Famous Whites to learn about for White History Month

Disclaimer: This is half parody, half serious. It started out as parody but then I got in to it.

During White History Month we learn about famous European Americans! Because that is all White History is – learning sanitized accounts of Good White People that Black people approve of. They do not even have to be important in White History or placed in history at all. In fact, some of the best European Americans to learn about are those who can easily be understood apart from history – like sports heroes, explorers, inventors, artists, writers and musicians.

Suggested (sanitize as needed):

Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868) – Congressman who pushed for emancipation, reparations and equal rights. Helped to get the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments passed, freeing slaves and providing for equal protection under the law.

Gerrit Smith (1797-1874) – abolitionist, who Frederick Douglass wanted for president in 1860 instead of Abe Lincoln. Smith provided money for John Brown’s uprising:

John Brown (1800-1859) raided Harpers Ferry to gain weapons for a slave uprising. A martyr to the North. Showed that slaves could only be freed by force. The Civil War started soon after.

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) – abolitionist, a White man’s Frederick Douglass.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) – author of “The Raven” and other horror stories. Often considered the first writer with a unique European American style.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) – abolitionist author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (1852). Her book turned public opinion of European Americans in the North against slavery.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) – author, wrote “Civil Disobedience” (1849), ”Walden” (1854) and “A Plea for Captain John Brown” (1859).

Moorfield Storey (1845-1929) – first president of the NAACP.

Robert Peary (1856-1920) – with the help of Matthew Henson, he became the first European American to reach the North Pole.

Franz Boas (1858-1942), father of American anthropology, helped to overthrow scientific racism. Zora Neale Hurston was his student.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) – First Lady. Strong supporter of equal rights for Blacks. Broke with the Daughters of the American Revolution and arranged for Marian Anderson to sing at the Lincoln Memorial. 

Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) – first European American writer to win a Nobel Prize for literature. Wrote “Main Street” (1920), “Babbit” (1922) and “Kingsblood Royal” (1947).

Babe Ruth (1895-1948) – the White Josh Gibson. Held the home run record in Caucasian-league baseball.

Lillian Smith (1897-1966) – author of “Strange Fruit” (1944) and “Killers of the Dream” (1949). Strong anti-racist critic of the Jim Crow South.

George Gey (1899-1970) – discovered the first immortal human cells (HeLa), isolated from cancer patient Henrietta Lacks.

Nathaniel Wyeth (1911-1990) – inventor of the plastic Coke bottle, brother of painter Andrew Wyeth.

Howard Zinn (1922-2010) – historian, author of “A People’s History of the United States” (1980). Taught at Spelman.

Robert Kennedy (1925-1968) – brother of President John Kennedy. Shot dead in 1968 while running for president, leading a multiracial coalition.

Jim Zwerg (1939- ) – civil rights worker whose beating at the hands of the Klan made the Freedom Riders unstoppable.

Michael Schwerner (1939–1964) – civil rights worker murdered by the Klan during Mississippi Freedom Summer.

Joe Biden (1942- ) – vice president, the highest ranking European American in government.

Steve Jobs (1955-2011) – entrepreneur, made computers a mass-market consumer product.

Keith Haring (1958-1990) – street artist, famous for the mural “Crack is Wack” (1986).

Eminem (1972- ) – the best-selling rapper of all time (as of 2013), protege of Dr Dre.

See also:

• Why there should be a White History Month
• American abolitionists
• Edgar Allan Poe: Ten Great Mysteries
• Marian Anderson
• Frederick Douglass
• Freedom Riders
• The best American writers live north of 110th Street

Rolling Stones: Brown Sugar

Remarks:

Despite the lyrics, this song was played on American radio in 1971 and went to number one on the pop charts. It went to #2 in their native Britain. It is now a rock classic. Both Marsha Hunt and Claudia Lennear claim Mick Jagger wrote the song with them in mind. He says he would never write anything that “raw” now and tones down the lyrics when performing it live.

I am not in the habit of doing full-blown posts on songs, but I thought this was a good time to throw this song out there for comment, in the wake of Lupita Nyong’o's Oscar win. She won for the film “12 Years a Slave” (2013), a true story where she plays Patsey, a slave woman who was raped – not far from the time and place of this song:

Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields,
Sold in a market down in New Orleans.
Scarred old slaver know he’s doin alright.
Hear him whip the women just around midnight.

Ah brown sugar how come you taste so good
(a-ha) brown sugar, just like a young girl should
A-huh.

See below for the complete lyrics.

Like most people, I did not really listen to the lyrics. With rock songs I mainly listen to the guitar (Keith Richards, in this case). At that level it is a good song and that is presumably what drove it to number one. For added value, it also works as a dance song.

But even half hearing the lyrics I gathered that Mick Jagger thinks Black women are a) desirable, b) easy and c) good dancers. The last two are stereotypes. The first one is good in a culture that constantly puts down Black women, but when you put it with the second one, it amounts to the Jezebel stereotype. Not so good.

And, for anyone who heard all the lyrics, it is even worse, making light of slavery, of rape, the rape of Black slave women in particular, complete with whips. In America in the 1970s, music, television, film, magazines and newspapers (but not books) were all censored, which means that the powers that be saw nothing wrong with it and let it enter the White American cultural bloodstream, where it remains to this day.

Some will excuse the song because Mick Jagger, a white man, dates black women.  So he cannot possibly be racist or have ill intent. Probably not ill intent, as far as I can tell, but the song is still racist regardless of how he “meant” it.

See also:

• The Jezebel stereotype
• “Some of my best friends are black”
• 12 Years a Slave - my post on the book, not the film
• Toure on sexually heroic slave women
• Tribal nudity in National Geographic 
• The whiteness of Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Django Unchained
• Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs

Lyrics:

Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields,
Sold in a market down in New Orleans.
Scarred old slaver know he’s doin alright.
Hear him whip the women just around midnight.

Ah brown sugar how come you taste so good
(a-ha) brown sugar, just like a young girl should
A-huh.

Drums beating, cold English blood runs hot,
Lady of the house wondrin where it’s gonna stop.
House boy knows that he’s doin alright.
You should a heard him just around midnight.

Ah brown sugar how come you taste so good
(a-ha) brown sugar, just like a black girl should
A-huh.

I bet your mama was a tent show queen, and all her boy
Friends were sweet sixteen.
I’m no schoolboy but I know what I like,
You should have heard me just around midnight.

Ah brown sugar how come you taste so good
(a-ha) brown sugar, just like a young girl should.

I said yeah, I said yeah, I said yeah, I said
Oh just like a, just like a black girl should.

I said yeah, I said yeah, I said yeah, I said
Oh just like, just like a black girl should.

Welcome to White History Month!

Welcome to White History Month!

Why White History Month? I used to say there was no need for White History Month in America because it is the month that never ends: American history is taught year-round from a White American point of view and makes White people the heroes, the good guys. But, as we know from the Texas school board and James Loewen, it is not a true history that is being taught but rather Caucasian Mythology (white supremacist propaganda).

Help me pick the topics! Below are some posts I am thinking of doing on White American History (in addition to some left over from Black History Month, like Henrietta Lacks). There is no way I can do them all, so pick the ones you are most interested in. Pick as many as you like. It will help me to decide which ones to do. You can also leave suggestions in the comments below.

Thank you!

See also:

• Why there should be a White History Month
• History in Texas schoolbooks
• James W. Loewen: Lies My Teacher Told Me
• “Your blog is anti-white”

Black Canada: A brief history

Governor General of Canada, Michaelle Jean, hugs Maile Alphonse, March 9th 2010 in Jacmel, Haiti. Alphonse lost her mother Magali in the earthquake who was the godmother of Jean’s daughter Marie-Eden. (Paul Chiasson / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Disclaimer: This post presents an overview of what I know in 500 words or less. I do not pretend to be an expert! I mostly use present-day place names. Corrections welcomed.

Mathieu Da Costa was the first black person known to set foot in what is now Canada, probably sometime before 1603 with Portuguese explorers. He was from the Benin Empire (Nigeria) and could speak Edo, Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, pidgin Basque and Eastern Algonquin. He later served as an interpreter for Champlain and other French explorers.

Unlike the Caribbean and America, slavery was never big in Canada. Instead:

Blacks came to Canada in four main waves:

1. Black Loyalists (1780s, 1810s): The British promised “Liberty to Slaves” and land too for those who joined their ranks in the American Revolution and the War of 1812. Many were settled in Canada, particularly in Nova Scotia and Ontario.

Those that settled in Nova Scotia after the American Revolution did not get their promised land. Half were later resettled in Sierra Leone in West Africa.

2. Underground Railroad (mostly 1840s-1850s) was a secret network of safe houses that stretched from the American slave South all the way to Canada. American slaves sang about the freedom train and talked about crossing the Jordan River. Whites thought they were talking about going to heaven, not Canada! The “Jordan River” was the Detroit River at the Canadian border.

The great thing about Canada was that it had outlawed slavery in 1833. Even free blacks were safer there than in America, especially after Americans passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Most escaped slaves settled in Ontario between Detroit and Toronto. Contrary to stereotype, they seemed intelligent and placed a high value on education. Some White Canadians were racist, leading to segregated schools, but overall they were less racist than White Americans, even those in the North.

Some blacks later returned to America, some mixed with White Canadians and some are still there today as Black Canadians.

3. The Lily White Canada Policy (c. 1896-1962) was never called that, but from letters between government officials we know there was an unwritten rule to keep blacks out by hook or crook. From 1896 to 1907 Canada let in 1.3 million Europeans and Americans, but fewer than 900 blacks! Not a wave but a trickle.

Caribana festival in Toronto, 2011

4. Caribbean immigration (1960s to present). Two-thirds of Black Canadians have their roots in the Caribbean. Gloria Reuben and Malcolm Gladwell, for example, have Jamaican mothers. Singers Deborah Cox and Melanie Fiona have Guyanese parents. Michaelle Jean, the Governor General from 2005 to 2010, was born in Haiti. Jamaicans mainly settle in English-speaking Ontario, especially in metropolitan Toronto. Haitians mainly settle in French-speaking Quebec.

Canada in 2011:

• 77% White
• 14% Asian
• 4% Native (First Nations, Metis, Inuit)
• 3% Black
• 1% Latino
• 1% Other

Compare America (2010):

• 64% White
• 16% Latino
• 12% Black
• 5% Asian
• 1% Native
• 2% Other

The Black Canadian unemployment rate is high compared to whites, even for those with university degrees, but the difference is not as bad as it is in America.

Nova Scotia’s anti-black racism is so bad that it has been called the Mississippi of the North. They still had racially segregated schools as late as the 1980s. But that still puts it ahead of America, where schools are resegregating.

Thanks to Herneith for her help with this post. All mistakes are mine!

Sources: Black History Canada, Learn Quebec: How they kept Canada almost lily white, The Root (2011), Wikipedia (2014).

 See also:

• American school resegregation
• Black Canadians:
  • Gloria Reuben
  • Yasmin Warsame
  • Cree Summer
  • Melyssa Ford
  • Melanie Fiona: It Kills Me
  • Deborah Cox: Did You Ever Love Me?
  • Malcolm Gladwell: The 10,000 hour rule
• White Canadian racism
  • “Too Asian”
  • The hearts of white people: the science
• Notes towards a black history of George Washington
• Back to Africa
• melanin

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass in 1840

Frederick Douglass (1818?-1895) was the top Black American leader of the 1800s. He was arguably the greatest public speaker of the English-speaking world in a time when public speaking was hugely important – and he spoke up for Blacks! He thundered against the injustices of American society, from slavery to racial inequality to lynching. He did not equivocate, he did not excuse. He did not soften his words to comfort the comfortable.

As a slave in Maryland, his master did not want him to learn how to read or write – so he knew it must be a good thing! He learned how in secret. In 1838 he ran away, along the Underground Railroad. He would later become a station master, helping slaves escape to Canada.

In the 1840s he became the leading Black voice of the abolitionist movement to end slavery. Even though the backbone of the movement was Black, the leadership had been White.

In 1847 Douglass started his own abolitionist newspaper, The North Star, named after the star runaway slaves followed to freedom. He went from town to town across the North speaking out against slavery. Most Whites in the North supported slavery, even most religious leaders! He helped to turn public opinion, providing the kindling for what would become the Civil War.

The spark came in 1859 when John Brown led a failed slave uprising at Harpers Ferry. Brown asked Douglass to lead it, but Douglass thought it had little chance of success.

During the Civil War (1861-1865), Douglass helped to persuade President Lincoln to use Black soldiers – a move that Lincoln later said saved the North from defeat. Douglass helped to raise the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments. (The 54th was the one in the Denzel Washington film, “Glory” (1989)).

Douglass also helped to persuade Lincoln not to send freed slaves back to Africa!

After the war, with the slaves freed, Douglass pushed to give Blacks equal protection under the law and the vote. That became the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution.

By the 1880s he saw the beginnings of the Nadir of American race relations: Jim Crow, slavery by another name, lynching, the rise of scientific racism, the romanticization of the old South, etc. He thought it would not last long: education, economics and good White people would not let it.

In our time he is best known for:

• “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” (1845), which shows how slavery dehumanized both Blacks and Whites, how Christianity made slave masters worse, not better!
• “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” (1852). Quote:
  

  Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Douglass, c. 1874. The quote is from “An address on West India Emancipation” (1857).

See also:

• American slavery
• American abolitionists
  • David Walker
  • Harriet Tubman
  • John Brown
  • Lincoln
    • Spielberg’s Lincoln
• Back to Africa
• The Nadir of American race relations
  • Jim Crow
  • Slavery by Another Name
• Anacostia - the part of DC where he lived in his later years
• The Black counter-frame - his writings are an early expression of it
• Black History Month - he is half the reason it is in February
• white father, black mother - his father was an unknown White man
• What they do not teach you about anti-racism at American high school

Moral Mondays

February 8th 2014: The largest civil rights protest in the South since Selma

Moral Mondays (2013- ) is an American grassroots protest movement against right-wing Republican Tea Party policies. It started in 2013 in North Carolina when the Tea Party took over that state. In 2014 it spread to Georgia and South Carolina.

On February 8th 2014 in Raleigh, North Carolina, the state capital, Moral Mondays and the left-wing HK on J Coalition staged the largest civil rights protest the South has seen since Selma in 1965.

It is not (yet) as large as the Occupy movement was just before the nationwide police crackdown in 2011, but it has a broader base: young and old, black and white, working and middle class, teachers, doctors,pro-abortion activists, etc. Church and labour leaders support it.

Rev William Barber II

Moral Mondays is led by Reverend William Barber II, president of the North Carolina NAACP.

• It is called Moral because it opposes Republican policies that Barber calls “extreme, constitutionally inconsistent, morally indefensible, economically insane policies.”
• It is called Mondays because they hold protests on Mondays at the state legislature when it is in session. In 2013 over 900 were arrested (a good thing for a protest movement).

In 2010 Republicans gained control of both houses of the legislature. In 2012 Pat McCrory, a Republican, was elected governor. It was the first time since 1870 that Republicans gained control of the state.

With their new-found power, Republicans:

• Made voting harder by requiring state-issued IDs, limiting early voting, ending same-day registration, etc.
• Cut taxes for the richest 5%, raised them for the bottom 95%.
• Cut spending on public education.
• Refused Medicaid coverage under Obamacare for 500,000.
• Ended unemployment benefits for 170,000.
• Ended the right of prisoners on death row to challenge racist verdicts.
• Banned same-sex marriage.
• Passed anti-abortion laws that are among the strongest in the country.

And so on.

Because Republicans got to draw the voting map after the 2010 census, they will have an edge in elections till at least 2020.

Moral Mondays at first protested the anti-voting law, which the NAACP is challenging in court. It has since taken on other issues.

The first protest was on April 29th 2013. Only a hundred showed up. By July there were 15,000.

Changing demographics: Barber wants to use it to

break through the white southern strategy that has dominated the South for the past 50 years.

That Southern strategy is built on a declining demographic: Angry White Men. Which is why Republicans pass anti-voting laws that affect blacks, the poor and the young (Democratic-leaning voters) more than others.

Republicans blamed the protests on outsiders. In fact, most protesters are from North Carolina. A PPP poll showed that more people in the state approved of Moral Mondays than of state lawmakers.

The protests so far seemed to have softened Republican positions on education spending and abortion.

Barber is planning a new Freedom Summer, like the one in Mississippi in 1964. He wants to register as many people as possible to lay the groundwork for a huge turnout at North Carolina’s midterm elections in November 2014.

Thanks to Stephanie for suggesting this post.

See also:

• The Southern strategy
• Obama’s campaign strategy in 2012
• Selma
• Voting Rights Act of 1965
• Freedom Riders

Walker’s “Appeal”

“Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in particular, and very expressly, to those of the United States of America” (1829) by David Walker, a free Black American, was a forceful condemnation of slavery and racism. In America it was a guiding light for Blacks. It radicalized Whites. It was banned in the South.

Walker urges Whites to repent before it was too late. Sooner or later God’s judgement would come down on America for what it was doing to Blacks. Either the country would sink into civil war, brother against brother, or a slave uprising would lead to the mass killing of Whites. One way or another, God would see to it that the slaves were freed. Because God is a God of justice.

Scripture: Whites loved to quote verses where slaves were told to obey their masters. And then add stuff about whips and chains.

They did not quote Luke 6:31:

And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.

or Acts 10:34-35:

God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.

Race is a distinction made by Whites, not by God.

White American Christianity is fake. Preachers go on and on about Free Masonry, Intemperance, Sabbath breaking, Sabbath mails and Infideility – and say almost nothing about slavery!

White American slavery is much worse than that practised by Egyptians, Greeks, Romans or Turks. Mainly because Whites do not see slaves as humans but as being like horses or worse. They kill them, beat them, whip them, cut them. They prevent them from becoming Christians. They prevent them from getting an education. Unlike Whites:

• The Egyptians saw slaves as human.
• The Romans prized slaves with good educations.
• The Turks would never think of throwing slaves into the sea.
• The Greeks would not think of breaking up families.

Whites have hearts of stone. They kill Blacks by inches. But Blacks bear some of the blame – for not rising up, for sometimes siding with Whites.

Scientific racism: Walker takes apart Thomas Jefferson’s scientific racism piece by piece. He says that, “unless we refute Mr. Jefferson’s arguments respecting us, we will only establish them.”

Back to Africa: Slaveholders saw free Blacks as troublemakers and wanted to get rid of them by sending them to Liberia. Walker says that Blacks have as much right to be in America as Whites do. It is their mother country too, a land watered with their tears and their blood.

Revolution: He calls the American Revolution the first revolution! He quotes the Declaration of Independence at length and says that White oppression against Blacks is far worse than British oppression against Whites ever was.

Multiracial society: Walker pictures an America where slaves are freed, where Blacks and Whites have equal rights. But even in a free society, Blacks would still have trouble because they lack education, religion and unity.

See also:

• American abolitionists
• American slavery
• Thomas Jefferson’s scientific racism
• Back to Africa
• The birth of White American racism against Blacks
• The black counter-frame against white racism - Walker’s “Appeal” is an early example. Most of the elements are already there in 1829.