American history, for its relatively short lifespan, involved many instances of injustice and atrocities. Since its conception, it has thrived on outrageous instances of discrimination and dehumanization – with the reasons lying in multi-billion-dollar revenue that these practices produced. Ever since the moment the first captured Africans stepped on American soil and to the present police brutality acts flashing in front of us, the Black struggle to be considered respected citizens has never been ending. America continued to scar and beat its former slaves long after that. In modern textbooks, there is a tendency to rewrite history, either to mute the facts or to lie about them completely – a vandalization of our own memory. All Americans must learn their real history, for it is history’s prime purpose – to teach the next generation the faults and mistakes of the past so that they never happen again.
Our story starts in the slavery days, which is the most obvious example of dehumanization that Black people have endured in this country, but it certainly does not end with its formal abolition. Long after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and even after Juneteenth, Black Americans experienced all the ways and the tricks the system came up with to keep them as secondary citizens. Juneteenth, of course, marks the moment that the mechanism of black liberation was set into motion. This is the reason why it is currently petitioned across all of the states to become an official national holiday, as it should have always been. However important is it to celebrate the movement’s victories? It is by far more important to paint an accurate picture in the minds of our contemporaries about the state of the matters of that time.
All Americans, despite the skin color and ethnic identity, need to have a clear factual knowledge about the situation of African-Americans at any point of US history in order to understand the current events and the direction that the politics have taken now. The debate for installing the national holiday of Juneteenth and taking down the Confederacy statues has populated the major audiences’ minds. While these problems are important, the people, in my opinion, are not focusing on the main goal we should be pursuing. After the Civil War, freedom for slaves came; however, de-facto, “black codes” were put up, criminalizing black people and exploiting their labor for free (History). There are more examples from the Jim Crow era to the recent past, including infuriating cases of police prejudice against black people. LaGarett King worded it well, “the overarching theme is, ‘Yes, we made mistakes, but we overcame because we are the United States of America’ ‘ (Silva). However, such perception does nothing to aid the current situation, as “it has erased tons of history that would combat that progressive narrative” (King as cited in Silva). We need to shift our focus from the current insignificant issues to educating the masses about the realities that were in place over a hundred years ago.
Black Lives Matter campaign and several other activists and educators are continuing to do their work towards a vision of an equal society that respects all of its citizens, providing them with equal rights, opportunities and freedoms. How can one contribute to the cause? What can I, single-handedly, do? You, and every and each one of you needs to understand: American society is so deeply rooted in racist tendencies, being built on the base of them, essentially, that to rework it entirely will require an immense group effort. We need to petition against altering the textbooks, boycott the corporations and political groups that do it, get our facts straight, trust only credible sources and educate one another. There will always be opposition; however, our collective force will not only triumph because of numbers but because we serve the truth and equality that continues to guide us further.
References
Silva, D. (2020). From Juneteenth to the Tulsa massacre: What isn’t taught in classrooms has a profound impact. NBC News, Web.
Nittle, N. K. (2021). How the Black Codes Limited African American Progress After the Civil War. History.com, Web.