Whitewashed History in the Land of the Freebie and the Home of the Slave

White descendants with white-European roots have been victimizing descendants of black Africa since 1619 — that’s 400 years and counting. The enslaved did not immigrate to the western hemisphere, nor did they emigrate from Africa. They were unceremoniously stolen, trafficked from diverse and disparate cultures, and trafficked into the slave trade. They were stuffed into cargo holds. If they survived their ocean transport they were sold as human resources — auctioned for their market value in a patriotically capitalist system to service the whims of a white-supremacist system. White supremacy is a system of nested partners in crime. The system merely asks its participants to refrain from questioning the unseemly exploitation that greases the machinery of “free” enterprise. Simply look the other way, assume that your complicity is self-delusion, judge it as one of those serenity prayer things that you cannot change.

White privilege goes viral by George Schwartz

American descendants of slaves (ADOS) learn the same fabricated history as Americans who are not descendants of slaves, the same rote-memorizable pack of lies that forgive all the white criminal Presidents from Washington to W, merely interrupted from 2009 to 2017. Conservative pundits still assign Mr. Obama the honor of “worst President in history.” Racist-apologists recoil at the very idea of a black man in a white house. Trump’s pissing-rights in a Moscow hotel room represent one such reaction.

What happens when your brand of organized religion includes practically no black congregants? I grew up in such an institution and I tune in to their sizable media outlets as a listener with an opposing-viewpoint. An institution that proclaims its message “universal” — while compartmentalizing every conceivable viewpoint as adhering to a “natural law” — loses credibility at every point of departure.

Here is a black memory from a Catholic in Louisiana:

Kids played a game called “black baby,” which involved throwing a ball or doll in the air and trying to catch it. I didn’t interact with African-American Catholics because there were two Catholic churches in town. St. Joseph was the white church. Our Mother of Mercy was the black church. To this day, the Diocese of Lafayette has more racially segregated churches than any other diocese in the United States. I am told that my grandfather went to confession toward the end of his life and said, “I can’t help it, Father. I hate N—s.” He knew racism was a sin. He knew he was racist. I think we all knew we were.

https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2016/07/27/white-catholics-have-talk-about-race-and-admit-their-racism

American descendants of European ancestry benefit richly and exceedingly from the system of white supremacy, a system that runs through US history like a red thread — I’m calling it a bloodied chain.

Classroom history texts must first be approved by a Texas committee that whitewashes each text used in all fifty States of its union. Ask anyone educated in an American school — from baby-boomer to millennial — you’ll find that we all learned the same sound bites.

Trump created the Birther Movement to soothe the stomachs of those who benefited most from the white-supremacist system so rudely interrupted from 2009 to 2017. Racism was strong enough to assure a racist triumph of the will on November 8, 2016.

A few bullet points:

  •  The choir does not need a new echo chamber.
  • The powerful are not lacking a societal voice.
  • The majority are not tyrannized by the minority.
  • Whiteous white supremacists are not victims of black supremacists, reverse-racists, or the Breitbart fantasy of civilization-destroying antifa who terrorize proud boys in an inconceivably anti-non-violent atmosphere that is poisoned by libtards and snowflakes. 
  • Society does not only stand on the shoulders of giants, but also on the racist greed of the insatiably privileged. 

Thanks for reading.

Author: Bill Ziegler

I am a former resident of Delhi Township. These are memories of my life and times in that community during the 1950s and 1960s. A time capsule.

33 thoughts on “Whitewashed History in the Land of the Freebie and the Home of the Slave”

  1. If it’s any comfort, here in the UK the street markets are selling toilet paper with Trump’s face on every piece. They are selling like hot cakes. True, by the way ~ George

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          1. Following the WP satirist ‘The Whitechapel Whelk’ – he’s a mate of my dad – we now call him ‘Jacob Less-Wogs’ – for obvious reasons ~ George

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  2. One thing that even bothered me as a believer was the ability to separate belief from the obvious outcome of it. Even today Christians try to distance themselves from Christendom. I no longer grant that immunity.

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      1. Absolutely. With a Panamanian, Filipino, Cherokee wife, I witness routinely the condescension exhorted on a woman much smarter than they. She just eye rolls any more with most of it, although calls people on it when appropriate. At least her English is good, which, believe it or not is the compliment she gets the most. We have a long way to go.

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        1. Thanks for the anecdote, jim. My kindest wishes to your wife, and to her rolling eyes. Condescension is a particularly odious character tell. Will now read a bit about Tagalog — the only thing I know about that language so far is that it does not rhyme with “tag along.” 🙂

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  3. The Canadian Government is doing a lot to establish a real and fundamental peace with the First Nations of the country – whether the taken measures are enough to compensate injustice of history or heal the wounds of the past, I can not value. In the USA something like that seemingly not on the agenda of the political elite?!

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    1. Thank you for this comment, suburban tracks.
      The full-scale assault and genocide of diverse cultures had already started within a year of Columbus’ appearance. Trump’s favorite President (excluding himself) is Andrew Jackson. The Supreme Court under Justice John Marshall ruled on behalf of the independence of the Cherokee Nation and Jackson delivered the equivalent of a Trumpish tweet with:
      “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”
      It set the tone for treating treaties with Indigenous People as worthless bits of paper.
      Andrew proceeded to drive them the hell out after convincing Congress to pass the Indian Removal Act. A principal actor in the Underground Railroad Movement, Harriet Tubman, won’t get to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill until Trump leaves office. Trump did offer to put her on the $2 bill.
      Columbus Day (October 14) is still a hotly guarded holiday. A number of states have officially changed it to Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

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  4. That was well said talking about America’s original sing that this place still hasn’t owned up to it to this day. I’ve lived through discrimination and double standards throughout my life and it’s a miracle how I’m even sane.

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    1. The Republican Party — they like to call themselves the party of Lincoln — has been assaulting every single protection for blacks under the law for a very long time. The Democratic Party is not a choir of angels, and they comprise too much, but the specter of McConnell, a creep without a gram of decency refuses every hint of comprise. Trump, McConnell, and the 5-4 majority in the Supreme Court threaten every remaining possibility of staving off American Fascism (Trumpism) if they cannot be stopped in 2020. Denying voter rights to every possible black person is job one for these whiteous guys. Stacey Abrams won the vote in Georgia 2018 even though the ballots were manipulated by Republican functionaries, and they even admit it, but flaunting the law is a point of pride for them.

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      1. That’s right and I hate it when they namedrop Lincoln as some kind of way to handwave their overt bigotry. The DNC used to be the ones the KKK were associated with before Civil Rights and even afterward, they only give platitudes and not tangibles to the Black community. You’re right about voting rights being trampled on which I certainly don’t dispute. It’s just really rough because I shouldn’t have to choose between overt racists and covert racists at the polls. I do appreciate your feedback on this matter.

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  5. Thanks for your candid and heartfelt post, Bill. I agree when you say, “Society does not only stand on the shoulders of giants, but also on the racist greed of the insatiably privileged.” Our planet and all of its people, regardless of the color of their skin, are suffering the consequences of such greed.

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    1. Thank you for these very kind words, Rosaliene, they buoy me more than you may know. I’ve been a left-leaning iconoclast since the 1960s and had already been convinced that unrestrained “lazy unfair” capitalism was on a turbocharged race toward an abyss since the 1970s. I read EF Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful when it was published in 1973, it is still over there in a bookcase. Once upon an era, the potential for human-induced climate change was recognized (and sequestered) by the fossil-fuel juggernauts. As the abyss comes into clearer focus on our respective horizons the turbochargers are being replaced with uber super turbochargers.
      “Our planet and all of its people, regardless of the color of their skin, are suffering the consequences of such greed.”
      Indeed. Catastrophic climatic change knows no color bar.

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  6. I recognise the first pic of the boy smirking at the Indian (?) man, but where was the second pic taken of the lone black young man surround white young men?

    And what was that about Trump’s pissing-rights in a Moscow hotel room? If it’s too long a story to tell, that’s okay 🙂 I know that things involving politicians can be very convoluted.

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  7. Thanks for the inquiries, Katrina. That young man is Dion Diamond, a genuine firebrand and civil-rights activist. The photograph is from 1960, I was in the seventh grade at the time and following the Kennedy-Nixon debates — as if that makes a difference. 🙂
    Anyway, below is an account on Diamond that gives you a little background. Scroll down a bit and you’ll see another fascinating photograph of protesters from that era. What a decade!
    https://washingtonareaspark.com/2013/01/20/crazy-dion-diamond-a-1960-rights-warrior-in-the-suburbs/
    The “pissing rights” thing is an allusion to Trump’s visit to the Moscow Ritz-Carlton Hotel and unproven/unprovable conjectures about a so-far-apocryphal video of a lewd vengeance incident there. Here is an NYT opinion on it:

    What is indisputable is Trump’s inexhaustible contempt for Obama, that contempt knows no bound. Whether Putin has compromising information is always concerning. Putin is not known for his lightheartedness and ruth though.

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    1. Thanks, Bill – they were enlightening links. I don’t know if I would have had the courage to nut off at a guard with a gun – lol! But I do know that one of the most dangerous things a government, or power system, can do to people, is give them nothing to lose.

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      1. I completely agree, Katrina. Any creature that is constantly harassed, hunted, exploited, derided, and condemned — then labeled as dangerous and violent, because of something they cannot hide: such as skin color, that they are appetizing, that they possess a hyde that can be transformed into leather goods or fur — has nothing to lose. They simply wish to live without being harassed, hunted, exploited, derided and condemned.

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  8. I read your rant. I voted for Trump. In your eyes I can never “win”. I am seriously considering buying either 1) a rifle and lots of ammo to protect myself against the revenge seekers you lionize, or 2) a plane ticket to Buenos Aires and another one to Patagonia.

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    1. I read your comment, David. I did not vote for Trump. In your eyes, I threaten you. Revenge is not my goal. I have never fired a rifle, do not own any firearms, do not kill my fellow sentient creatures because I am a vegan and recognize that all sentient beings have an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I do not purchase meat, eggs or dairy because that kills by proxy. If I see a turtle crossing the road I carry it to the other side, if I see an earthworm crossing a sidewalk I drop it in a safe place, if I see a dead deer on the side of the road I lament. Unarmed and non-violent creatures do not wish you harm. And I do not teach others to kill others.

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      1. Bill, the pleasure is mine! I am deeply humbled by your words. I can literally reblog nearly everything you publish. Your work is so valuable and consistent and if white people in this country don’t lend you their ears and heart, they will suffer karma and peace will never find them. Thank you so much for what you’re trying so hard to do.

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        1. My gracious thanks for these kind words, Kreb. Reader-response really does drive content here, so your encouragement means a lot to me. I have found that white-supremacist “sensibilities” promote an unstated policy— to see how much they can get away with while using an immoral compass: the globe over. Whites who benefit from racism have no misgivings about receiving stolen goods — such as all 50 States and the District of Columbia — or installing puppet regimes anywhere within 12,000 miles.
          Western Civilization is a European brand that celebrates benchmarks achieved by ruthlessly exploiting and enslaving non-white populations — those that were in the way of Manifest Destiny, such as Indigenous peoples and those imported from Africa to make the “American Dream” possible (for whites only/no “coloreds”).
          The empires that set out from the various points of departure in Europe took turns subjugating those who were residing in peace, imposing arbitrary borders surrounding those stolen lands, and then naming them to fit the proper languages of Europe (such as Rhodesia). Whites will point out that strongmen who committed genocide are not all White, that Idi Amin and Robert Mugabe were Black henchmen, but they do not point out that those guys were trained and enabled by the British Empire.

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