Juneteenth and the lack of black lives in US curricula

[Dill]

(06-22-2020, 09:02 PM)Truck_1_0_1_ Wrote: As mentioned in the rep, very good points; personally think it's a culture thing that started the oppression, back when they were taken from Africa: steal them from their land, strip away their rights and freedoms (ie: make them, "culturally-lesser," or, "culturally-beneath," White Man) and then the oppression falls in line, the second one of them attempts to take back what was taken.

JMO, I may be way off.

Certainly, slaves were socialized in ways that reduced incentives to save money, value education, develop a personal work ethic and assume responsibility for the welfare of their own children. When freed, they were thrown onto the economy to fend for themselves, with what little help they were originally given rolled back by 1875.

And yet, in the hundred years following the Civil War, millions of black citizens reversed that socialization, became hard working people who valued education, saved money, and celebrated personal responsibility (the latter sometimes to their detriment).  Remember one of the motivations for the Tulsa massacre was the AFFLUENCE of Greenwood--black people with grand pianos in their homes and new cars. Educated and "uppity." Unfair to poor whites. The backbone of the Civil Rights movement were these capable, competent and courageous descendants of slaves, who fought to get their foot into higher education as well lunch counters. Just as the backbone of white supremacy, segregation, and the "take American back" movement has been those who felt most threatened by black success.

If there is an urban "thug culture," now quite unfairly labelled "black culture," then likely its roots are less in slavery than in the innumerable blocks to advancement that striving black families encountered for decades, even post WWII. Blocks which prevented them from getting loans and housing, and concentrated many in urban settings among "their own kind." Such blocks can not only induce cynicism towards about life goals easily in reach of whites, but lead to celebration of "tricksters" who live by cheating "the man." No surprise if, in an advanced capitalist society, a market of music and film opens which celebrate and reinforce this cynicism. 

Meanwhile, systemic racism can continue little noticed by whites, still ever ready to explain away results of long term historical trends in terms of personal responsibility, or mysterious lack thereof.