White Lies and Truth

White Lies and Truth

As we look at the chaos in the United States, many people claim to not understand how we got to this point of chaos in our country. It perplexes them and they search for answers to a situation whose answer is so clear, we all look right through it.

Our education system, combined with the historical lies, myths and fairytales that have been taught in our nation for generations, have produced the exact outcome desired, a sense of White superiority and the belief that everyone else is inferior. We have an education system that is designed to provide a good to excellent education to White and rich children as it purposefully, under educates and strips educational resources from every other child in the nation, including poor White children.

Our children/citizens are taught about the greatness of White people who literally murdered and raped their way across the continent to take control of land they had no rightful claim to, to build a home and wealth. We then teach our children/citizens about the greatness of White people who literally committed every crime against humanity imaginable; while not considering that teaching the greatness of the White historical figures who committed these monstrous acts, not only glorifies the monstrous acts they committed, but belittles, diminishes, and completely disregards the life and humanity of those murdered and abused, making them acceptably expendable.

Few of our children/citizens learn about Newton Knight, the White man who tried to lead a slave rebellion prior to the Civil War or that his rebellion was part of the catalyst to spark the Civil War. Nor do they know that his rebellion was because poor Whites could barely earn a living due to slave labor. Excepting Nate Turner, most do not realize there were dozens of slave rebellions in the United States for freedom which resulted in the second amendment to maintain a force to gather up run away slaves and if necessary, stop slave rebellions, not protect citizens from the government as many believe in err.

Few children/citizens learn about the contraband camps (concentration camps) of the Union army after slavery, which used Blacks, first as free labor before deciding to cage them within the contraband camps and starve them to death and be buried where they fell, to reduce their numbers in the country, creating fertilizer for peach groves the locals won’t eat because they know the bodies of Black citizens fertilize the peach groves. Nor do they realize the Nazis studied discrimination against African Americans and utilized everything they learned on the Jews during the holocaust, including concentration camps and death camps.

Few of our children/citizens are taught about the many massacres of both Black and Indigenous people let alone the details and death counts of such events as:

Trail of Tears 4,000 dead

Wounded Knee 150-350 dead

Bear River massacre 14 soldiers dead, 224-300 Natives dead

Shoshone massacre 270-400. dead

1863 Lawrence massacre 150 dead

1898 Wilmington massacre 60-300 dead

1906 Atlanta massacre 25-40 dead

1917 East St. Louis massacre (our military assisted rioting Whites attacking Black citizens, burning them out of their homes and shooting with machine guns as they tried to escape) hundreds dead

April - November 1919 Red Summer of 36 race riots The resulting casualties of the riots include: 50+ fatalities; 527 injured; and 1,000 black families left homeless.

1921 Black Wall Street massacre/looting/destruction 300-800 dead, hundreds more missing.

1923 Rosewood Florida massacre/looting/destruction 27-150 dead

1935 Harlem riots 3 dead, 100+ injured

1943 Harlem riots 6 dead, 435+ injured

1955-1969 Civil Rights Movement 41 dead acknowledged

EVERY civil rights activist was considered a threat to national security

EVERY civil rights organization, (Black, Hispanic, Asian and Native) were all infiltrated by FBI agents

EVERY civil rights activist that was not MURDERED, was imprisoned, chased from the shores of the mainland or STRONGLY encouraged to no longer fight for civil rights

1985 police drop bomb on Black Philadelphia community to go after members of MOVE, killing MOVE members and several residents

1992 Rodney King riots 63 dead, 2,383 injured

2014 Black Lives Matter protests and

2020 murder of George Floyd riots and sadly, it’s not the full list.

The discussion of the continuance of the Klu Klux Klan as a terror organization that has murdered and terrorized hundreds of communities has lasted well over one hundred years without being named as a terror organization, despite the police and FBI hunting down and destroying every previous Black, Hispanic, Native and Asian civil rights organization who NEVER murdered or terrorized so much as one person (this includes Black Lives Matter), and in the case of the Black Panther Party, who created over sixty social programs to assist the poor, of which forty were adopted and are still utilized by our government.

We don’t teach how members of the Klu Klux Klan were also members of the police departments, in every level of government and political office, made the laws, of which many were designed to not only be unjust but in many instances, as humiliating as possible.

When we teach about the new deal we forget to teach that Blacks were skillfully and carefully left out despite suffering from the depression, just as Whites, with little to no assistance in a nearly dead economy because domestics and agriculturalists (the jobs most Black citizens worked) were purposefully left out of social security and relief (welfare) support.

We don’t teach about 10% of the country being gifted free of charge to Whites, sometimes by claiming enslaved people as family, which was worth fifty acres, then forcing the enslaved for whom they received the land, amongst varying crimes against humanity, to work the land for free.

We don’t teach about Black World War II veterans that were excluded from the benefits of the G.I. bill for housing and education.

We have all these issues that explain the racial hatred some White citizens harbor, that falsely present a pristine White nation with little input from the people of color that were slaughtered, abused, misused and actually did the work to build and rocket this country forward as a world leader. Because of the way our country lies to our children/citizens, many Whites look at the history of the United States and only see White people and as a result, many Whites believe, incorrectly, I might add, that only White citizens did anything of import to build this nation.

Most believe the enslaved were domestics and field hands only, but that’s also not true. They won’t teach they were skilled dressmakers and tailors, masons, carpenters, builders, blacksmiths and more. Some Blacks, not only did the books of the plantation, they assisted in investments and they actually ran the day to day financial business of the plantation. But if they taught that information, maybe they would be obligated to explain the people who taught the enslaved to do the work they performed were not White.

The list of things our children/citizens are NOT taught about this country and its people is far more than they actually teach, yet once learning this ‘new’ information, never is it questioned why this information is not taught to everyone in school, nor is it questioned why it must be taught as a college elective or learned individually, rather than to every citizen.

Our nation, classically villainizes every race of people except Whites as a danger to Whites citizens, and politicians regularly portray minorities as people with some sinister plan to harm the White community, as in the Willie Horton ad used by Bush or the raping Mexican speech by Trump. Yet actual history has proven that not only to be a lie, but the opposite is true. White citizens have been the most brutal and violent people in this country from its inception to date toward every race of people including other Whites. And while many yell the defense, it was another time, as we look around our nation, the chaos, hatred and discrimination, I’m forced to ask, was it really? The behavior of the past is being repeated by police and citizens alike, on varying levels. While it is not as brutal as it was, anyone who chooses to actually look, will see the obvious similarities.

Since their arrival to the Americas, White people have committed some of the most monstrous acts in the history of the world, yet they get angry when it is discussed. From the genocide of Indigenous people to killing a million buffalo so natives would starve to slavery and its assorted atrocities to using Black babies as alligator bait; their actions have consistently been so horrifyingly unbelievable that a human being could think of such cruelty, let alone actually perform the associated atrocities. Yet when the greatness of America is touted, we don’t talk about the human cost of that greatness or the monstrous acts of Whites to get us to that level of greatness.

Of course, we don’t want little children to know their grandpa they love and adore was a monster, so rather than owning the beast, we diminish the humanity of the people he killed and abused or leave them out of the story completely. This is the root of racism, discrimination and hate in the United States, the lie to convince those who see brutality, to dismiss and not see it at all through the diminishment of the humanity of “others”.

The exclusion of actual facts that teach the real history of this country, is the source of racism and the omissions of truth and fact, inspire Whites to rise up in anger, yelling LIES, when hearing the truth for the first time. When you belittle the lives of people by calling those who commit genocide and crimes against humanity on them great, you make those human beings completely expendable, having little to no human worth.

But if these historical figures really are great, why can’t we teach our children about their greatness? Why don’t we tell our children/citizens George Washington didn’t have wooden teeth, which would have expanded with moisture and not fit, he took the teeth out of the mouths his slaves to make dentures? Why can’t we tell our children that a slave doesn’t have the ability to consent to sex, so every time Thomas Jefferson forced sex on Sally Hemmings, it was rape or that he enslaved his biological children with her?

When slavery is briefly mentioned to our children/citizens, why do we not give the full list of atrocities committed against the enslaved, the full list of jobs they performed or the full list of slave codes? Why don’t we give the children/citizens a list, with pictures of the torture devices used? Why do we spend so much time making up lies, myths and fairytales about people deemed great who committed monstrous acts and crimes against humanity? It would appear, that “someone” is ashamed of the truth, otherwise it would be boldly taught to all citizens.

Why does our education system downplay the genocides and atrocities of our great White leaders? Why do we not teach our children about man’s inhumanity to man in the United States? Why do we forget the many communities literally destroyed by angry or jealous White people? Why does the United States remove the people of color who stood side by side with Whites from history? Why have White citizens, knowing natives and Africans were here, not questioned their virtual absence and diminished presence in history?

For many White citizens, their American identity is inextricably linked to the greatness of the pioneers, founding fathers and confederate soldiers. When those citizens look at themselves, they don't see crimes against humanity or genocide, they see the greatness they have been trained to see. Many of those very same citizens, who have not been accurately taught United States history, view the absence of Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanics and Asians, or their minimal exposure to their presence, as an absence of valuable contributions to the nation.

Instead of linking their American identity to highly flawed leaders of the past, many White citizens need to reevaluate their identiy as United States citizens. They need to disconnect from the connection that gives them a sense of pride and understanding to the people of the past so that they can embrace and understand the current problems we, as a nation, are experiencing today.

Until we develop the stomach and courage to admit the truth, our country will continue to periodically explode in chaos and violence as it has done repeatedly over the last century and a half. Until we learn to accept the truth of United States history, rather than embracing lies, myths, fairytales and fantasy, we will never be able to pull out the roots of hate, racism and discrimination, nor will we ever have liberty and justice for all. These roots exist in our nation because we continue to lie about the character and integrity of people who could teach serial killers to do their worst. Just as we would never call a serial killer great, we should never teach our children/citizens that people whose actions are equivalent to those of serial killers great, again, it diminishes the lives of those they abused.