. How can we get a species of animal where long term benefit just is not wired into our thinking brains, but greed is, to do what is vitally necessary to save our own skins? Especially in the wake of strong special interests (the fossil fuel supremacists), and their supporting political party, trying their best to muddy the waters with disinformation/misinformation.
A really important question. As an adult survivor of childhood physical and sexual abuse, and as part of my ongoing healing, I had to learn about my nervous system, reptile brain, fight, flight or freeze instincts and how we hold unprocessed memories of trauma. What else can we draw upon?
Answering that question is why it is so important to me to nurture my belief in a non-physical Source (whatever you call it, God/Goddess/ Goodness/Universe/Allah/Yahweh etc.) that resides in each of us, and is the source of all the important things we can't buy in the store: love, peace, justice, joy and more. We don't need to succumb to hierarchies of patriarchal religions in order to hold this belief and call upon these resources in ourselves and others every day. It's a life-long process, and it's worth it!
I'm a survivor also. Abuse seems endemic to the culture that raised me, but it is not at all clear to me how it became that way. But it does not seem to have always been like this, or not everywhere. Looking at gender relations and child rearing practices in other times and places has been useful for me.
An intriguing story about a very different culture:
Incredible article, Erik!! Thank you so much for posting it. Sadly, the links at the end of it are all out of date and gone. Still, some wonderful lessons and concepts and of course, fascinating American history that we don't get in school!! Just made my whole evening, kind sir!! :D
Yes I don't recall where I saw this, but it was only in the past year or so. I did not know of Sally Roesch Wagner and have not done a general search for more of her work, but two of the links on the above page can be retrieved using the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive--a cool thing to know about:
We might start by asking whether greed and only working for short term gain are in fact hard-wired into all humans or if this is a particular moment in history where those traits have become ascendant in the most powerful populations of the world. It can be a quick route to despair to naturalize the way things are: it kills hope that things could be or ever have been different. Which is probably why we hear so many narratives telling us that we simply are incorrigible by nature.
Our brutal greed and short-sightedness certainly help to drive colonialism and capitalism, but there is plenty of historical and anthropological/archeological evidence that these are not universal dominant human drives. Indigenous cultures, both in the Americas and on other continents, are more often grounded by ideals of long-term stewardship of land and people; for many of them, the land and the people are not particularly separate, but are bound in a symbiotic relationship where the health of each is dependent on the other. There is even evidence that the "barbarians" of Europe, maybe as late as just before Roman conquest, saw their relationship to land and time very differently from how we see it now.
There have also been quite nearly countless other cultures over humanity's lifetime thus far, and they do not all match up with the story that would naturalize the features of dominant capitalist Western cultures. I am still in the middle of Graeber and Wengrow's "The Dawn of Everything", but it is rearranging my own thoughts on what the archeological record does and does not show--and I have been studying many of the same times and places that they have, and for about as long.
But their overall point seems to be one I agree with: the way things are here and now are historically contingent; we need not throw up our hands and see all humanity as hopelessly narcissistic and cruel.
Well an anthropologist I am not! This book suggests that human societies have gotten it right in the past. If so, today's human societies have a long road to hoe before we get serious about saving our children and the world's species from the worst of a climate disaster. The US, for quite a while now, has been looked upon world wide as the preeminent civilized nation on earth (IMO largely because of our contribution to victory over fascism in WW2, and our growth since then). What we do on the international stage matters. We can influence the other civilized nations. But we are failing miserably when it comes to addressing climate change. And we are hamstrung by a large segment of our population that just refuses to take it seriously, represented by and influenced by a political party that is so evil as to publicly reject that which they know to be true in favor of short term profits for the rich corporations and individuals they represent. I don't see a way out of it. What the hell happened that we are this way, in spite of the societal successes that seem to have occurred, described in this book?
That is the big question that they are trying to answer, and that I and many others have been trying to answer for a very long time. I have not finished the book, so I do not yet know what their conclusion is, but I can say this much:
One of the standard answers to "where did Western civilization go wrong?" starts with the Neolithic Revolution in the Fertile Crescent, where, beginning about 10,000 years ago, Europe's ancestors switched from hunting and gathering to intensive agriculture and domestication of livestock. According to this narrative, notions of private property arose as fields were cordoned off, and the first accumulation of wealth was in grain, stored for the winter and against bad harvests. Farming could support larger, more permanent populations, so hunting camps became villages which turned into towns and then cities, where contagion could much more easily spread, lowering individual lifespans, and where inequities in material wealth become sharper and sharper over time.
The main idea here is that hunting and gathering is a kind of eutopian existence where people do not have to work all day, relations are egalitarian because resources are shared and not hoarded, and people live in small groups in a state of natural bliss--or some would figure it that way--all until agriculture ruins everything forever.
Graeber and Wengrow are sympathetic to this narrative* but suspect, as I do, that it is much too simplistic. There were "neolithic revolutions" on every continent, most starting around 7000-10,000 years ago, and although they all introduced more intensive agricultural practices than had been known before, they produced a variety of outcomes. So they look deeply into those that happened in North America and compare them to what happened in the Fertile Crescent, and what they found over some 15-20 years of research and conversation is that the Neolithic Revolution was not one.
That is, it seems not to have happened all at once anywhere: many different kinds of agriculture arose, and some groups started farming and then stopped and went back to hunting and gathering--which itself almost always incorporates a degree of husbandry of wild game as well as cultivation of wild crops. The line between the two forms of culture is not only not always distinct, but is not necessarily between only two forms of culture.
In other words? It's really incredibly complicated, and just like most Western academic discourse, archeology and anthropology have a tendency to tell Just So stories that make Euroamerican culture the "natural" outcome of much of prehistory, leaving those of us who distrust that degree of neatness to try to understand what might really have happened, or indeed, whether we can look backward with any accuracy at all, given the (post-)modern glasses we all look through.
I wish the answer were simple. I wanted it to be when I started looking at the Neolithic Revolution, the Roman Conquest and subsequent Christianization of (the rest of) Europe, and even the Black Death/Great Plague. I do think those were crucial moments, but I still do not have the answer to what has become my most central question: when/where/why/how did (some subset of?) European culture forget that we are a part of the natural world and decide instead that Nature must be conquered--brutally, if necessary--so that "men" may unlock "her" secrets?
I do not know yet. When I finish the book, I'll try to say more about Graeber and Wengrow's conclusions. There are other questions that attend to the overall Where Did We Go Wrong, but it does seem to me that one of the most important things for us to remember now is that we belong to life on Earth, that everything and everyone here is dependent on everything and everyone else here--human, non-human, animal, vegetable, mineral. Continuing to remain forgetful may well be suicidal. It has already been genocidal throughout human and non-human kingdoms.
*They also contrast it with a different, but equally simplistic narrative about the "war of all against all" coming to an end with the first Social Contract, where no blissful state of nature has ever existed. I'm leaving that out for, um, brevity. :) Ultimately, though, it is just as reductive and historically inaccurate as the first.
That's why I'm committed to posting these ideas and stories as far and wide as I can. It's something I can do, along with postcards, no matter how much energy I have for actual in person protests and rallies.
I often tell people that Central Illinois is much more "southern" in character than its Land of Lincoln image would suggest. I grew up in Decatur, during the 1960's, only 30 minutes from Springfield on the two-lane highway. While we all went on school field trips to see the "Lincoln sites" abundant in our area, we NEVER learned about the Springfield riot. My mother was extremely racist, while my father, a defense lawyer was not. He told me, "people are people, no matter the color of their skin." Fortunately, I absorbed his message, not my mother's. As I got into high school I began to see the subtle and not so subtle racism that permeated our community.
I heard racist talk and jokes in my family. My mother, bless her would fight against that kind of talk. She surprised everyone when she, as a blonde, middle-class, white woman drove her new buick 1 ┬╜ hours north to volunteer in a Headstart program in a black ghetto (Watts). I was too young to know how the racists males in our family responded, but she became very attached to a preschooler named George. She brought him home and he played with my younger brother and me. My father was completely disconcerted when he came home from work to find his little white toddler splashing in the water with the little beautiful George. I was in charge of making sure they were safe whilst mom made dinner. I do not know what the yelling going on in the kitchen was all about. But I learned that the color of our new, little friend who was having a great time with my little brother wreaked havoc. I must have been about 10. And then the riots in LA happened and my mother was banned from returning to the ghettos of LA. I only know that little George introduced me to family behaviors that were appalling and unjust. Only as I have grown older have I realized how brave and courageous my mother was. And she appeared to have made such an impact upon me, the only girl in a family of six. I listened to her arguments at dinner with her husband and her father. I do not think any of my brothers really listened or learned, or even paid attention...The eldest is a evangelical trumpist. We could not talk due to his macho tenor and misogyny that I could not tolerate. He was the perfect specimen to relate to the dogma of trump and the growing fascism in America. Did I do the right thing in helping him to live when he almost died of cancer....I wonder sometimes. I know what TCinLA would say...on my left shoulder.... Racism is so damned deep in our foundations.
That is what my black soldier friend who had served in 4 theaters of war warned me about when we argued about the beauty of Obama running for prez. He was totally against it and swore to me that it would unleash what people of white privilege cannot imagine. I argued with him like my mom argued with the men in my family. They were both right. This is going to take all of us to face this ancient prejudice and take our country forward-- ALL OF THE PEOPLE THIS TIME.
And though the extremists are trying to set the narrative of CRT and WOKE being negatives. WE need to set them straight.
The meaning of WOKE is AWARE of and ACTIVELY ATTENTiVE to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice). BE Proud to be woke.
Or Awakened. Stand up for our youth to be better educated than we were. Ken Burn's has great films on the history of our country. Watch them with your children and grandchildren and talk with them. It is not about guilt, it is about not repeating how atrocious some of our American history is, and that none should be proud of nor repeat. They will understand if you teach them. I learned from my mother's behaviors and actions. She taught me well to be Woke and my black, soldier friend taught me to really wake upтАФfully. Now, what am I gonna do today with all this wokeness energy I have been gifted?
Based on what I saw within my organization after Obama was elected was EXACTLY what your Black soldier friend warned about. I have used the analogy of Obama's election as ripping the scab off a poorly healed wound and watching the pus run out. His election only illustrated that we are part and parcel a country founded on racism and the theft of Indigenous lands. That is our "greatness".
Last night 60 Minutes re-played the program about Canadian "residential" schools that were responsible for so much abuse & killing of little indigenous children.
I dont know how anyone feels about the series "1923" but boy, it certainly made clear exactly how bad it was. And it needs to be made clear - like so very much of our history.
I grew up in Freeport, Illinois, home to one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates and тАЬhistoryтАЭ was never very far away. Yet reading about Springfield makes me wonder what else I didnтАЩt learn about my old hometown.
Thankyou,Heather. And thankyou for telling THE history I never learned in school.
In my all white Massachusetts school, NONE of this was ever discussed. Lincoln announced an "emancipation", we fought the Civil War and won. Done. The insane and cruel treatment of fellow humans was never whispered. The incredible slaughter of the war? Nothing. The retaliation in the South after the war and going forward for decade after decade? Not a word.
And the war continues endlessly because we have allowed racism to become part of our cultural DNA. IMO, teaching CRT should not just be a college elective. It should start in grade school. KIds SHOULD BE TAUGHT about the horrors of their ancestors. Start with the European genocide of Native Americans. Teach what Columbus and his crew really did.
Teach that there are really no races - just different colors and different cultural experiences. Teach about bigotry. Teach how Americans have brutalized Blacks, Italians, Irish, Poles and Jews. Teach how as soon as the Irish gained power in Northern cities they did the same stuff that was done to them. Teach them they can be better. Teach them that they must.
And in teaching this cruel aspect of American history, teach our children to THINK! Kids are able to weigh the contradictions of the American story with the facts. Our history is brutal. Our history is glorious. Our history is complicated.
Yes! YES!
Well... we don't have to be so graphic with little ones. We CAN teach and encourage love, respect, tolerance and appreciation for our diversity and differences. Kids like to just play together. They don't naturally hate other kids who look or talk differently. They learn that.
I didn't learn it in school either. "And that is what the NAACP had done, and would continue to do: highlight that the inequalities in American society were systemic rather than the work of a few bad apples, bearing witness until тАЬthe believers in democracyтАЭ could no longer remain silent."
This is the truth that Florida and other states are fighting so hard to conceal. And they very cleverly have found a way to rally their base around remaining ignorant - get them scared of CRT! I'm remembering MTG's questioning during a House Oversight Committee hearing, of Gene Dodaro, head of the GAO, about COVID funds being illegally used for CRT. When Mr. Dodaro said, "CRT?" she explained, "ItтАЩs a racist curriculum used to teach children that somehow their white skin not equal to black skin and other things." Am I indulging in reverse racism when I cringe at her southern accent as she asked her ridiculous questions?
I do not believe you are. You are reacting to what sounds to me like chosen ignorance and a distinct lack of personal and cultural insight.
Thank you Jennifer. Even at 77, old tendencies to self-judgement sneak by my consciousness. I just realized I enjoy a southern accent when the words are kind and/or interesting. And I also just realized that, as a native Long Islander, I love my NY accent (shows up when I'm tired or back in NYC!) and don't enjoy it at all when I hear it from others expressing ignorance and/or racism.
тЬЕ
When I post Heather's letters, I give a brief summary of the content. Today I added that here we are in 2023 and are still dealing with racism and in some places are going backwards....looking at you DeSatan and Florida and the use of the buzz initials, CRT, everywhere. Here in Salem, so far, we have two far right types running with help from regressive groups, including those who helped mess up the schools in Newburg, the board of which, had to change their policy about certain items in classrooms when they lost law suits. This is why we all must pay attention to all elections, local and otherwise.
And lawsuits!! Democracy Docket (free substack) will light your hair on fire. Right-wingers are wielding a heavy litigation weapon against democracy, free speech, "liberal arts" education -- you name it!
I do the same, Michele; I see it as a real public service that we can be proud of. Thank you!
And thank you. I have several friends who now pass on Heather's letters.
The sharing and expanding of good energy....a strong catalyst for a better world!
I hope. We are too old for a lot of physical activity, so it's posting and donating.
Chaplain Terry Nicholetti -- "Am I indulging in reverse racism when I cringe at her southern accent as she asked her ridiculous questions?"
She makes a lot of people cringe.
In an act of flagrant racism, representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) have decried the moving performance [ Sheryl Lee RalphтАЩs rendition of тАЬLift Every Voice and SingтАЭ] as an act of тАЬwokeness.тАЭ Thankfully, Twitter wasnтАЩt having it.
тАЬЁЭШКЁЭШйЁЭШ│ЁЭШкЁЭШ┤ ЁЭШЪЁЭШ╡ЁЭШвЁЭШ▒ЁЭШнЁЭШжЁЭШ╡ЁЭШ░ЁЭШп ЁЭШлЁЭШ╢ЁЭШ┤ЁЭШ╡ ЁЭШ┤ЁЭШвЁЭШпЁЭШи ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШйЁЭШж ЁЭШоЁЭШ░ЁЭШ┤ЁЭШ╡ ЁЭШгЁЭШжЁЭШвЁЭШ╢ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШкЁЭШзЁЭШ╢ЁЭШн ЁЭШпЁЭШвЁЭШ╡ЁЭШкЁЭШ░ЁЭШпЁЭШвЁЭШн ЁЭШвЁЭШпЁЭШ╡ЁЭШйЁЭШжЁЭШо ЁЭШвЁЭШ╡ ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШйЁЭШж ЁЭШЪЁЭШ╢ЁЭШ▒ЁЭШжЁЭШ│ ЁЭШЙЁЭШ░ЁЭШ╕ЁЭШн. ... ЁЭШЙЁЭШ╢ЁЭШ╡ ЁЭШ╕ЁЭШж ЁЭШдЁЭШ░ЁЭШ╢ЁЭШнЁЭШе ЁЭШйЁЭШвЁЭШ╖ЁЭШж ЁЭШиЁЭШ░ЁЭШпЁЭШж ЁЭШ╕ЁЭШкЁЭШ╡ЁЭШйЁЭШ░ЁЭШ╢ЁЭШ╡ ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШйЁЭШж ЁЭШ│ЁЭШжЁЭШ┤ЁЭШ╡ ЁЭШ░ЁЭШз ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШйЁЭШж ЁЭШ╕ЁЭШ░ЁЭШмЁЭШжЁЭШпЁЭШжЁЭШ┤ЁЭШ┤.тАЭ
https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/marjorie-taylor-greene-lauren-boebert-lose-it-over-sheryl-lee-ralphs-black-national-anthem-are-immediately-roasted-by-twitter-%E2%80%9Cwhy-are-you-so-scared-of-diversity%E2%80%9D/ar-AA17phAn?li=BBnb7Kz
From the same article:
Journalist Dennis Perkins immediately put a halt to the representativeтАЩs attempt to spark a culture war, sharing a Taste of Country article that quotes Stapleton on his support for the Black Lives Matter Movement. тАЬЁЭШЛЁЭШ░ ЁЭШР ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШйЁЭШкЁЭШпЁЭШм ЁЭШЙЁЭШнЁЭШвЁЭШдЁЭШм ЁЭШнЁЭШкЁЭШ╖ЁЭШжЁЭШ┤ ЁЭШоЁЭШвЁЭШ╡ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШжЁЭШ│? ЁЭШИЁЭШгЁЭШ┤ЁЭШ░ЁЭШнЁЭШ╢ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШжЁЭШнЁЭШ║. ЁЭШР ЁЭШеЁЭШ░ЁЭШптАЩЁЭШ╡ ЁЭШмЁЭШпЁЭШ░ЁЭШ╕ ЁЭШйЁЭШ░ЁЭШ╕ ЁЭШ║ЁЭШ░ЁЭШ╢ ЁЭШдЁЭШ░ЁЭШ╢ЁЭШнЁЭШе ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШйЁЭШкЁЭШпЁЭШм ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШйЁЭШжЁЭШ║ ЁЭШеЁЭШ░ЁЭШптАЩЁЭШ╡. ЁЭШЫЁЭШйЁЭШжЁЭШ│ЁЭШжтАЩЁЭШ┤ ЁЭШв ЁЭШ╖ЁЭШжЁЭШ│ЁЭШ║ ЁЭШгЁЭШ│ЁЭШ░ЁЭШвЁЭШе ЁЭШвЁЭШ╕ЁЭШвЁЭШмЁЭШжЁЭШпЁЭШкЁЭШпЁЭШи ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШйЁЭШвЁЭШ╡ ЁЭШР ЁЭШиЁЭШ╢ЁЭШжЁЭШ┤ЁЭШ┤ ЁЭШйЁЭШвЁЭШ┤ ЁЭШдЁЭШ░ЁЭШоЁЭШж ЁЭШвЁЭШгЁЭШ░ЁЭШ╢ЁЭШ╡, ЁЭШвЁЭШпЁЭШе ЁЭШкЁЭШ╡тАЩЁЭШ┤ ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШкЁЭШоЁЭШж ЁЭШзЁЭШ░ЁЭШ│ ЁЭШоЁЭШж ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШ░ ЁЭШнЁЭШкЁЭШ┤ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШжЁЭШп. ЁЭШИЁЭШпЁЭШе ЁЭШкЁЭШ╡тАЩЁЭШ┤ ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШкЁЭШоЁЭШж ЁЭШзЁЭШ░ЁЭШ│ ЁЭШ░ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШйЁЭШжЁЭШ│ ЁЭШзЁЭШ░ЁЭШнЁЭШмЁЭШ┤ ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШ░ ЁЭШнЁЭШкЁЭШ┤ЁЭШ╡ЁЭШжЁЭШп,"
And the title of the article: "Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert Lose It Over Sheryl Lee RalphтАЩs Black National Anthem, Are Immediately Roasted by Twitter: тАЬWhy Are You So Scared of Diversity?тАЭ
Story by Raven Brunner
Love the comebacks-- we need to develop volumes of comebacks to these insane and inane spews. Their white hoods are off and we see them, clearly. We need to respond and not be complicit.
Thank you! I don't follow football and none of this showed up in my own feed. I think we are waking up to what has to happen every single time some of this vile, racist ranting shows up.
This reminds me of how brilliantly Rep. Frost handled his questioning time in the House Oversight meeting last week. He tweeted in response to an article praising his performance: "IтАЩve found that these ridiculous and extreme far-right talking points are best met with simple ridicule. Seems to be effective." BTW he ridiculed the idea not the speaker. So skilled!
https://twitter.com/MaxwellFrostFL/status/1624814188102144001?s=20&t=5cEraR29CLr5NKkjm_QIUw
That needs intervention-- we need to educate our country on what CRT is. It is not a meme to own the libs. Write letters, post on social media. March.
MTG, an empty vessel.
Actually, Margaret, she is powerful and very dangerous vessel full of hatred and narcissism. Two very dangerous ingredients in a leader.
"inequalities in American society were systemic rather than the work of a few bad apples"
and this applies to so many parts of our government - as in policing, which we are all aware of at this point in time.
Absolutely! We are modeled on the caste system and the Great Experiment is still trying!!
TerriтАФas I cringe when I listen to LouisianaтАЩs Senator Kennedy (Oxford graduate) hush-my-mouth fifth-grade vocabulary speeches. His biography lists Magdalen College (one of the colleges that make up Oxford) and not Oxford.
Important that we hear those words, "Silence under these conditions means tacit approval.тАЭ
Time to take a look at how we're living under the fossil fuel supremacists.
тАЬFossil fuel supremacists.тАЭ Perfect description, thanks Jeff.
I am constraining myself to not write a one thousand word reply. How can we get a species of animal where long term benefit just is not wired into our thinking brains, but greed is, to do what is vitally necessary to save our own skins? Especially in the wake of strong special interests (the fossil fuel supremacists), and their supporting political party, trying their best to muddy the waters with disinformation/misinformation.
A really important question. As an adult survivor of childhood physical and sexual abuse, and as part of my ongoing healing, I had to learn about my nervous system, reptile brain, fight, flight or freeze instincts and how we hold unprocessed memories of trauma. What else can we draw upon?
Answering that question is why it is so important to me to nurture my belief in a non-physical Source (whatever you call it, God/Goddess/ Goodness/Universe/Allah/Yahweh etc.) that resides in each of us, and is the source of all the important things we can't buy in the store: love, peace, justice, joy and more. We don't need to succumb to hierarchies of patriarchal religions in order to hold this belief and call upon these resources in ourselves and others every day. It's a life-long process, and it's worth it!
I'm a survivor also. Abuse seems endemic to the culture that raised me, but it is not at all clear to me how it became that way. But it does not seem to have always been like this, or not everywhere. Looking at gender relations and child rearing practices in other times and places has been useful for me.
An intriguing story about a very different culture:
https://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/genwom/iroquoisinfluence.html
Incredible article, Erik!! Thank you so much for posting it. Sadly, the links at the end of it are all out of date and gone. Still, some wonderful lessons and concepts and of course, fascinating American history that we don't get in school!! Just made my whole evening, kind sir!! :D
Yes I don't recall where I saw this, but it was only in the past year or so. I did not know of Sally Roesch Wagner and have not done a general search for more of her work, but two of the links on the above page can be retrieved using the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive--a cool thing to know about:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070225015807/http://www.nyhistory.com/sallyroeschwagner/
https://web.archive.org/web/20030218171632/https://www.matildajoslyngage.com/
We might start by asking whether greed and only working for short term gain are in fact hard-wired into all humans or if this is a particular moment in history where those traits have become ascendant in the most powerful populations of the world. It can be a quick route to despair to naturalize the way things are: it kills hope that things could be or ever have been different. Which is probably why we hear so many narratives telling us that we simply are incorrigible by nature.
Our brutal greed and short-sightedness certainly help to drive colonialism and capitalism, but there is plenty of historical and anthropological/archeological evidence that these are not universal dominant human drives. Indigenous cultures, both in the Americas and on other continents, are more often grounded by ideals of long-term stewardship of land and people; for many of them, the land and the people are not particularly separate, but are bound in a symbiotic relationship where the health of each is dependent on the other. There is even evidence that the "barbarians" of Europe, maybe as late as just before Roman conquest, saw their relationship to land and time very differently from how we see it now.
There have also been quite nearly countless other cultures over humanity's lifetime thus far, and they do not all match up with the story that would naturalize the features of dominant capitalist Western cultures. I am still in the middle of Graeber and Wengrow's "The Dawn of Everything", but it is rearranging my own thoughts on what the archeological record does and does not show--and I have been studying many of the same times and places that they have, and for about as long.
But their overall point seems to be one I agree with: the way things are here and now are historically contingent; we need not throw up our hands and see all humanity as hopelessly narcissistic and cruel.
oh, thank you again, Erik!! i'll definitely be getting that book!! it's so encouraging and empowering to gain such insights from history!! :-)
Found it!! Ordered... thanks! :D
You're welcome! It's long, as you might have noticed, but their writing is very accessible. History requires detail, alas.
Well an anthropologist I am not! This book suggests that human societies have gotten it right in the past. If so, today's human societies have a long road to hoe before we get serious about saving our children and the world's species from the worst of a climate disaster. The US, for quite a while now, has been looked upon world wide as the preeminent civilized nation on earth (IMO largely because of our contribution to victory over fascism in WW2, and our growth since then). What we do on the international stage matters. We can influence the other civilized nations. But we are failing miserably when it comes to addressing climate change. And we are hamstrung by a large segment of our population that just refuses to take it seriously, represented by and influenced by a political party that is so evil as to publicly reject that which they know to be true in favor of short term profits for the rich corporations and individuals they represent. I don't see a way out of it. What the hell happened that we are this way, in spite of the societal successes that seem to have occurred, described in this book?
That is the big question that they are trying to answer, and that I and many others have been trying to answer for a very long time. I have not finished the book, so I do not yet know what their conclusion is, but I can say this much:
One of the standard answers to "where did Western civilization go wrong?" starts with the Neolithic Revolution in the Fertile Crescent, where, beginning about 10,000 years ago, Europe's ancestors switched from hunting and gathering to intensive agriculture and domestication of livestock. According to this narrative, notions of private property arose as fields were cordoned off, and the first accumulation of wealth was in grain, stored for the winter and against bad harvests. Farming could support larger, more permanent populations, so hunting camps became villages which turned into towns and then cities, where contagion could much more easily spread, lowering individual lifespans, and where inequities in material wealth become sharper and sharper over time.
The main idea here is that hunting and gathering is a kind of eutopian existence where people do not have to work all day, relations are egalitarian because resources are shared and not hoarded, and people live in small groups in a state of natural bliss--or some would figure it that way--all until agriculture ruins everything forever.
Graeber and Wengrow are sympathetic to this narrative* but suspect, as I do, that it is much too simplistic. There were "neolithic revolutions" on every continent, most starting around 7000-10,000 years ago, and although they all introduced more intensive agricultural practices than had been known before, they produced a variety of outcomes. So they look deeply into those that happened in North America and compare them to what happened in the Fertile Crescent, and what they found over some 15-20 years of research and conversation is that the Neolithic Revolution was not one.
That is, it seems not to have happened all at once anywhere: many different kinds of agriculture arose, and some groups started farming and then stopped and went back to hunting and gathering--which itself almost always incorporates a degree of husbandry of wild game as well as cultivation of wild crops. The line between the two forms of culture is not only not always distinct, but is not necessarily between only two forms of culture.
In other words? It's really incredibly complicated, and just like most Western academic discourse, archeology and anthropology have a tendency to tell Just So stories that make Euroamerican culture the "natural" outcome of much of prehistory, leaving those of us who distrust that degree of neatness to try to understand what might really have happened, or indeed, whether we can look backward with any accuracy at all, given the (post-)modern glasses we all look through.
I wish the answer were simple. I wanted it to be when I started looking at the Neolithic Revolution, the Roman Conquest and subsequent Christianization of (the rest of) Europe, and even the Black Death/Great Plague. I do think those were crucial moments, but I still do not have the answer to what has become my most central question: when/where/why/how did (some subset of?) European culture forget that we are a part of the natural world and decide instead that Nature must be conquered--brutally, if necessary--so that "men" may unlock "her" secrets?
I do not know yet. When I finish the book, I'll try to say more about Graeber and Wengrow's conclusions. There are other questions that attend to the overall Where Did We Go Wrong, but it does seem to me that one of the most important things for us to remember now is that we belong to life on Earth, that everything and everyone here is dependent on everything and everyone else here--human, non-human, animal, vegetable, mineral. Continuing to remain forgetful may well be suicidal. It has already been genocidal throughout human and non-human kingdoms.
*They also contrast it with a different, but equally simplistic narrative about the "war of all against all" coming to an end with the first Social Contract, where no blissful state of nature has ever existed. I'm leaving that out for, um, brevity. :) Ultimately, though, it is just as reductive and historically inaccurate as the first.
Those words jumped out at me too, Jeff. "Tacit approval" indeed.
That's why I'm committed to posting these ideas and stories as far and wide as I can. It's something I can do, along with postcards, no matter how much energy I have for actual in person protests and rallies.
I often tell people that Central Illinois is much more "southern" in character than its Land of Lincoln image would suggest. I grew up in Decatur, during the 1960's, only 30 minutes from Springfield on the two-lane highway. While we all went on school field trips to see the "Lincoln sites" abundant in our area, we NEVER learned about the Springfield riot. My mother was extremely racist, while my father, a defense lawyer was not. He told me, "people are people, no matter the color of their skin." Fortunately, I absorbed his message, not my mother's. As I got into high school I began to see the subtle and not so subtle racism that permeated our community.
I heard racist talk and jokes in my family. My mother, bless her would fight against that kind of talk. She surprised everyone when she, as a blonde, middle-class, white woman drove her new buick 1 ┬╜ hours north to volunteer in a Headstart program in a black ghetto (Watts). I was too young to know how the racists males in our family responded, but she became very attached to a preschooler named George. She brought him home and he played with my younger brother and me. My father was completely disconcerted when he came home from work to find his little white toddler splashing in the water with the little beautiful George. I was in charge of making sure they were safe whilst mom made dinner. I do not know what the yelling going on in the kitchen was all about. But I learned that the color of our new, little friend who was having a great time with my little brother wreaked havoc. I must have been about 10. And then the riots in LA happened and my mother was banned from returning to the ghettos of LA. I only know that little George introduced me to family behaviors that were appalling and unjust. Only as I have grown older have I realized how brave and courageous my mother was. And she appeared to have made such an impact upon me, the only girl in a family of six. I listened to her arguments at dinner with her husband and her father. I do not think any of my brothers really listened or learned, or even paid attention...The eldest is a evangelical trumpist. We could not talk due to his macho tenor and misogyny that I could not tolerate. He was the perfect specimen to relate to the dogma of trump and the growing fascism in America. Did I do the right thing in helping him to live when he almost died of cancer....I wonder sometimes. I know what TCinLA would say...on my left shoulder.... Racism is so damned deep in our foundations.
That is what my black soldier friend who had served in 4 theaters of war warned me about when we argued about the beauty of Obama running for prez. He was totally against it and swore to me that it would unleash what people of white privilege cannot imagine. I argued with him like my mom argued with the men in my family. They were both right. This is going to take all of us to face this ancient prejudice and take our country forward-- ALL OF THE PEOPLE THIS TIME.
And though the extremists are trying to set the narrative of CRT and WOKE being negatives. WE need to set them straight.
The meaning of WOKE is AWARE of and ACTIVELY ATTENTiVE to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice). BE Proud to be woke.
Or Awakened. Stand up for our youth to be better educated than we were. Ken Burn's has great films on the history of our country. Watch them with your children and grandchildren and talk with them. It is not about guilt, it is about not repeating how atrocious some of our American history is, and that none should be proud of nor repeat. They will understand if you teach them. I learned from my mother's behaviors and actions. She taught me well to be Woke and my black, soldier friend taught me to really wake upтАФfully. Now, what am I gonna do today with all this wokeness energy I have been gifted?
Based on what I saw within my organization after Obama was elected was EXACTLY what your Black soldier friend warned about. I have used the analogy of Obama's election as ripping the scab off a poorly healed wound and watching the pus run out. His election only illustrated that we are part and parcel a country founded on racism and the theft of Indigenous lands. That is our "greatness".
That тАЬwe are part and parcel a country founded on racism and the theft of Indigenous lands. That is our "greatness".
Truth is disheartening, disgusting IsnтАЩt it? The scab has been yanked offтАж.. will we ever heal?
Last night 60 Minutes re-played the program about Canadian "residential" schools that were responsible for so much abuse & killing of little indigenous children.
I dont know how anyone feels about the series "1923" but boy, it certainly made clear exactly how bad it was. And it needs to be made clear - like so very much of our history.
Brilliant! thank you
The Day Lincoln was born plus 100 years, a new movement was born
I was taught virtually nothing of this in primary or secondary school. You probably werenтАЩt either
And here we are still, with the embers of supremacy still hot under the ashes of the eveningтАЩs fire
I grew up in Freeport, Illinois, home to one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates and тАЬhistoryтАЭ was never very far away. Yet reading about Springfield makes me wonder what else I didnтАЩt learn about my old hometown.
We don't have to learn the history necessarily; we live it, or have lived it.