How will this new history be taught decades from now?
The monuments moved, the flags fabric woven differently, the policies, procedures, practices of public ‘protection’ laid bare, systems within systems of fictional white supremacy disrupted in hope of new design.
How can this be taught in the history classes throughout the United States and around the world without correcting the context in which history previous to has been taught. Did you know about Juneteenth? Was there much emphasis given to the Tulsa Massacre (slaughter, blood bath, genocide, extermination)?
Half century ago, this white little girl never learned – I was inculcated by a repeated mantra ‘to conquer leads to victory’, and to the conqueror raised up, held in memory for children to memorize dates of the destruction, mesmerized by the repeated focus; that white men lead and you must follow.
Racism rests on targeting the race to devalue and designating to whom resources for ‘liberty and justice’ will be allotted. We pledged this every day in school, hand to heart, staring at a flag which symbolized a union of sorts, and this one action showed our patriotism.
Now we face the principles from which our practices arise. Principles pave the way. Having common ground from which to unite is necessary for any organization to work efficiently and effectively. That ground now dug up to plant new seeds, we hope, to revitalize its viability to cultivate true Liberty and Justice for all. If we only mow down the weeds, will never get at the roots which can suffocate the potential of new seedlings.
This will take time, attention, repeated effort, and an intention that is not political but personal to the principle of true human-ism. The one ism that can target all other isms, devalue them, and designate dignity to all that have been marginalized and left behind. Such a deep dis-ordered white world, where whites are world minority of only 11.5% in a world of approximately 8 billion human beings on this earth.
History is informing our present and determining our future. What future we desire, motivated by which intention, (to dominate or hold deference for difference), determines what we will design.
I imagine all those amazing black entrepreneurs and artists exterminated in Tulsa, the brilliance we lost, how we may have been better with all of them to craft and carve a robust system in ‘protection’ our inherent good.
As Faulkner stated, “The past is never dead, it’s not even past”, it lives in us and directs our every move.
It serves us all to consider returning to our history classes to see what fiction we rely upon to construct our reality, to get down on the ground to be humbled and shaped into a new possibility, to be re-ordered and led by an unedited truth.
Then, we might live the words offered by MLK and many others, an enacted Love is Justice made visible.