A major goal of America's radical right authoritarian (RRA) wealth and power movement is to lie about inconvenient things, including inconvenient history.
As we all recall from a couple of months ago, I posted about a plan to whitewash some very inconvenient American history by the RRA DeSantis and his happy crew of RRA thugs. They floated the idea that slavery was good for slaves because they got some learnin' 'n skills 'n good stuff 'n things out of being slaves. It was just on-the-job training with free room & board tossed in for extra goodness! Last July, the WaPo wrote about Desantis' demented faux history plan:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is intensifying his efforts to de-emphasize racism in his state’s public school curriculum by arguing that some Black people benefited from being enslaved and defending his state’s new African American history standards that civil rights leaders and scholars say misrepresents centuries of U.S. reality.Former U.S. Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, who announced last month that he was joining the race for the GOP nomination, blasted the idea that enslaved people were able to use slavery as some kind of training program.
“Slavery wasn’t a jobs program that taught beneficial skills,” Hurd, the son of a Black father and a White mother, tweeted. “It was literally dehumanizing and subjugated people as property because they lacked any rights or freedoms.”
My recollection is that the DeSantis rewrite of history cited 16 examples of slaves who done good after slavery. If I recall right, 7 or 8 of the examples were debunked almost instantly by real historians. One of the historians who came up with this crackpot scheme to whitewash slavery is a co-founder of a history think tank (or whatever) in Ohio called YAAHA (Yocum African American History Association -- no, I didn't make that up). Its communications include comments like these:
The Yocum African American History Association (YAAHA) is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to sharing educational resources about Black history and providing historical milestones that prove that Black history is American history. .... YAAHA is happy to announce that we are in the top 25 Best Black History Blogs and Websites online. We are honored to be number eight.
Welp, long story short (I know, too late for that), I wrote to YAAHA and informed them that on of their founders was spewing historically incorrect crackpottery and silly anti-historical whitewash. I was shocked that I got a response back.* Even more shocked to find that the yahoos at YAAHA were aware of the whitewash and approved of it because it spoke truth to ignorance about the benefits of slavery to slaves.
* Digression: Over the last 5-6 months, I've tried to contact all kinds of people and organizations (clueless journalists, corporate liars, crackpot scientists and politicians, etc.) when there's something worth saying to them. So far it's mostly (well, completely) been constructive criticism. I get a response back ~2% of the time and a hearty silent non-response ~98% of the time.
Back to YAAHA
After my initial dart, YAAHA sent me a follow-up email asking for contributions to their new book, The Chronicle of Heroes. The group wants to change perspectives about Black history in America. Parts of the email are shown or quoted below.
- Book size is 9" x 11," 200+ pages, 600+ photos
- Non-partisan
- Stories of cooperation between the races
- No generalities or stereotypes
- An American story of resilience
- Heroes who struggled against unmanageable circumstances
- Empowering through education
The history of Black and White communities is a tapestry woven with resilience, innovation, courage, and the quest for justice within American history. Yet, countless stories remain obscured, waiting to be unveiled. Some of the most egregious omissions are the stories of cooperation between the races. Throughout every milestone in American history, Blacks and Whites have worked together for a common cause. This is invaluable information for the citizenry as it illustrates that like-minded people transcend race.
Transcending race
_________________________________
Wait! What?
Hm. No agenda, no generalities, no stereotypes, nonpartisan, just the facts? Excuse me!! DeSantis approved this debunked faux slave history story.
What could be going on here might be a huge grift wrapped in a gigantic pile of cherry picked history and outright lies. The point is obvious: Whitewash the horrors of American slavery and get DeSantis elected as president. It's a win-win for the RRA movement and YAAHA!
One can reasonably think that DeSantis might try to make this wonderful new whitewash fiction mandatory in Florida schools, churches, libraries, bathroom stalls, hotel rooms, airplane seats, lunch counters, jails and everywhere else he can force it on people. That ought to smooth over the naughty bits of the history about American slavery.
If DeSantis can pull it off, taxpayers will pay for the means needed to deceive and disinform themselves. What a slick plan. One has to admire the big cojones on these inventive entrepreneur historians and patriotic political leaders.
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