"Leaders of the slaveholding South called the Declaration [of Independence] 'a most pernicious falsehood.' South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun called the very idea of equal rights a 'false doctrine.'..
"The influential 'second' Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s was anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish as well as anti-Black, which was why, unlike the original Klan, it flourished outside the South.. Christian nationalism has been a powerful force throughout America’s history" https://wapo.st/3QonhLY
— #GiftArticle
"White Americans tolerated the systematic oppression of Black people for a century after the Civil War. They tolerated violence in the South, injustice in the courtrooms, a Supreme Court that refused to recognize the equal rights of Black people, women and various minorities...
"Irish Americans may not remember Thomas Nast cartoons.. Italian Americans may not recall that a riot by 'New Orleans’ finest' lynched and murdered 11 Sicilian immigrants and were never charged."
— #ushistory
Useful history on US housing and economy from the great depression since to today’s deeply messed up housing and economic structure. Also the US housing market can be fixed through local measures. Cities have taken the first step to loosen zoning laws; financing remains a challenge.
James, by Percival Everett.
You are a runaway slave, your escape attempt joined by a white child named Huckleberry, and as the Mississippi River (and various white people) try to kill you, it gets harder to keep your truth from Huck.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
However, ss #MathewCooke rightly analyses in his podcast*, all US institutions were originally built as a #SlaverNation. Unequal justice for different parts of society continue(d) to be the groundwork for the development of the Republic.
Whereas the #UK was (arguably) able to eventually overcome the strongly discriminatory nature...
...of the #MagnaCarta 2), which only applied to barrons and the clergy, the #US despite #Reconstruction and all the Amendments was never able to really overcome systemic racism and plutocratic discrimination. In fact, ever since #CitizensUnitedVsFEC, the pendulum has been swinging in the opposite direction, so far culminating in the overturning of #RoeVsWade.
...#Orwellian#dystopias simultaneously: #1984 and, more pertinent in this context, #AnimalFarm. Seen from this novel's perspective, aspiring to be the One Animal [that] Is more equal Than Others makes perfect sense. It even strongly appeals to the lowest human instincts.
I have long thought that #DefundThePolice doesn’t have any merit, except for anarchists waiting for the breakdown of civil society to loot shops, etc.
...recently begun to think that given the slaver and colonial origins of the police force in the US, it might become necessary to rebuild everything from the ground up. How? I wouldn't know.
Looking at the causes auf #BLM and the current police brutalities against students exercising their #1A on public grounds (sometimes private--different story,) the system might be beyond repair indeed.
...#RomanRepublic, elected officials of one of the 3 branches of government, deserves immunity while in office. Once their term ends, they must be accountable to the fullest extent of the law.
This is what really differentiates a democracy from (absolute) monarchy or Putinesque authoritarianism/tyranny.
Therefore, if there is serous cause that members of the government committed crimes, their immunity must be lifted by their...
...their peers or another branch of government. (Impeachment is clearly not working for the Presidential office, the chief reason being the undemocratic #filibuster.)
So, any any special Law Enforcement Officers' Bill of Rights (#LEBOR, #LEOBR, or #LEOBoR) for the police is undemocratic and should be ruled unconstitutional, including contractual means to circumvent this fact.
It's a manifestation of #AnimalFarm.
"And it's eerily similar to the double standards enjoyed by the apparatchiks back in the Soviet Union."
Yes, absolutely.
And there is yet another similarity: the #fascist movement in #Italy with its #BlackShirts came into existence b/c the #Italian landed gentry and industrialists were afraid of losing their property to the plebs, like their #Russian counterparts in the #OctoberRevolution of 1918.
Today is Earth Day. National Geographic tells the story of the first time the event was held, in 1970. It was the result of outrage at a devastating oil spill in Santa Barbara in Jan. 1969, which killed thousands of birds and stained beaches along California's coast.
There are more than 180,000 historical markers throughout America, and many of them tell only partial truths. Over the past year, NPR has analyzed crowdsourced data to uncover some of those errors. Many were strange, funny or silly — like a sign that marks the home of a world-famous Santa Claus school in Albion, New York, and a marker in Arizona that pays tribute to a donkey that drank beer. But many paint a fractured version of history: 70% of markers that mention plantations do not mention slavery, and there are 500 markers that describe the Confederacy in glowing terms. Here's more.
Last night I dreamed [energy drink brand] released a limited edition "Milk" flavor. The can had Nixon on it. Looked at the ingredients and it had pineapple in it, referencing his last White House meal.
Obama was the best president of my lifetime, but a lot of Democrats don’t seem to know that.
The influence of GOP media has a long reach. In subtle ways, such as language and framing, it seeps into everything from the New York Times to liberal social media. It seems to have convinced a number on the left that Obama was evil.
—
1/3 #ushistory#politics#observation#progressive#media
Pretty day. Sorry that we'll be a little stinky on the Dinky 🚉 (the nation's shortest scheduled rail line). https://www.njtransit.com/dinky We'll do our best to clean up before boarding. 🦨😂
"And though some may forget because of her proximity to the glitz and glamor of Hollywood, Beyoncé is a Black Texan.
In that context, her critics are misunderstanding Cowboy Carter’s lush symbolism. She’s striving to communicate many things, of course, while also simply reminding all of us that Black cowboys and rodeo performers have been part of the social fabric of Texas, the South and the US for a very long time."
Houston was a boomtown before oil - thanks to cotton.
This mural near the old "Cotton Exchange" shows a birds eye view of what the city looked like back then in the 1930s (the era is recognizeable by the presence of the Neils Esperson Building).
The US has erased a lot of it's own history through "urban renewal", but some bits of history remain and remind us of that.
"In May 2021, Thorpe had issued a formal apology for Antioch’s mistreatment of early Chinese immigrants, including the torching of Chinatown and driving out its residents, which has been documented by local newspapers and historians. Thorpe’s actions led to major cities like San Jose, Los Angeles and San Francisco passing similar resolutions."
In my Canadian survey course tomorrow, I'll also briefly mention the projection into the country of the political project of race and memory that was the Lost Cause of the Confederacy via this French-language plaque erected in 1957 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in Montreal "à la mémoire de Jefferson Davis." A victim of the woke mind virus avant la lettre, it was removed from the wall of the Bay Building on Union Avenue in 2017.
Affirmative Action is a way to try to right generational wrongs that have caused damage to entire portions of our population, damages that continue to reverberate today.
Given that the US continues to underfund public primary education in poor and underprivileged communities where generally minorities live in higher proportion, yes, this is breaking history and the future for many in this country.