Maybe We Do Need White History Month or Millennials Don’t Know Shit About Slavery or Picking Appropriate Essay Topics or Being a Black English Adjunct Sucks Sometimes–Merry

So, I have to go with the salutation that one of my favorite IG personalities, Jill Is Black, often uses in the opening of her videos–

Dear White People–

And then I have to say something touchy, that I almost regret, but not quite because it’s necessary–

Please get your kids.

If you are a Boomer with a Millennial kid or grandkid, or an Xer with a Millennial kid, I’m begging you. For his own good. Get him.

Explain to his little ass that while slavery did allow White America to amass tremendous wealth during the two-plus centuries of its operation, which, in turn, allowed America to become a global superpower, submitting an essay entitled “Slavery Changed America for the Better” that does not approach the institution from an economic standpoint solely is problematic as hell.

Could you–just–for me? Please?

I literally just read the following in a first year student’s paper:

“In conclusion, through slavery people have learned to stand up for what they believe in and show off who they are. Many people see slavery as a negative thing because of all the damage it had on people, physically and mentally. But in the end, slavery was actually a positive thing for the world because people learned to fight for who they are. It all started when slaves were brought to the colonies in the 1800’s. Men and women were forced to live in terrible conditions as farm hands and some as house servants. No slaves were given the privilege of reading or writing as that might cause [sic] to learn how to escape. They were encouraged to raise large families and the slave women would be taken by their masters for sex. However, slaves would use the underground railroad [sic] to escape and many did. This simple act of courage changed the world. This started the beginning of a long flight for equal rights because slavery started segregation . . . Racism really came about after slavery however, slavery was something that really opened up people’s eyes.”

And this passage really opened up my eyes. It made me rethink some things about which I was “certain” for years before I encountered this essay.

Because every February, on social media, I read a barrage of posts and reposts from young white people arguing about the “reverse racism” of Black History Month. And the shit gets me tight (shout out, Cardi B.)

These white kids’ favorite point to make is White History Month would never be tolerated. So why, they ask, should Black History Month be allowed to exist?

And usually I respond to this argument by counter-arguing that Americans are taught the history of White America in school, but very few are taught about black history beyond receiving concise briefings on slavery, Emancipation, and Jim Crow (“Africans were kidnapped and sold into slavery. They worked under harsh conditions. Lincoln freed them with the Emancipation Proclamation. The South retaliated to the loss of slavery and the Civil War by instituting segregation. MLK and LBJ ended Jim Crow”), if that.

And, even if grade school students are taught anything about Reconstruction or the Civil Rights Movement or–brace yourselves–the Black Power Movement in school, they are not taught these things with very much historicity, nuance, or depth. So that is why America needs Black History Month and not White History Month.

But you know what?

Maybe all these angry millennials are right. Maybe we do need a White History Month after all.

Because maybe if we taught the history of slavery and Emancipation and Reconstruction and Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement in terms of what white people were doing during these periods rather than what black people were experiencing--if we used the “great deeds done by great [white] men” paradigm to teach the history–if we completely subverted the black narrative the way we do the indigenous narrative, say, in teaching about the geographical expansion of the nation–

Then white kids would actually know what the fuck happened and know better than to try to put a “silver lining” on a racist genocide.

Maybe if we provided them an encyclopedic number of facts about how white people captured Africans, transported them to the Caribbean, “made” them through torture and starvation, transported them to America, sold them, broke them, raped them, separated their illegal families, murdered them when they attempted to escape, maimed them when they stole food or read or wrote something, while the whole time justifying their actions with decontextualized and misrepresentative religious doctrine and pseudo-science, these young white people would know better than to write shit like “A privilege that slaves did have that owners and masters actually encouraged was reproducing.”

Because here’s the thing: White slave owners bred slaves. They didn’t set them up on dates and provide them with cushy rooms and beds so they could comfortably and happily make babies. They forced the most physically robust of their slaves to have sex, whether they had intimate relationships or not, in the hopes they would make more physically robust slaves that the owners could exploit for free labor, or they could sell.

Slave owners didn’t afford slaves anything that could be accurately called a “privilege.” They “granted” slaves petty “freedoms” that weren’t theirs to grant (“inalienable rights,” remember?) and never should’ve been stolen from the slaves in the first place.

But, mostly, they treated them like animals of a slightly higher order than horses.

And all of this began happening, systematically, in the 1600s. Which means white people held generations of black people in bondage for–no–not 63 years–from 1800-1863–but from 1619-1865.

Maybe if we had a White History Month, and we taught our young people even more of what white people did to establish this country, in more explicit terms than we generally use in classrooms and textbooks, then students wanting to write about slavery, like mine, could at least get that–the timeline of the institution–correct.

They could write things like “A Dutch ship manned by a Capt. Jope and Mr. Marmaduke brought the first African slaves–20 kidnap victims–to Jamestown, VA, in 1619 to oversee tobacco crops,” and “On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger read aloud, in Galveston, TX, the text of General Order No. 3, which signified the total emancipation of slavery in America.”

Now, of course I’m being petty and facetious.

The student that wrote this “slavery changed America for the better” paper obviously needs to learn the history of slavery as it occurred in black and white society.

But I’m saying that America needs White History Month because my student’s lack of factual knowledge about slavery–his lack of understanding of the role of anti-blackness in the development of American culture and white identity politics–is indicative of a legitimate problem the white people of this country have with facing the ugly parts of American history.

But this isn’t just their problem. Once this seemingly pandemic need to avoid knowing the truth about how American was built funnels down to one student and one essay that he turns in to one instructor, then I’m affected.

Which is where my frustration comes in. At the intersection of the student’s privileged myopia and my beleaguered humanness.

Because I do not need to be accosted by micro-aggressive bullshit like this–which diminishes the horror of slavery and perilous nature of the black experience in America—no matter how inadvertent or “innocent” that micro-aggressive bullshit might be.

Because when a white person fails to acknowledge the history of black people in this country, it makes it impossible for him or her to contextualize and so correctly understand the difficulties that black people face in America today.

It almost ensures that he or she will interact with black people on the bases of assumptions, myths, lies, and stereotypes, and they will perpetuate some form of bigotry.

Yes, as a teacher, I understand this young man’s seeming desire to rewrite history–to expurgate the immense cruelty with which white slavers treated slaves–or absolve white people of that cruelty in whatever convoluted way he can manage–so he cannot be viewed as an accessory in his ancestors’ crime after the fact or a beneficiary of their proverbial stolen merchandise (i.e. white privilege).

However, I do not understand why he would recruit me of all people to help him in that effort in any way.

I have no interest in making anyone feel as if slavery was anything other than the holocaust that it was. Why should I?

And it was a holocaust. Some 10 million died as a consequence of American slavery. That’s more than the populations of 72 whole countries around the globe, including Ireland, New Zealand, Lebanon, Croatia, Singapore, Norway, Denmark, and Switzerland.

So I don’t particularly care whether slavery made America “better” or not, and I don’t think any decently intelligent person should ever try to argue that.

I mean–of course it galvanized black people to fight for their rights–that is a fact, not an arguable thesis–but, besides that, wouldn’t it have been “better” if black people didn’t need to fight for what they already had in their homes in Africa? I’m just saying.

So white people–please–

Give your children a book about slavery for Christmas. Yes–I’m going to make this a PSA. Tuck a book about slavery into your children’s stockings–something they can skim some time between their Pokémon-playing and YouTube-viewing–and help stop madness like this from persisting.

Direct them to a historically accurate Internet source where they can read about slavery, so they can understand how wrong it is to a) endeavor to do something like prove slavery was “good” for America (as if black people aren’t part of America), and b) present the fruits of that endeavor to a black American woman that is the descendant of slaves (my great-great-great grandfather, who my great-grandmother remembered to me as a kid was freed in Emancipation).

Let me give you a gift. Links. There are wonderful book suggestions for very young to college-age kids here, here, here, and here. Have at them.

And tell your young people–from a logical standpoint–they cannot argue that slavery made America “better” because “better” is a comparative term, and we can only extrapolate–we can’t know–what America might’ve been if there hadn’t been slavery.

Although I wish to God that we could.