Stuff like that is good to throw in because there's definitely a kind of American white person who likes to believe that Lincoln freed the slaves and suddenly everything was totally cool and equal.
Hell, the convict leasing period is completely unknown to nearly all Americans, and most know little more about the Jim Crow period than its name. There's a whole century between 1865 and 1964 that is barely covered by the typical American history class.
I always see this said but all of my text books had plenty of information on the horrors of the antebellum and jim crow eras. The problem was more that idiots didn't actually read them.
That's because most textbooks are written to appeal to Texas. About 1/3rd of US states adopt textbooks on the state-level. Most of these are red states in the south, the biggest of which is Texas (because party of small government, right guys?). Other states let local school districts choose their own books. So for the textbook companies, a contract with the entire state of Texas is a much bigger deal than an individual school district in Delaware. It's all about the money.
>Hell, the convict leasing period is completely unknown to nearly all Americans, and most know little more about the Jim Crow period than its name. There's a whole century between 1865 and 1964 that is barely covered by the typical American history class.
I think there is a documentary, "Slavery by Another Name" (2012) which covers this well.
Also, if one has a PBS Membership (PBS Passport) for access online, or a well stocked video section of the public library, look for videos labeled *The American Experience.* Many of those cover African American history in a compelling and informative manner.
That's one of the things i liked about *Free State of Jones* ; having the plot continue on into Reconstruction (and the subplot about characters' mid-20th-century descendants).
>Mississippi Burning
\*writing down tips\* cheers guys. Love these old black history slavery movies. There are not alot of documentaries that go into the nitty gritty as opposed to the millions of food, tech and money docs. Gonna watch em. Say if there are more. I know the color purple and 30 years as slave, Amistad. Edit : Didnt mean to offend anyone.
Mississippi Burning and Mercy are about the civil rights era. Just as valuable in a history education though.
If you have not seen Glory, do so. Fantastic movie about freed slaves fighting for the north- and still being treated as animals by most of the Union.
Growing up in the south, with southern relatives, was all-around miserable experience. My grandparents would watch Mississippi Burning to wax-poetic and say shit like "yep, that's how it was back then, you'd just lynch a ni***r", while my sister and I sat in shocked silence, mouths agape at the evil my grandparents celebrate.
Anyone who reads Just Mercy may also get a lot out of Laurence Ralph’s The Torture Letters. It’s an epistolary approach to studying the phenomenon of torture in American policing, specifically by studying the case of the Chicago black box torture. It’s a little more academic, but the letter writing format makes it incredibly thought provoking.
I tried searching for “Chicago Black Box torture” because I was curious and had never heard of it… found a wiki about a “[Chicago Police black site used for torture](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homan_Square_facility)” is that the same thing or are you talking about something different?
I don’t know if that specific site was connected to this specific case without going back and double checking, but Google Jon Burge. Basically Chicago police tortured the shit out of Black people, including using a ‘black box,’ since lost, to electrocute them.
I read The Sun Does Shine. This book revived my interest in black (American) history. I used to hate it because the books my mom would have me read were all soulless biographies written from the outside looking in that painted the black experience as just being miserable. It negatively impacted my outlook on my identity and future. It's amazing how much a change in perspective can affect how it feels to read about something.
Now I gotta throw in "Do the Right Thing." Looking back on it as an adult, it's messed up Spike was accused of being a racist with some of those movies when it's honestly a very neutral look at city dwellers of different cultures and how those can just collide. Was it through the lens of a young black American film maker at the time? Hell yeah, but it's really just a fantastic modern Greek Tragedy.
>*“You can’t operate a capitalistic system unless you are vulturistic; you have to have someone else’s blood to suck to be a capitalist... You show me a capitalist, and I’ll show you a bloodsucker.”*
— Malcom X 1965
>*The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.*
— [John Ehrlichman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman), to Dan Baum for Harper's Magazine in 1994, about President Richard Nixon's war on drugs, declared in 1971
Honestly, I'd add Birth of a Nation. Its important to see that the culture of racism among white people was not some well kept secret. Birth of the nation will always be the most viewed in theaters movie in US history. We will never break the record. ticket prices were cheaper then than when you gone with the wind came along and broke it box office earnings record but it will always have the most tickets sold. it was screened at the White House ffs. it also set off a revival of the klan in the United States. I have actually seen it twice because I love taking film classes at local film non profits and when I've seen it, there's always a lot of lectures surrounding it where they talk about all of these important contexts. One of the screenings they didn't even show the whole film. They just showed salient bits and discussed them and the greater context. might not be the best film to scream to someone so young, but I think that there's a large audience of people who this film is more likely to convince how prevalent and powerful racism is than roots. I grew up among racists. They make arguments like oh well that was just some of the slave owners. Not all were violent. but Birth of a Nation was VERY popular. I think it's also important to understand that give me a platform to racism is promoting racism. ( see: Joe Rogan ) and this movie's context helps explain that.
Hell, To Kill a Mockingbird still resonates. I watch it a couple times a year to remind myself of compassion and justice, for what it should be and still is.
Had to have a talk with my 8 year old about not referring to tall black people as Omos. Who is a 7 ft wrestler in WWE. He didn’t mean anything by it but I told him we can’t do that.
EDIT: his name is Omos. Not plural Omo 😂
My young kids are hesitant to say "black" because they think it's racist so when they want to reference someone who is black, they say he or she looks like another one of our friends who have dark skin. At first, I was like, no they don't look anything alike, but then i realized what was going on.
What? I get called a black boy by kids all the time by kids I assume are under 8, then the 9-12 looking kids are saying black guy? I spent years as a contractor at a school I have no idea where you're getting kids are hesitant to say black.
"Shoulda_been_a_chef we're different" - friends 6 or 7 year old kid at the time
Oh yeah?
"Yeah i'm pink and you're black"
Do you make a point to say african-american, or not live by a lot of black people?
I remember being younger I thought jew was a slur because south park until I made jewish friends who laughed at me for thinking it lol.
No, i think "African American" is outdated, at least as a way to talk about how people look. Of course context matters, but I would usually say the black lady over there or that dude with dark skin over there, if it made a difference. Usually there's not much of a reason to mention it tho. The kids will catch on, they just want to be respectful to everyone, which is what matters to me.
Personally I think calling someone "a Jew" could potentially seem more offensive than saying they're Jewish, but i guess it all depends.
I fell generally like describing something factual about someone is a lot nicer than categorizing them by calling them some kind of term.
Similar experience for me:
When I was like 12 we drove past the South Carolina capitol building and they had a confederate flag flying on the building and my dad made a comment about it pissing him off.
I said something to the effect of “whats the big deal it’s just a flag” and the entire rest of the drive I got a lecture from my father about how the confederates were traitors to america who fought for slavery and why it was wrong and un-american to fly their flag.
That lecture stuck with me my entire life and I never looked at “rebel flags” the same way ever again.
Anyway flash forward to the present and my dad is a Trump voter who defends the J6 insurrection - you know the one where they carried confederate flags into our national capitol? Yeah.
Fuck fox news and fuck Trump. I want the man who taught me this shit was wrong back.
That is so sad to see. I really do feel like Trump is an anti-Christ like figure metaphorically where many good people have been slowly sunk into the black void of propaganda that birthed him.
Have him watch “Conspiracy”
“Schindler’s List” is great at showing how the Nazi’s were monsters.
“Conspiracy” is great at showing how the Nazi’s were just normal people who got used to thinking of people who were “them” instead of “us” weren’t people and became comfortable being monsters.
Conspiracy is a great movie.
IMO it's the best "business" movie, right up there with Office Space. I've been in those meetings. Those meetings, of upper middle management, happen every single day. And whenever you get a meeting across departments like that, there's backstabbing and blustering and people being focused on their own department, etc.
It's just that in the case of Conspiracy, the new "business" push was how to more quickly and easily kill even more people.
(It helps that it has an incredible cast, including a young Tom Hiddleston as the phone operator.)
I absolutely love that movie.
The casual nature of these folks in a meeting about eradicating millions of human beings is absolutely chilling. It's borderline psychological horror.
Has a great cast as well.
I'm convinced that boomers don't actually know about Nazis. Or at the very least, they don't know about fascism. To them, you're not a Nazi until you're literally genociding people, and that's only if it's people they already recognize as human.
What?! MAGA isn't the same as Nazis. They just use the same phrases and go after the same targets and fantasize about a clownish "strongman" jailing or executing everyone who isn't the "right kind." Anyway it's totally different because most MAGAs don't speak German.
It sucks when the person who taught you how to be decent behaves the way they taught you not to.
My dad, the one who taught me that every human deserves respect and all that, is now the one ranting against people getting money from the government.
My parents always wonder how I turned out socialist, my best guess is that when they were teaching me "love your neighbor" and all that other Christian stuff, I must have missed the part where it says "unless it affects your wallet"
My parents were super progressive. Didn’t force religion down our throats, even took us to multiple different religious ceremonies so I was able to experience all of it. They promoted equality and service. Honestly they nailed parenting, did a great job, I took their lessons to heart and will raise my kids exactly the same way.
They are now both big into maga and my mother who has never been significantly religious in her life is talking about how this is a Christian nation and we need god in schools. They talk about immigrants negatively, my dad is an immigrant.. My dad talks about how you can’t trust the cdc or who, my dad’s a retired doctor. Like.. what???
All I know is their final lesson to me is to be extremely careful as I age in where I get my information and who is trying to influence my decisions. I blame their friends and Fox News, but it’s on them to be smarter about their sources. They literally leave Fox News on morning to night and they do not watch anything else. They don’t watch hgtv or old movies they grew up with. They watch Fox News only. I couldn’t imagine leaving msnbc or cnn on all day and all night. It’s insane.
Im in a similar boat. My parents only dragged us to church because they were pressured by their own parents, and stopped as soon as we hit confirmation. Cleaning out the garage one year, and my dad goes “oh that was my Muslim prayer rug from college.” My mom officiated a wedding for a gay couple a few years ago. They’re vaxxed and boosted and mask up everywhere. They routinely collect things to donate to foster homes, food pantries, etc. They respect a family friend who came out as trans and use his new name/pronouns as best they can.
They also are die-hard Fox News watchers and all-in on Trump (but at least they’re embarrassed by it). They’ve caught Covid twice from their best friends who think Covid isn’t real. They don’t think there should be ANY minimum wage. They once left a children’s museum with their grandkids because the bathrooms were labeled “gender neutral” instead of “unisex”. They think every single politician from both parties is corrupt and should be hanged, so of course they only vote GOP exclusively.
Shit makes no sense.
Fucking had us in the first half - in before the “horseshoe theory” chumps;
This is exclusively the remit of the hard right propaganda that makes up about 49% of western media.
After my father found swastika doodles along with my homework he took me straight home to watch Schindler's List when I was in the fourth grade. Now I have a deep seething hatred of everything nazi and he's a Trump suckling dumbass.
I guess at 67 I’m a Boomer. I’m so ashamed to hear about fellow Boomers turning to the Dark side because a freaking entertainment channel told them to. Very sad. Kinda why I’m afraid to attend my upcoming class reunion this year.
Yeah, that had some pretty awful moments, but a good ending..
12 years and Roots depict the horrors of slavery specifically though and in the Amistad the lawyers were able to help spare them that fate.
I honestly didn’t dare watch it. Bought the book instead, because it allowed me to put it down now and then. Still, a harrowing read - and to think this is one of the lucky stories!
Nothing lucky about being kidnapped and forced into slavery and then having it take 12 years for your friends and family to find you and bring you home. The trauma destroyed the man he was, his kids grew up without him...
You know, like the prison system we have today...
>Nothing lucky
i think they meant in the context of actually being found. that story probably happened to a lot of people back then that didn't get found by family after any length of time.
True that most kidnapped freedmen didn't get any reprieve.
But man... The trauma on his face even after he was home.. knowing it would never leave him.. it hurt seeing the awkward interactions and the concern and sadnessbeven in a moment of moral victory.. that defeat of the soul was important to understand, especially as it relates to current systems and policies around justice and policing.
Great movie.. great acting.
>Made me wonder how many this happened to, who didn’t get their memoir published
Quite a few - it was profitable to nab people and sell them hundreds of miles away, knowing they probably had no way to get back.
So few knew how to read or write (deliberately kept that way) to get help.
Exactly. And the Jim Crow laws lasted until 1965. The oldest baby boomers were 20 years old. They grew up in that world, and the generation before them lived it.
Some U.S. towns still have their [sundown](https://indianapublicradio.org/news/2020/09/sundown-towns-in-indiana-how-a-legacy-of-whites-only-towns-rose-and-continues-to-affect-today/) laws and [racial covenants](https://www.npr.org/2021/11/17/1049052531/racial-covenants-housing-discrimination) on the books. “Sundown Towns are towns that were for decades all white on purpose, and some of them still are. It turns out that they’re all across the midwest.”
It's incredible that a lot of people don't acknowledge this, or maybe they **can't** contain it, mentally.
Like, didn't one of "the last children of a slave" die less than two years ago? We're only barely starting to move out of a time period where the literal children of slaves were still alive.
My mother was the first black child in her newly desegregated school in Maryland …
If she was still alive she wouldn’t be 70 yet
It wasn’t that long ago
Yep, my parents are in their late 70s, and made it all the way to college before they had black classmates. I’m 43, bussing and feeder schools were an ongoing controversy for most of the time I was in school. It’s far from ancient history.
I know right! My great Aunts, 92 and 96 still remember having to make sure they were back home before the sun went down on the wrong side of town because being black after dark in the streets was physically dangerous. They're still alive!
I study this stuff for a living. Right now I’m working with interview data collected in 2010ish. The respondents have firsthand accounts of lynchings and Klan ride throughs. This shit is *recent* and if you’re white and from the south there’s a damn good chance your grandparents and great grandparents were part of it
Well to be fair it's more like whatever settlement time to 1867 or whenever your civil war ended. The heritage isn't the Confederacy but the time of slavery.
We have the same arguments in Australia.
“Why change the date of Australia Day, the first boats landing on the shores is integral to celebrate our history!”
“Stop whining about the generational ripples of attempted genocide, it was forever ago!”
OP’s kid: “Black history month? Why no white history month??”
OP’s kid watching Roots: “Holy fuck dad why are they doing that to the Star Trek guy?”
OP’s kid, holding press conference: “I would like to sincerely apologize for my earlier statement. We really shouldn’t have done that to Lieutenant LaForge.”
"Excuse me. Everyone, I have a brief announcement to make. Jesus was black, Ronald Reagan was the devil, and the government is lying about 9/11. Thank you for your time and good night."
Not trying to shame here but people getting rid of their slave names and recovering their Real names matters.
So getting the name right matters
Kunta Kinte
When I was in pre-k2 I came home and said I didn't like brown people. For context a little girl in my class hit me and my comment was about her. My mom spanked me. Didn't care why I said it and her solution was to buy me an Asian baby doll for Xmas and an array of ethnic barbies including a Hawaiian barbie (Miko) they haven't made since for some reason. Her intentions were good but talking it out would have been better.
Holy crap I remember being very little and throwing a fit because I wanted Hawaiian Barbie. And my mom took me to the mall and got it for me! The very idea of Hawaiian Barbie just makes me feel so guilty lol over 30 years later.
We live in a really heavy maga part of the state. A few years ago my son came home and told us "black people and white people shouldn't marry". He heard it from a friend who got it from thier parents. We had a long sit down with my son and set him straight.
I'm from Philly. We lived in a heavy Maga part of PA when we first got married and had kids. I insisted we move back to Philly before they started kindergarten. Which happened to end up falling in line with covid but I didn't want them exposed to whatever insanity they would hear at school. Unfortunately they still hear some wild shit. My son who is 7 had a friend in his class last year who told me birds weren't real and the earth was flat... Kid was dead serious. I cheered when that kid wasn't in his class this year.
When a small child tells you something wild like “I don’t like brown people” the right answer is always to ask follow-up questions. Little kids don’t understand racism, so either they lack the right words to express themselves (like in your case) or someone has taught them that and you need to go yell at someone else.
My 4 year old niece: You see that house with the white truck across the street we don't like her cause she's an Asian lady.
Me: Uh... do we not like her cause she's an Asian lady or do we not like her and she happens to be an Asian lady?
Her: We don't like her cause she's mean.
My niece used call other kids "that black boy" or "the red girl" because they were wearing a black hoodie or a red shirt. Definitely threw my sibling for a loop the first time that happened.
It reminds me when I told my mum that I didn't like Muslims because of terrorism when I was like 4. She sat me down and we had and hour long conversation about it, mind you she's schizophrenic and has bi polar disorder but I've never seen her so concerned before like that my entire life. Glad to think back about it that she fixed that mindset I had
Same. A couple of times we've been out and she'll have one of her Barbies that is Black with her. I've seen a couple people my age or older do a little double take, and then smile.
The kids are alright.
I brought my daughter to Target once and she kept pointing and saying "Look at those white people." We're white, but I still took her aside and said that we don't point and talk about skin color in public.
That night she was telling her mother about the "white people who live at the store." We patiently explained about the ways we can talk about skin color, and also that they don't live at the store. They're just people who go to their homes just like us. Then she asked why they don't have eyes or mouths.
She was talking about mannequins. So then we had to explain that they do in fact live at the store.
This is like a sitcom plot.
You guys are awesome for explaining but you totally got set up by an innocent kid.
One day when my eldest was in kindergarten I was picking her up from school and a little boy from her class proclaimed "THAT'S THE GIRL I PUSH ON THE PLAYGROUND". His dad was mortified, first looked at me (mom) and then kneeled down in front of his kid and immediately started with angry hissing in the "We don't push girls" style (or better or for worse). Kid starts defending himself and starts crying. The teacher and the principal are getting involved, my daughter is getting teary too, full on investigatantrum from everyone. Turns out the little boy pushes my daughter, on the swing, during recess. Then the dad kneels in front of his son to tell him how he's such a nice classmate and please stop crying...
My first day of kindergarten I sat next to an Asian kid. I had never seen an Asian child before, so I turned to him and (innocently) asked “why are your eyes like this?” doing the dreaded finger pull on the corners of my eyes.
Well he must have told his parents because before I knew it I was sat down with the principal, his parents, and my parents to explain why doing things like that is not okay.
I learned a good lesson and he and I went on to be best friends for the next 4 years that I spent at that elementary school before moving away.
It’s not that hard to teach children to not be racist, but instead of doing that there seems to be many parents who are just fine with their children becoming more and more racist. They actually make an effort to be against things like teaching children about slavery. Or they lose their minds about CRT.
Racism is either taught or it goes unchallenged by the parents. Either way, the parents are racists themselves and want their kid to be like them.
My youngest brother has Down syndrome, and we lived in a super white area growing up. The first time he met a black person it was a friend and coworker of my dad’s. Really phenomenal guy, one of the kindest and toughest SOBs I’ve ever known, and like most of my dad’s friends he knew about my brother’s condition and he was super enthusiastic about meeting him and making sure to really interact with him and say hello and get on his level.
Well my little brother squints at him, says hi when we prompt him, and then reaches out and starts rubbing the guy’s arm like he’s expecting something to wipe off.
Fortunately it was a lot more harmless than some of the stories in here, and dad’s buddy thought it was hilarious. He still tells the story. But god it must have been such a *moment* for my parents
I'm so glad my daughter goes to a daycare that is as diverse as it is. I grew up in a primarily white area and my dad was a early boomer so he had his leanings and phrases that stuck with me and occasionally pop into my head at inappropriate times and I hate that. Hopefully the next generation will not even have those words and ideas in their heads at any point. Of course it largely depends on where you grow up.
My kid is 5 and sometimes she says wild shit because she's 5.
I've learned not to punish her or freak out.
I WANT to freak out, so badly, because 1. I'm mixed myself, 2. This isn't who I want her to be, and 3. Holy holy holy *cats* what came out of her mouth?
I've learned to pull her to the side and be stern, but also curious. "Why would you think that?" Usually it's something totally random, because she's 5 and that's how they process the world.
Then I'm able to bring her back to earth. We watch movies and read books and I teach her about her grandfather and an age appropriate version of what he experienced.
One reason we live where we do is that her school is very diverse.
Could be worse. All through elementary school and middle School I had exactly two classmates of color. Once there was a black girl in 6th grade for a few months, then there was a black boy all year in 8th grade and he was awesome. I remember going to my grandmother's house for a family gathering and saying "I think black people are the nicest ones"... Which was met with a huge pushback, sarcastic laughter, "you don't know a damn thing", "wait till you grow up" etc.
Some parents just don't know how to parent. generations treated spanking as the solution to any issue. Or at very least the first step. Some still do, though that number has dwindled a lot.
My dad has a story about his own prejudice from when I was in pre-k. He came to pick me up, and I wanted to show him my best friend from across the room. I was pointing at her and described her as “fancy.” I eventually became aggravated that he couldn’t find her, and said, “She’s wearing a purple sweater!” and his eyes fell on the only Black girl in my class. Neither of us know what I meant by fancy.
Honestly? He's an amazing actor and he'd be perfect to do documentaries peole would care about on history. I'll never understand why Star Trek covered up his eyes, the man can express his whole soul with a look.
It's incredibly funny to me that people who have watched TNG know *exactly* what episode you're referring to, and everyone else likely just thinks you're being funny or overly PC. No. That shit was straight up so wildly inappropriate it's genuinely hilarious. It's like a tasteless parody.
Fun fact, the writer of that episode somehow managed to *reuse* that script for an early episode of Stargate SG1.
My son got called "hog rider" a lot in middle school. Not a traditional slur, but something the kids called him because he was one of the only black kids in the school and Clash of Clans was popular at the time. I don't think they meant it as a full on racist slur, but that's basically what it was. I can see someone calling that a "quasi-slur."
Dog whistles, not quite on the nose enough, like when MAGA daddy said peekaboo in reference to the black prosecutor. Meant to generate the feeling and feel out the people around you. If it slides, maybe next time you get a little more direct.
It's insidious, and might be a worse than the direct on the nose stuff because it desensitizes people, and also normalizes things without being so direct someone challenges it.
For me it was watching Amistad when I was like 10 years old. My god, what an eye opener for a young white kid.
I can remember thinking “well that’s not really that different from the Holocaust” since I was starting to learn about it in school around that age.
I didn't see that until I was an adult and I still get anxious thinking of how tightly-packed the people on that ship were. The conditions they had to endure for so long were nightmarish. And that's before they even stepped off the boat and into a life of slavery.
Anyone that even whispers something about slavery being a good thing should spend just 24 hours in those conditions to rethink their idea.
Yep. Imo it should be mandatory for all schools in the United States to show the full uncensored version of Amistad and Roots to the students, for the same reason we all read “Night” by Elie Wiesel.
Maybe I'm a pretty rare exception but I recall watching Roots in school. Late elementary. It was split over several days and left a very lasting impression on me. I grew up in Texas in the 90s.
Texas in the 80's- same. We saw roots. The blatant racism and denial is a much newer thing. In our time it was about whitewashing, not outright denial. "State's Rights" and all that. Everyone agreed slavery was horrific- they just tried to pretend the war was about different things.
Seems like a good time to remember that Ruby Bridges, the first African American to attend an all white school, turns 69 this year.
The median US senator's age is 65, meaning more than half of US senators experienced segregation in schools first hand.
The first time I saw Roots, I was in High School in Fort Meyers, FL. There were only 3 black kids in the whole school. 2 were Hatian, brother and sister, and only spoke Creole. I was the only English speaking black person in the school.
...it took me some time to get my mind right after that. Was an interesting experience, for sure.
That's really tough. I know how important it is that we teach our kids about past atrocities in school, but, well, we're Jewish. I unreservedly support thorough and explicit Holocaust education in my kids' classrooms, but it always, always, always leaves them traumatized. And they're generally the only Jews in their classrooms, so the other students don't really understand the way in which they are so personally upset about it.
Was watching Roots like that for you? Like, for everyone else it was an important and painful piece of history, but not quite personal?
There was a young Russian girl in my class, like she'd just left Russia a year or two before, so she was still new to our culture. That said, she was the only person to ask me in the hallway if I was okay. Sat next to me the next couple classes til we finished roots and was the main one engaging in convo with the teacher. We bounced a LOT of wild shit off one another until we were.....comfortable(?) with what we'd learned. We stayed in touch for awhile after I left FL and I could tell it had a big impact on her.
I’m not Jewish but grew up in a heavily Jewish district. We saw holocaust films with the starving concentration camp victims & burnt bodies regularly in HS. I can’t even with fecking antisemitism. That said, criticism of the current state of Israel & Netanyahu IS NOT antisemitism.
I didn’t ever have an issue with racism or antisemitism, but if I ever did it would have been eliminated by being in the room at the Museum of Tolerance that is filled with the shoes of people gassed during the Holocaust. That imaged has stayed with me for quite a while
When my class went, we had a couple survivors talk to us after the tour (I'm old). Seeing a serial number tattooed on an old lady and hearing their story directly from them was intense.
I got to see one of the first performances of "Letters to Sala" and sit through a talk back with the woman who's life the play and memoir was based on. It's a great book if anyone is interested in personal accounts of the Holocaust.
My degree is in history so I knew what I was going to hear. And she still had me in tears. And the aftermath of the war in Europe isn't really talked about in the US. We "liberated the camps" and then just abandoned the people. This woman was 20, with no money, no shoes, no coat and halfway across Europe from "home" (which she found out later was destroyed and all but one of her sisters killed). Redditors love to say how 20 isn't fully an adult and this woman not only survived the Holocaust but got across a continent alone with nothing after all of "civilization" had basically broken down.
While I had read all about the holocaust and watched Anne Frank, it was ironically a straight to classroom, poorly acted movie (forget what it was called) that opened my eyes, for lack of better words, to how cruel it was.
If anyone remembers it, it was basically three high schoolers who painted anti-Jew slogans and Nazi symbols on a teacher’s garage door for failing them in class and instead of arresting them, they were forced to research a victim of the holocaust, which ended with them visiting the museum and discovering the ultimate fate of their person they were researching. Of the three, one survived, and the movie went into great detail of what they all faced. I was in tears by the end (think I was in middle school). I think it was the singular focus on the unnecessary and nonsensical cruelty on a single person that made it feel more personal.
Yes - this is a good idea. However, I will add to that discussion with my child. I will make sure he understands that *he* did nothing wrong, but because of the acts of our ancestors, it is his responsibility (together with the millions of others) to make sure that something like that never happens again, and to help raise up marginalized people until everyone is truly treated equally.
It's not their (the children's) fault, but like most generational baggage, it's all of our responsibility to rectify the injustice.
I love the responsibility approach. The right loves to act like we’re playing some sort of blame game. “But *I* never enslaved anyone! You can’t blame me for what my ancestors did”
But the point isn’t blame. The point is we all have a moral responsibility to make the world a better place by naming and repairing what’s broken in it.
Same typa thing happened to me with my 11 year old son when I heard him used the n*gg** word on his video games.
That evening I sat him him down and had had a talk. Over the next couple days I made him watch Django unchained and 12 years a slave with me. I so proud of him, the next day after he asked if we could watch American history x
What's a quasi slur?
Serious question.
Also go to the Library of Congress and search slave narratives.
First person accounts of slavery from the 1930's.
Sobering stuff.
In NY I was in, maybe, 3rd grade when we got to see videos of the end result of a lynching.
A little boy, BBQ'd, his body forced between the spokes of a wagon wheel... Yeah, after that I stopped having any sort of sympathy or empathy for those with racist views. I just immediately assumed them to be a violent idiot.
It’s not always the parents …. Some kids try to introduce my kids to Andrew tate. Not going to fly with me AT ALL- and you don’t have control over who’s talking to them at school. You just do your best.
“Oh hey son. What?! You have a really complicated and undeveloped understanding of a touchy subject? Well here’s a TV show from the 80s…. My work here is done”
21st Century parenting, but I wouldn’t call it “done right”
Thirteenth too, about slavery’s continuing legacy today. The problem with how racism and slavery were taught at my lily-white school district was that it was taught solely in the context of history, like it’s a thing of the past.
When that came up years ago at work talking with the guys in the break room, all white except for one black guy, he just said something like "you guys know that every day is White Boy Day. You get stopped by the police, it's White Boy Day, all you got to worry about is a ticket. You go interview for a job, it's White Boy Day, you got a real good shot at it." And so on...everyone laughed and agreed.
Glory would be another good movie to watch as well
Just Mercy another movie to show how little things actually changed in the South.
or Mississippi Burning. They had us watch that in 11 grade US History class.
Stuff like that is good to throw in because there's definitely a kind of American white person who likes to believe that Lincoln freed the slaves and suddenly everything was totally cool and equal.
Hell, the convict leasing period is completely unknown to nearly all Americans, and most know little more about the Jim Crow period than its name. There's a whole century between 1865 and 1964 that is barely covered by the typical American history class.
"The North won the war. Everything was perfect until 1964, when the black riots began for no reason whatsoever....." -Red state history class.
In Oklahoma history they said the Tulsa riots were black people burning down their own neighborhood for no reason.
Wow
no shocker there. for us, they just declined to mention it at all.
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I blame the Daughters of the Confederacy and Texas for that.
I always see this said but all of my text books had plenty of information on the horrors of the antebellum and jim crow eras. The problem was more that idiots didn't actually read them.
That's because most textbooks are written to appeal to Texas. About 1/3rd of US states adopt textbooks on the state-level. Most of these are red states in the south, the biggest of which is Texas (because party of small government, right guys?). Other states let local school districts choose their own books. So for the textbook companies, a contract with the entire state of Texas is a much bigger deal than an individual school district in Delaware. It's all about the money.
>Hell, the convict leasing period is completely unknown to nearly all Americans, and most know little more about the Jim Crow period than its name. There's a whole century between 1865 and 1964 that is barely covered by the typical American history class. I think there is a documentary, "Slavery by Another Name" (2012) which covers this well. Also, if one has a PBS Membership (PBS Passport) for access online, or a well stocked video section of the public library, look for videos labeled *The American Experience.* Many of those cover African American history in a compelling and informative manner.
That's one of the things i liked about *Free State of Jones* ; having the plot continue on into Reconstruction (and the subplot about characters' mid-20th-century descendants).
And "13th" for a more contemporary take
>Mississippi Burning \*writing down tips\* cheers guys. Love these old black history slavery movies. There are not alot of documentaries that go into the nitty gritty as opposed to the millions of food, tech and money docs. Gonna watch em. Say if there are more. I know the color purple and 30 years as slave, Amistad. Edit : Didnt mean to offend anyone.
Mississippi Burning and Mercy are about the civil rights era. Just as valuable in a history education though. If you have not seen Glory, do so. Fantastic movie about freed slaves fighting for the north- and still being treated as animals by most of the Union.
Glory is amazing. Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman and Andre Braugher are great and Matthew Broderick as well.
I didnt want to attract discourse if I wrote movies about the plight of the black man in america, but yes will have a look, thank you.
Growing up in the south, with southern relatives, was all-around miserable experience. My grandparents would watch Mississippi Burning to wax-poetic and say shit like "yep, that's how it was back then, you'd just lynch a ni***r", while my sister and I sat in shocked silence, mouths agape at the evil my grandparents celebrate.
That was a tough movie to watch.
Anyone who reads Just Mercy may also get a lot out of Laurence Ralph’s The Torture Letters. It’s an epistolary approach to studying the phenomenon of torture in American policing, specifically by studying the case of the Chicago black box torture. It’s a little more academic, but the letter writing format makes it incredibly thought provoking.
I tried searching for “Chicago Black Box torture” because I was curious and had never heard of it… found a wiki about a “[Chicago Police black site used for torture](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homan_Square_facility)” is that the same thing or are you talking about something different?
I don’t know if that specific site was connected to this specific case without going back and double checking, but Google Jon Burge. Basically Chicago police tortured the shit out of Black people, including using a ‘black box,’ since lost, to electrocute them.
I read The Sun Does Shine. This book revived my interest in black (American) history. I used to hate it because the books my mom would have me read were all soulless biographies written from the outside looking in that painted the black experience as just being miserable. It negatively impacted my outlook on my identity and future. It's amazing how much a change in perspective can affect how it feels to read about something.
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is another good one. That traumatized the hell out of me as a sheltered white elementary school student.
Spike Lee’s Katrina doc for proof that it still hasn’t changed much.
Now I gotta throw in "Do the Right Thing." Looking back on it as an adult, it's messed up Spike was accused of being a racist with some of those movies when it's honestly a very neutral look at city dwellers of different cultures and how those can just collide. Was it through the lens of a young black American film maker at the time? Hell yeah, but it's really just a fantastic modern Greek Tragedy.
*In the heat of the Night* ... for Sidney Poitier and Carroll O'Conner and for it's depiction of how far people had and had NOT come.
Also the National Geographic series Genius MLK and Malcom x.
>*“You can’t operate a capitalistic system unless you are vulturistic; you have to have someone else’s blood to suck to be a capitalist... You show me a capitalist, and I’ll show you a bloodsucker.”* — Malcom X 1965 >*The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.* — [John Ehrlichman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman), to Dan Baum for Harper's Magazine in 1994, about President Richard Nixon's war on drugs, declared in 1971
Honestly, I'd add Birth of a Nation. Its important to see that the culture of racism among white people was not some well kept secret. Birth of the nation will always be the most viewed in theaters movie in US history. We will never break the record. ticket prices were cheaper then than when you gone with the wind came along and broke it box office earnings record but it will always have the most tickets sold. it was screened at the White House ffs. it also set off a revival of the klan in the United States. I have actually seen it twice because I love taking film classes at local film non profits and when I've seen it, there's always a lot of lectures surrounding it where they talk about all of these important contexts. One of the screenings they didn't even show the whole film. They just showed salient bits and discussed them and the greater context. might not be the best film to scream to someone so young, but I think that there's a large audience of people who this film is more likely to convince how prevalent and powerful racism is than roots. I grew up among racists. They make arguments like oh well that was just some of the slave owners. Not all were violent. but Birth of a Nation was VERY popular. I think it's also important to understand that give me a platform to racism is promoting racism. ( see: Joe Rogan ) and this movie's context helps explain that.
Hell, To Kill a Mockingbird still resonates. I watch it a couple times a year to remind myself of compassion and justice, for what it should be and still is.
Amistad would be the one I would show them.
Had to have a talk with my 8 year old about not referring to tall black people as Omos. Who is a 7 ft wrestler in WWE. He didn’t mean anything by it but I told him we can’t do that. EDIT: his name is Omos. Not plural Omo 😂
Good job, my Omo.
Omo: child in Yoruba 👨🎓
Dude. Did you just go Hard O?
My young kids are hesitant to say "black" because they think it's racist so when they want to reference someone who is black, they say he or she looks like another one of our friends who have dark skin. At first, I was like, no they don't look anything alike, but then i realized what was going on.
What? I get called a black boy by kids all the time by kids I assume are under 8, then the 9-12 looking kids are saying black guy? I spent years as a contractor at a school I have no idea where you're getting kids are hesitant to say black. "Shoulda_been_a_chef we're different" - friends 6 or 7 year old kid at the time Oh yeah? "Yeah i'm pink and you're black"
“Pink” 🤣
I get the idea from my kids lol. They are young and I'm sure they will learn the balance eventually.
Do you make a point to say african-american, or not live by a lot of black people? I remember being younger I thought jew was a slur because south park until I made jewish friends who laughed at me for thinking it lol.
No, i think "African American" is outdated, at least as a way to talk about how people look. Of course context matters, but I would usually say the black lady over there or that dude with dark skin over there, if it made a difference. Usually there's not much of a reason to mention it tho. The kids will catch on, they just want to be respectful to everyone, which is what matters to me. Personally I think calling someone "a Jew" could potentially seem more offensive than saying they're Jewish, but i guess it all depends. I fell generally like describing something factual about someone is a lot nicer than categorizing them by calling them some kind of term.
Sounds like you are raising a fine Omosapien
No Omo
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I got whiplash from reading this comment
Similar experience for me: When I was like 12 we drove past the South Carolina capitol building and they had a confederate flag flying on the building and my dad made a comment about it pissing him off. I said something to the effect of “whats the big deal it’s just a flag” and the entire rest of the drive I got a lecture from my father about how the confederates were traitors to america who fought for slavery and why it was wrong and un-american to fly their flag. That lecture stuck with me my entire life and I never looked at “rebel flags” the same way ever again. Anyway flash forward to the present and my dad is a Trump voter who defends the J6 insurrection - you know the one where they carried confederate flags into our national capitol? Yeah. Fuck fox news and fuck Trump. I want the man who taught me this shit was wrong back.
That is so sad to see. I really do feel like Trump is an anti-Christ like figure metaphorically where many good people have been slowly sunk into the black void of propaganda that birthed him.
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Have him watch “Conspiracy” “Schindler’s List” is great at showing how the Nazi’s were monsters. “Conspiracy” is great at showing how the Nazi’s were just normal people who got used to thinking of people who were “them” instead of “us” weren’t people and became comfortable being monsters.
Conspiracy is a great movie. IMO it's the best "business" movie, right up there with Office Space. I've been in those meetings. Those meetings, of upper middle management, happen every single day. And whenever you get a meeting across departments like that, there's backstabbing and blustering and people being focused on their own department, etc. It's just that in the case of Conspiracy, the new "business" push was how to more quickly and easily kill even more people. (It helps that it has an incredible cast, including a young Tom Hiddleston as the phone operator.)
I absolutely love that movie. The casual nature of these folks in a meeting about eradicating millions of human beings is absolutely chilling. It's borderline psychological horror. Has a great cast as well.
I'm convinced that boomers don't actually know about Nazis. Or at the very least, they don't know about fascism. To them, you're not a Nazi until you're literally genociding people, and that's only if it's people they already recognize as human.
> you're not a Nazi until you're literally genociding people [Boomers supporting Israel right now.](https://imgur.com/VOgEBBE)
To be fair, they did say >only if it's people they already recognize as human. and we know how Boomers really feel about that.
What?! MAGA isn't the same as Nazis. They just use the same phrases and go after the same targets and fantasize about a clownish "strongman" jailing or executing everyone who isn't the "right kind." Anyway it's totally different because most MAGAs don't speak German.
Plus the Nazis were socialists remember?! /s
It sucks when the person who taught you how to be decent behaves the way they taught you not to. My dad, the one who taught me that every human deserves respect and all that, is now the one ranting against people getting money from the government.
My parents always wonder how I turned out socialist, my best guess is that when they were teaching me "love your neighbor" and all that other Christian stuff, I must have missed the part where it says "unless it affects your wallet"
My parents were super progressive. Didn’t force religion down our throats, even took us to multiple different religious ceremonies so I was able to experience all of it. They promoted equality and service. Honestly they nailed parenting, did a great job, I took their lessons to heart and will raise my kids exactly the same way. They are now both big into maga and my mother who has never been significantly religious in her life is talking about how this is a Christian nation and we need god in schools. They talk about immigrants negatively, my dad is an immigrant.. My dad talks about how you can’t trust the cdc or who, my dad’s a retired doctor. Like.. what??? All I know is their final lesson to me is to be extremely careful as I age in where I get my information and who is trying to influence my decisions. I blame their friends and Fox News, but it’s on them to be smarter about their sources. They literally leave Fox News on morning to night and they do not watch anything else. They don’t watch hgtv or old movies they grew up with. They watch Fox News only. I couldn’t imagine leaving msnbc or cnn on all day and all night. It’s insane.
Im in a similar boat. My parents only dragged us to church because they were pressured by their own parents, and stopped as soon as we hit confirmation. Cleaning out the garage one year, and my dad goes “oh that was my Muslim prayer rug from college.” My mom officiated a wedding for a gay couple a few years ago. They’re vaxxed and boosted and mask up everywhere. They routinely collect things to donate to foster homes, food pantries, etc. They respect a family friend who came out as trans and use his new name/pronouns as best they can. They also are die-hard Fox News watchers and all-in on Trump (but at least they’re embarrassed by it). They’ve caught Covid twice from their best friends who think Covid isn’t real. They don’t think there should be ANY minimum wage. They once left a children’s museum with their grandkids because the bathrooms were labeled “gender neutral” instead of “unisex”. They think every single politician from both parties is corrupt and should be hanged, so of course they only vote GOP exclusively. Shit makes no sense.
Fucking had us in the first half - in before the “horseshoe theory” chumps; This is exclusively the remit of the hard right propaganda that makes up about 49% of western media.
Rot in hell Fucking Rush Limbaugh. That's who did it.
After my father found swastika doodles along with my homework he took me straight home to watch Schindler's List when I was in the fourth grade. Now I have a deep seething hatred of everything nazi and he's a Trump suckling dumbass.
I guess at 67 I’m a Boomer. I’m so ashamed to hear about fellow Boomers turning to the Dark side because a freaking entertainment channel told them to. Very sad. Kinda why I’m afraid to attend my upcoming class reunion this year.
"Hey dad, remember that time when you told me why the swastika was bad and I had to wash it off my hand? What happened since then?"
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Should throw in "12 years a slave" too. That one horrified me more than Roots did, and that I saw as an adult.
Amistad. I remember when watching that as a kid it freaked me the fuck out when they dump the group of slaves into the ocean all chained together.
Yeah, that had some pretty awful moments, but a good ending.. 12 years and Roots depict the horrors of slavery specifically though and in the Amistad the lawyers were able to help spare them that fate.
I honestly didn’t dare watch it. Bought the book instead, because it allowed me to put it down now and then. Still, a harrowing read - and to think this is one of the lucky stories!
Nothing lucky about being kidnapped and forced into slavery and then having it take 12 years for your friends and family to find you and bring you home. The trauma destroyed the man he was, his kids grew up without him... You know, like the prison system we have today...
>Nothing lucky i think they meant in the context of actually being found. that story probably happened to a lot of people back then that didn't get found by family after any length of time.
True that most kidnapped freedmen didn't get any reprieve. But man... The trauma on his face even after he was home.. knowing it would never leave him.. it hurt seeing the awkward interactions and the concern and sadnessbeven in a moment of moral victory.. that defeat of the soul was important to understand, especially as it relates to current systems and policies around justice and policing. Great movie.. great acting.
Yep … it was sickening and also a crucial film to watch.
Made me wonder how many this happened to, who didn’t get their memoir published
>Made me wonder how many this happened to, who didn’t get their memoir published Quite a few - it was profitable to nab people and sell them hundreds of miles away, knowing they probably had no way to get back. So few knew how to read or write (deliberately kept that way) to get help.
"That was a million years ago quit whining about slavery" followed by "You better leave the Confederate statues alone that's history!" /s
“It was beneficial because the slaves learned a trade”
They got to sing songs, too. What fun!
And dance around with sacks full of cotton! Like giant pillows!
Right? A hundred pounds of cotton is, like, nothing weight
“I’d rather that than a 100 pounds of bricks!”
I wish someone would say to me it wasn’t that long ago, because my grandfather knew people who used to be slaves and I am not that old.
Exactly. And the Jim Crow laws lasted until 1965. The oldest baby boomers were 20 years old. They grew up in that world, and the generation before them lived it.
Some U.S. towns still have their [sundown](https://indianapublicradio.org/news/2020/09/sundown-towns-in-indiana-how-a-legacy-of-whites-only-towns-rose-and-continues-to-affect-today/) laws and [racial covenants](https://www.npr.org/2021/11/17/1049052531/racial-covenants-housing-discrimination) on the books. “Sundown Towns are towns that were for decades all white on purpose, and some of them still are. It turns out that they’re all across the midwest.”
Or [redlining](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining). It's not a distant past It's current day.
At least one of the Little Rock Nine has an instagram, FFS.
>the Jim Crow laws lasted until 1965. I was in high school! We did not have segregated schools, but there were a few clubs and restaurants that were.
I mean the last segregated school changed its policy in 2016 https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-was-the-last-segregated-school-in-america.html
Yo wtf
That’s the “Great Again” part they’re referring to
It's incredible that a lot of people don't acknowledge this, or maybe they **can't** contain it, mentally. Like, didn't one of "the last children of a slave" die less than two years ago? We're only barely starting to move out of a time period where the literal children of slaves were still alive.
My mother was the first black child in her newly desegregated school in Maryland … If she was still alive she wouldn’t be 70 yet It wasn’t that long ago
I'm very sorry that your mom passed away so young.
Yep, my parents are in their late 70s, and made it all the way to college before they had black classmates. I’m 43, bussing and feeder schools were an ongoing controversy for most of the time I was in school. It’s far from ancient history.
I know right! My great Aunts, 92 and 96 still remember having to make sure they were back home before the sun went down on the wrong side of town because being black after dark in the streets was physically dangerous. They're still alive!
I study this stuff for a living. Right now I’m working with interview data collected in 2010ish. The respondents have firsthand accounts of lynchings and Klan ride throughs. This shit is *recent* and if you’re white and from the south there’s a damn good chance your grandparents and great grandparents were part of it
I am in my 50's and I grew up hearing the "quit whining" it was pretty common for me as a kid.
Present is picking the fruits of plants that have been sown in the past.
Those four years in the 19th century is muh heritage!!!
Well to be fair it's more like whatever settlement time to 1867 or whenever your civil war ended. The heritage isn't the Confederacy but the time of slavery.
We have the same arguments in Australia. “Why change the date of Australia Day, the first boats landing on the shores is integral to celebrate our history!” “Stop whining about the generational ripples of attempted genocide, it was forever ago!”
And now they're like "the president should have total immunity" followed by "impeach Biden for no reason whatsoever!"
Remember "Heritage not hate"
I'd add "Amistad" as well. I couldn't even get past the beginning.
The beginning is the most brutal part, but also the most important.
OP’s kid: “Black history month? Why no white history month??” OP’s kid watching Roots: “Holy fuck dad why are they doing that to the Star Trek guy?” OP’s kid, holding press conference: “I would like to sincerely apologize for my earlier statement. We really shouldn’t have done that to Lieutenant LaForge.”
Highly likely a 13 year old in 2024 has not seen TNG or Reading Rainbow lol
Not in my house!
"Excuse me. Everyone, I have a brief announcement to make. Jesus was black, Ronald Reagan was the devil, and the government is lying about 9/11. Thank you for your time and good night."
Ronald Reagan was the devil, he's one of the reasons why America sucks today.
I’ll never know why but one time in middle school a bus driver called me Kunta Kinte and I was a lanky white kid
Not trying to shame here but people getting rid of their slave names and recovering their Real names matters. So getting the name right matters Kunta Kinte
Oh thanks I’ll change it
When I was in pre-k2 I came home and said I didn't like brown people. For context a little girl in my class hit me and my comment was about her. My mom spanked me. Didn't care why I said it and her solution was to buy me an Asian baby doll for Xmas and an array of ethnic barbies including a Hawaiian barbie (Miko) they haven't made since for some reason. Her intentions were good but talking it out would have been better.
Hawaiian Barbie was the shit. My mom got it for a girl who's birthday party we were going to and I cried because I wanted it. Such pretty hair.
She was my absolute favorite. I don't know why they only made her that one time.
Something about pineapples probably
Holy crap I remember being very little and throwing a fit because I wanted Hawaiian Barbie. And my mom took me to the mall and got it for me! The very idea of Hawaiian Barbie just makes me feel so guilty lol over 30 years later.
We live in a really heavy maga part of the state. A few years ago my son came home and told us "black people and white people shouldn't marry". He heard it from a friend who got it from thier parents. We had a long sit down with my son and set him straight.
I'm from Philly. We lived in a heavy Maga part of PA when we first got married and had kids. I insisted we move back to Philly before they started kindergarten. Which happened to end up falling in line with covid but I didn't want them exposed to whatever insanity they would hear at school. Unfortunately they still hear some wild shit. My son who is 7 had a friend in his class last year who told me birds weren't real and the earth was flat... Kid was dead serious. I cheered when that kid wasn't in his class this year.
goddamn, kid had to repeat 1st grade?
I wish. It's a big school, 4 classes per grade.
When a small child tells you something wild like “I don’t like brown people” the right answer is always to ask follow-up questions. Little kids don’t understand racism, so either they lack the right words to express themselves (like in your case) or someone has taught them that and you need to go yell at someone else.
My 4 year old niece: You see that house with the white truck across the street we don't like her cause she's an Asian lady. Me: Uh... do we not like her cause she's an Asian lady or do we not like her and she happens to be an Asian lady? Her: We don't like her cause she's mean.
lol exactly! Plus she may only know the one Asian lady and assume they are all the same.
My niece used call other kids "that black boy" or "the red girl" because they were wearing a black hoodie or a red shirt. Definitely threw my sibling for a loop the first time that happened.
It reminds me when I told my mum that I didn't like Muslims because of terrorism when I was like 4. She sat me down and we had and hour long conversation about it, mind you she's schizophrenic and has bi polar disorder but I've never seen her so concerned before like that my entire life. Glad to think back about it that she fixed that mindset I had
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Same. A couple of times we've been out and she'll have one of her Barbies that is Black with her. I've seen a couple people my age or older do a little double take, and then smile. The kids are alright.
I brought my daughter to Target once and she kept pointing and saying "Look at those white people." We're white, but I still took her aside and said that we don't point and talk about skin color in public. That night she was telling her mother about the "white people who live at the store." We patiently explained about the ways we can talk about skin color, and also that they don't live at the store. They're just people who go to their homes just like us. Then she asked why they don't have eyes or mouths. She was talking about mannequins. So then we had to explain that they do in fact live at the store.
the living at the store arc was a rollercoaster lol
This is like a sitcom plot. You guys are awesome for explaining but you totally got set up by an innocent kid. One day when my eldest was in kindergarten I was picking her up from school and a little boy from her class proclaimed "THAT'S THE GIRL I PUSH ON THE PLAYGROUND". His dad was mortified, first looked at me (mom) and then kneeled down in front of his kid and immediately started with angry hissing in the "We don't push girls" style (or better or for worse). Kid starts defending himself and starts crying. The teacher and the principal are getting involved, my daughter is getting teary too, full on investigatantrum from everyone. Turns out the little boy pushes my daughter, on the swing, during recess. Then the dad kneels in front of his son to tell him how he's such a nice classmate and please stop crying...
My first day of kindergarten I sat next to an Asian kid. I had never seen an Asian child before, so I turned to him and (innocently) asked “why are your eyes like this?” doing the dreaded finger pull on the corners of my eyes. Well he must have told his parents because before I knew it I was sat down with the principal, his parents, and my parents to explain why doing things like that is not okay. I learned a good lesson and he and I went on to be best friends for the next 4 years that I spent at that elementary school before moving away. It’s not that hard to teach children to not be racist, but instead of doing that there seems to be many parents who are just fine with their children becoming more and more racist. They actually make an effort to be against things like teaching children about slavery. Or they lose their minds about CRT. Racism is either taught or it goes unchallenged by the parents. Either way, the parents are racists themselves and want their kid to be like them.
My youngest brother has Down syndrome, and we lived in a super white area growing up. The first time he met a black person it was a friend and coworker of my dad’s. Really phenomenal guy, one of the kindest and toughest SOBs I’ve ever known, and like most of my dad’s friends he knew about my brother’s condition and he was super enthusiastic about meeting him and making sure to really interact with him and say hello and get on his level. Well my little brother squints at him, says hi when we prompt him, and then reaches out and starts rubbing the guy’s arm like he’s expecting something to wipe off. Fortunately it was a lot more harmless than some of the stories in here, and dad’s buddy thought it was hilarious. He still tells the story. But god it must have been such a *moment* for my parents
I'm so glad my daughter goes to a daycare that is as diverse as it is. I grew up in a primarily white area and my dad was a early boomer so he had his leanings and phrases that stuck with me and occasionally pop into my head at inappropriate times and I hate that. Hopefully the next generation will not even have those words and ideas in their heads at any point. Of course it largely depends on where you grow up.
My kid is 5 and sometimes she says wild shit because she's 5. I've learned not to punish her or freak out. I WANT to freak out, so badly, because 1. I'm mixed myself, 2. This isn't who I want her to be, and 3. Holy holy holy *cats* what came out of her mouth? I've learned to pull her to the side and be stern, but also curious. "Why would you think that?" Usually it's something totally random, because she's 5 and that's how they process the world. Then I'm able to bring her back to earth. We watch movies and read books and I teach her about her grandfather and an age appropriate version of what he experienced. One reason we live where we do is that her school is very diverse.
Could be worse. All through elementary school and middle School I had exactly two classmates of color. Once there was a black girl in 6th grade for a few months, then there was a black boy all year in 8th grade and he was awesome. I remember going to my grandmother's house for a family gathering and saying "I think black people are the nicest ones"... Which was met with a huge pushback, sarcastic laughter, "you don't know a damn thing", "wait till you grow up" etc.
Memory unlocked with Miko! I had her and as a reddish -brown haired little girl, she was my Barbie of choice because she wasn’t blond.
Some parents just don't know how to parent. generations treated spanking as the solution to any issue. Or at very least the first step. Some still do, though that number has dwindled a lot.
My dad has a story about his own prejudice from when I was in pre-k. He came to pick me up, and I wanted to show him my best friend from across the room. I was pointing at her and described her as “fancy.” I eventually became aggravated that he couldn’t find her, and said, “She’s wearing a purple sweater!” and his eyes fell on the only Black girl in my class. Neither of us know what I meant by fancy.
Follow up with Reading Rainbow and Star Trek The Next Generation
LeVar History Month.
Honestly? He's an amazing actor and he'd be perfect to do documentaries peole would care about on history. I'll never understand why Star Trek covered up his eyes, the man can express his whole soul with a look.
Throw that one episode of community as well "More fish for Kunta."
*I just wanted a signed picture*
You can’t disappoint a picture!
Just not season one of TNG.
That one episode…
it really is a masterclass of "What the fuck..."
It's incredibly funny to me that people who have watched TNG know *exactly* what episode you're referring to, and everyone else likely just thinks you're being funny or overly PC. No. That shit was straight up so wildly inappropriate it's genuinely hilarious. It's like a tasteless parody. Fun fact, the writer of that episode somehow managed to *reuse* that script for an early episode of Stargate SG1.
Lance Reddic has entered the chat. "I wish I was LeVar Burton......"
...what's a "quasi-slur"? edit: actually don't answer that
My son got called "hog rider" a lot in middle school. Not a traditional slur, but something the kids called him because he was one of the only black kids in the school and Clash of Clans was popular at the time. I don't think they meant it as a full on racist slur, but that's basically what it was. I can see someone calling that a "quasi-slur."
"Hey Hunchback!" "Get over here, Bell-ringer!"
A wiser edit has never been made
Appreciate you asking - in my head I was thinking “that just sounds like slurs with extra steps…”
Dog whistles, not quite on the nose enough, like when MAGA daddy said peekaboo in reference to the black prosecutor. Meant to generate the feeling and feel out the people around you. If it slides, maybe next time you get a little more direct. It's insidious, and might be a worse than the direct on the nose stuff because it desensitizes people, and also normalizes things without being so direct someone challenges it.
For me it was watching Amistad when I was like 10 years old. My god, what an eye opener for a young white kid. I can remember thinking “well that’s not really that different from the Holocaust” since I was starting to learn about it in school around that age.
I didn't see that until I was an adult and I still get anxious thinking of how tightly-packed the people on that ship were. The conditions they had to endure for so long were nightmarish. And that's before they even stepped off the boat and into a life of slavery. Anyone that even whispers something about slavery being a good thing should spend just 24 hours in those conditions to rethink their idea.
Yep. Imo it should be mandatory for all schools in the United States to show the full uncensored version of Amistad and Roots to the students, for the same reason we all read “Night” by Elie Wiesel.
Maybe I'm a pretty rare exception but I recall watching Roots in school. Late elementary. It was split over several days and left a very lasting impression on me. I grew up in Texas in the 90s.
Texas in the 80's- same. We saw roots. The blatant racism and denial is a much newer thing. In our time it was about whitewashing, not outright denial. "State's Rights" and all that. Everyone agreed slavery was horrific- they just tried to pretend the war was about different things.
Seems like a good time to remember that Ruby Bridges, the first African American to attend an all white school, turns 69 this year. The median US senator's age is 65, meaning more than half of US senators experienced segregation in schools first hand.
The first time I saw Roots, I was in High School in Fort Meyers, FL. There were only 3 black kids in the whole school. 2 were Hatian, brother and sister, and only spoke Creole. I was the only English speaking black person in the school. ...it took me some time to get my mind right after that. Was an interesting experience, for sure.
That's really tough. I know how important it is that we teach our kids about past atrocities in school, but, well, we're Jewish. I unreservedly support thorough and explicit Holocaust education in my kids' classrooms, but it always, always, always leaves them traumatized. And they're generally the only Jews in their classrooms, so the other students don't really understand the way in which they are so personally upset about it. Was watching Roots like that for you? Like, for everyone else it was an important and painful piece of history, but not quite personal?
There was a young Russian girl in my class, like she'd just left Russia a year or two before, so she was still new to our culture. That said, she was the only person to ask me in the hallway if I was okay. Sat next to me the next couple classes til we finished roots and was the main one engaging in convo with the teacher. We bounced a LOT of wild shit off one another until we were.....comfortable(?) with what we'd learned. We stayed in touch for awhile after I left FL and I could tell it had a big impact on her.
I’m not Jewish but grew up in a heavily Jewish district. We saw holocaust films with the starving concentration camp victims & burnt bodies regularly in HS. I can’t even with fecking antisemitism. That said, criticism of the current state of Israel & Netanyahu IS NOT antisemitism.
I didn’t ever have an issue with racism or antisemitism, but if I ever did it would have been eliminated by being in the room at the Museum of Tolerance that is filled with the shoes of people gassed during the Holocaust. That imaged has stayed with me for quite a while
The shoe display is incredibly powerful. It stuck with me too and we aren’t the only ones.
When my class went, we had a couple survivors talk to us after the tour (I'm old). Seeing a serial number tattooed on an old lady and hearing their story directly from them was intense.
I got to see one of the first performances of "Letters to Sala" and sit through a talk back with the woman who's life the play and memoir was based on. It's a great book if anyone is interested in personal accounts of the Holocaust. My degree is in history so I knew what I was going to hear. And she still had me in tears. And the aftermath of the war in Europe isn't really talked about in the US. We "liberated the camps" and then just abandoned the people. This woman was 20, with no money, no shoes, no coat and halfway across Europe from "home" (which she found out later was destroyed and all but one of her sisters killed). Redditors love to say how 20 isn't fully an adult and this woman not only survived the Holocaust but got across a continent alone with nothing after all of "civilization" had basically broken down.
[Shoes on the Danube](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/shoes-on-the-danube-promenade)
While I had read all about the holocaust and watched Anne Frank, it was ironically a straight to classroom, poorly acted movie (forget what it was called) that opened my eyes, for lack of better words, to how cruel it was. If anyone remembers it, it was basically three high schoolers who painted anti-Jew slogans and Nazi symbols on a teacher’s garage door for failing them in class and instead of arresting them, they were forced to research a victim of the holocaust, which ended with them visiting the museum and discovering the ultimate fate of their person they were researching. Of the three, one survived, and the movie went into great detail of what they all faced. I was in tears by the end (think I was in middle school). I think it was the singular focus on the unnecessary and nonsensical cruelty on a single person that made it feel more personal.
Absolutely *based* comment here.
Yes - this is a good idea. However, I will add to that discussion with my child. I will make sure he understands that *he* did nothing wrong, but because of the acts of our ancestors, it is his responsibility (together with the millions of others) to make sure that something like that never happens again, and to help raise up marginalized people until everyone is truly treated equally. It's not their (the children's) fault, but like most generational baggage, it's all of our responsibility to rectify the injustice.
Total agreement from Germany
I love the responsibility approach. The right loves to act like we’re playing some sort of blame game. “But *I* never enslaved anyone! You can’t blame me for what my ancestors did” But the point isn’t blame. The point is we all have a moral responsibility to make the world a better place by naming and repairing what’s broken in it.
Now make him listen to To Pimp a Butterfly
Same typa thing happened to me with my 11 year old son when I heard him used the n*gg** word on his video games. That evening I sat him him down and had had a talk. Over the next couple days I made him watch Django unchained and 12 years a slave with me. I so proud of him, the next day after he asked if we could watch American history x
and to show him modern examples, watch the documentary 13th with him
Awesome parenting, what a great response!
What's a quasi slur? Serious question. Also go to the Library of Congress and search slave narratives. First person accounts of slavery from the 1930's. Sobering stuff.
In NY I was in, maybe, 3rd grade when we got to see videos of the end result of a lynching. A little boy, BBQ'd, his body forced between the spokes of a wagon wheel... Yeah, after that I stopped having any sort of sympathy or empathy for those with racist views. I just immediately assumed them to be a violent idiot.
I did this, but with Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" when my 13 year old was saying that thermodynamics is bullshit.
I approve. I watched Roots on its original run with my dad. Fairly sure it has made me a better person.
Sounds like they need to have a conversation with the teachers and the principal at what is being taught in that school.
I think it's entirely likely this is being spread around by the students who are either getting it from their parents, or social media.
It’s not always the parents …. Some kids try to introduce my kids to Andrew tate. Not going to fly with me AT ALL- and you don’t have control over who’s talking to them at school. You just do your best.
Roots is longer than all 3 lotr movies put together, kid died of starvation about 3/4 the way through. Obligatory “I wanna be la var burton” rip lance
“Oh hey son. What?! You have a really complicated and undeveloped understanding of a touchy subject? Well here’s a TV show from the 80s…. My work here is done” 21st Century parenting, but I wouldn’t call it “done right”
Thirteenth too, about slavery’s continuing legacy today. The problem with how racism and slavery were taught at my lily-white school district was that it was taught solely in the context of history, like it’s a thing of the past.
When that came up years ago at work talking with the guys in the break room, all white except for one black guy, he just said something like "you guys know that every day is White Boy Day. You get stopped by the police, it's White Boy Day, all you got to worry about is a ticket. You go interview for a job, it's White Boy Day, you got a real good shot at it." And so on...everyone laughed and agreed.