This Week's Opening Thought: September 18, 2023
Image description: A one-panel comic strip. An older person wearing glasses and a suit and tie stands at a podium in front of the silhouette of an audience. A person in the audience says, "I want my kids taught about the past exactly as it happened in a way that also mythologizes this country's achievements in particular while portraying bad actions as aberrations in order to instill a sense of civic pride but is not in any way opinionated." At the bottom of the image is the sentence, "My nightmare: having to write public school history curricula."
This week's opening thought: THIS. This is why I decided to go on an indefinite sabbatical from doing anti-racism and equity work with organizations.
There is no positive spin for original sins.
There is no way to learn about or have difficult conversations about U.S. history, colonization, the abuse and enslavement of Black and Indigenous peoples, and the near genocide of Native and Indigenous communities and make people of pallor "feel safe" or willingly allow people of the white persuasion (genetically or aspirationally) to run with the "not my ancestors" narrative unchecked.
Don't waste my time. Don't waste the time of facilitators, educators, and other people you expect to teach you or our youth if all you want is to feel you and your ancestors are on the "right side of history."
Those who want to rewrite history tend to have no issue repeating it and partaking in its bitter fruit.
Just admit you prefer the fruit you know and aren't interested in you or your kids planting new trees and digging up the old ones.
[Image description: A one-panel comic strip. An older person wearing glasses and a suit and tie stands at a podium in front of the silhouette of an audience. A person in the audience says, "I want my kids taught about the past exactly as it happened in a way that also mythologizes this country's achievements in particular while portraying bad actions as aberrations in order to instill a sense of civic pride but is not in any way opinionated." At the bottom of the image is the sentence, "My nightmare: having to write public school history curricula."]
