{"id":6562,"date":"2023-07-26T09:36:26","date_gmt":"2023-07-26T13:36:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/?p=6562"},"modified":"2023-07-26T09:36:31","modified_gmt":"2023-07-26T13:36:31","slug":"white-wash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2023\/07\/26\/white-wash\/","title":{"rendered":"White Wash"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There is a movement in the United States to \u201crevise\u201d American History.  It\u2019s really kind of sad; there\u2019s a portion of our political \u201cclass\u201d that think they are the \u201cvictims\u201d.   They declare that \u201cwoke\u201d teachers (whatever that means) are trying to make their little white children feel guilty over the misdeeds of the American past.  So they want American History sanitized, whitewashed (a doubly-loaded term) to protect their children from feeling responsibility for the sins of their fathers.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emmett Till<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday was the eighty-second anniversary of Emmett Till\u2019s birth.\u00a0\u00a0Till was a fourteen year-old Black teen, who in 1955 went from his home in Chicago to visit relatives in Mississippi.\u00a0\u00a0He committed an \u201cunforgiveable sin\u201d in the then-Jim Crow South. He spoke to a white girl, twenty-one years old, in a store. Maybe he even flirted with her a bit, as fourteen year-old boys sometimes do.\u00a0\u00a0For that, he was kidnapped, tortured beyond belief, and then murdered.\u00a0\u00a0They found his body in the Tallahatchie River.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mangled corpse was eventually returned to his mother in Chicago.  She made a momentous decision:  she determined to have an open casket at his funeral.  Mamie Till-Mobley wanted the entire world to see what was done to her son.  She got little reaction from the national government.  A telegram sent to President Dwight Eisenhower asked him to see that:  \u201c(J)ustice is meted out to all persons involved in the beastly lynching of my son.\u201d  She never heard back (NYT<\/a>).  Till\u2019s murderers, Roy Bryant and RW Milam, were found \u201cnot guilty\u201d by an all-white male Mississippi jury who deliberated for an hour.  No one was ever legally held to account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photographic Memory<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

But the media, particularly the Black Press, made sure that her decision impacted the world.  More than 100,000 people personally viewed the open casket.  And the pictures of Emmett\u2019s body, and Mamie\u2019s reactions, became a national memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why was the excruciating death and funeral of this fourteen year-old so important?\u00a0\u00a0It put a true picture of the terrorism that supported Jim Crow segregation in the mind of the Nation.\u00a0\u00a0The Till story was a huge step on the road to Civil Rights.\u00a0\u00a0It inspired leaders like John Lewis and Rosa Parks to sacrifice.\u00a0\u00a0And it became the \u201cface\u201d of segregation, to be joined in the next ten years by the black and white video of Bull Connor\u2019s police dogs attacking demonstrators, the bombed church in Birmingham that killed four little girls, and John Lewis himself beaten by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Within a decade, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

National Monument<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday President Biden officially created a National Monument in honor of Emmett and Mamie Till.  The monument spans three sites:  the riverside where Emmett\u2019s body was discovered; the Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi where Bryant and Milam were tried; and the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Chicago where the funeral was held.  The riverside plaque had to be made bulletproof.  The memories of Jim Crow are still strong in the South, sixty-eight years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

History is history.\u00a0\u00a0It isn\u2019t \u201cwoke\u201d (whatever that means) or propaganda to be sanitized.\u00a0\u00a0It is America\u2019s \u201cstory\u201d, the good and the bad.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s the amazing achievements, including Black people gaining civil rights. And it\u2019s the incredible indecencies, including the lynching of Emmett Till.\u00a0\u00a0To ignore, to \u201cwhitewash\u201d those facts of our past, to scrub them from the classrooms of Florida, or here in Ohio, is to tell children a different story.\u00a0\u00a0It says to those children that they have something to be ashamed of, some unspeakable crime that they can\u2019t know about because THEY somehow bear responsibility.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the Education Department of Florida tells its teachers to talk about the \u201cbenefits\u201d of enslavement to the enslaved, (\u201c\u2026they learned trades like blacksmithing they could use in life\u201d), the kids in the classrooms aren\u2019t stupid.\u00a0\u00a0They\u2019ll know that there\u2019s a deep dark secret their teachers, or parents, or state governments, are ashamed of.\u00a0\u00a0You see, kids are smart.\u00a0\u00a0They can jump on the computer at home and see exactly what happened. It’s easily available: from\u00a0Emmett Till<\/a>\u00a0to the\u00a0horrors of enslavement<\/a>\u00a0in the 1800\u2019s.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More Perfect<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In fact, the victimhood that the \u201cwhite political class\u201d or so afraid of, is exactly what they are creating.  Good teachers teach American History in the context and spirit of the Constitution (itself a flawed, racist document).  The Constitution begins with the goal;  \u201c\u2026in order to become a more perfect union\u2026\u201d.  To become more perfect, there were \u201cimperfections\u201d, from the three-fifths compromise to the Fugitive Slave Act, that needed to be \u201cperfected\u201d.  And that\u2019s what our Nation did and does.  To deny those facts, those imperfections; is telling kids they have something to be ashamed of, that is somehow \u201ctheir\u201d fault.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s not.\u00a0\u00a0And a good teacher will let them know it\u2019s not.\u00a0\u00a0And just like the bullet holes that still scar the plaque by the river where Emmett\u2019s body was discovered, we are still in the process of becoming \u201cmore perfect\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s the lesson kids need to learn, and that every good teacher will share;\u00a0\u00a0even in Florida, and even here in Ohio.\u00a0\u00a0It isn\u2019t about being \u201cwoke\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s about kids knowing the truth, in context; and teachers knowing kids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a movement in the United States to \u201crevise\u201d American History.  It\u2019s really kind of sad; there\u2019s a portion of our political \u201cclass\u201d that think they are the \u201cvictims\u201d.   They declare that \u201cwoke\u201d teachers (whatever that means) are trying to make their little white children feel guilty over the misdeeds of the American past.  So they want … Continue reading “White Wash”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhite Wash : Our America - 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