Last night and today #bunkerbitchakadjt spewed a false narrative of American history. He talked about people trying to destroy America by tearing down statues of American heroes. He talked about about the hero’s who built this country but he lied. He lied to himself and to the people who refuse to accept the real story of America.
The story begins in 1619 when the first settlers set foot on what was to become the United States. Those settlers didn’t discover a new land. They invaded the land of indigenous people who had been here long before there was a civilized Europe. These invaders brought with them indentured servants and slaves. The indentured servants could one day look forward to freedom but the slaves could have no Hope’s of freedom. The slaves were my ancestors stolen and traded from mother Africa.
The settlers were not prepared for the hardships of the new land and but for the help of the indigenous people they would have perished. Out of this survival arouse a custom still celebrated each November. We call it Thanksgiving. The settlers were giving thanks for a new life with new freedoms. The slaves that they brought with them and the indigenous people would find that they had little to be thankful for.
It didn’t take long for the settlers to decide that they were more entitled to this new land than the indigenous people who had welcomed them and helped them to support. Rather than see them as equals they labeled them as savages so that they could justify their actions of treachery. Meanwhile my ancestors from Africa were forced to toil from sunup to sunset to enrich people grown greedy and blind to the oppression they were placing on the backs of other men and women. They justified it by telling themselves and the rest of the world that these people in bondage were less than human.
Time progressed and these European settlers found themselves chafing be English colonies. They longed for independence. The fight started slowly but the thirst for freedom grew. The irony of this thirst for freedom was that the first man to fall, Crispus Attucks was a man of African and indigenous blood. Quite possibly a slave who laid down his life for a land that did not love him.
The colonies fought for and won their freedom from England. They wrote a declaration of Independence and a Constitution. They said that all men are created equal. But of course that didn’t apply to slaves because they were conveniently deemed to be less than human. Indigenous people whose land the coveted were uncivilized savages.
The capital of this nation was built with slave labor. The indigenous people of this land were forced off their land to make room for European invaders. That is the history of the United States.
Large numbers of Chinese laborers were imported to the US to help build the railroads to the west. When that work was completed special Chinese immigration laws were enacted. Chinese immigration was heavily restricted until 1965.
By virtue of the Civil War slaves were freed from physical bondage. The reconstruction period began and lasted barely ten years before black codes and Jim Crow once again made the lives of black Americans a living hell.
Americas history is not a story of pulling one self up by your bootstraps. It’s a story of racial oppression and exploitation. If we care about truth let’s tell it rather than made up stories that leave out inconvenient truths.
The history of the United States is not the story of a single people. It is the story of the indigenous people who welcomed the settlers and their ancestors. It is the history of the african slaves held in bondage first by chains and then by policy. It is the history of the Chinese and other asians who have made America home. It is the story of Latinos from all over the world who made this country home. It is not just a white story.
Last night and today #BunkerbitchakaDJT tried to rewrite the history of America. One of my favorite authors, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called the “Tipping Point”. We have passed the Tipping Point. We won’t go back to the way things once were. The African proverb says that “The child that is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel it’s warmth”. How we deal with this is up to us.
THINK!!
EYES WIDE OPEN!!!
PLEASE SHARE!!!!