Unmasking Historical Nonsense: The Absurdity of Rewriting Slavery’s Brutality

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Oh, brace yourselves for this madness! The Florida State Board of Education has decided to mess with history, pushing a distorted narrative that’s just plain delusional. Can you believe they actually want to teach students that some Black people benefited from being enslaved? Are they kidding? Nope! This is nothing but a pathetic attempt to whitewash the horrors of the past and uphold the illusion of white grandeur, whiteness, white supremacy, white mental madness, or whatever you want to call it.

The Violent Legacy of Slavery: They Got It All Wrong!

Let’s set the record straight: slavery was violence and savagery at its worst! Enslaved individuals suffered unimaginable cruelty—kidnapping from their families and homeland, chained, shipped like commodity cargo, sold like livestock, beatings, lynchings, family separations, rape, murder in the most heinous of ways anyone diabolical enough could imagine, torture, humiliation, mental suffering, hunted, burned at the stake, and cut into pieces, body parts shared and kept as souvenirs from a public lynching, chained some more, hot branded, deprived of decent food, and medication, and forced labor under horrendous conditions.

That remains a festered wound in American conscientiousness and something to be woefully ashamed of. The country still oozes puss from the past injury. It is an even greater disgrace that the country has not reconciled this past in a way that can lead to reparations and a more harmonious healing of our United States. I wrote about the need for reconciliation in a previous article. To even suggest that some Black folks benefited from this torment is a sledgehammer to the face of the truth.

Slavery’s Unyielding Impact on All Involved: Wake Up!

We can’t sweep this under the rug! Slavery left deep scars on everyone involved, from the oppressed to the oppressors. It poisoned our society, breeding systemic racism and inequality that still haunt us today. Whiteness, the mental damage it causes to its hosts, and the destruction it causes to society is indisputable. The damage is real, and pretending otherwise won’t make it disappear.

Whiteness, and its vessel, colonialism, produced monsters and grotesque laws that supported these monsters in that vessel, and now we want to re-energize the monsters living among us today?! Do we want to pretend that these monsters are good, God-fearing Christians who hate people enough to pretend that America is a place of love and harmony?! We want to destroy an education system that was already behind the rest of the world by focusing on stupid things like race instead of STEM, art, and real history?!

The Role of Education: Stop the Foolery!

Slavery, or as I like to call it, “enslavement,” is an abhorrent concept that stands in stark contrast to the aspirations of every human being. Nobody dreams of becoming a slave; no child yearns to grow up in chains. We strive to be doctors, entrepreneurs, engineers, economists, musicians, electricians, firemen, FBI agents, writers, decent priests, or honest politicians — professions that empower us and contribute positively to society.

Those who dare to claim that slavery is a good thing would never subject themselves willingly to such oppression. It’s laughable how they champion the idea of people benefiting from their own enslavement while cowering at the mere thought of being enslaved themselves. Hypocrisy at its finest!

Jane Elliot: If you white folks want to be treated the way blacks are in this society, stand

The truth is, if they even sensed a hint of someone coming to enslave them, they’d arm themselves with guns and ammunition, fiercely defending their freedom — a freedom they have the audacity to deny others. Slavery is unequivocally anathema to humans, and any attempt to justify or romanticize it is an insult to the very essence of humanity.

Education should enlighten, not deceive! We need to teach the honest truth, no matter how mentally uncomfortable it may be. Distorting history only fuels the division and injustice we’re trying to overcome. Doing this for political gain for a few years in office to ruin a country and its people with outlandish fascist ideas is anathema to humanity. It’s time to wake up, face our past, and work towards a more inclusive future.

Standing Up for the Truth

This whole mess is infuriating! We can’t let them rewrite history and perpetuate lies. It’s our responsibility to preserve the truth and confront the painful reality of slavery, aka enslavement. We need to fight for a more just and empathetic society that acknowledges the scars of the past and dismantles the chains of racism. Let’s rise against this disastrous attempt to erase our history and embrace the strength of diversity and truth.

Please, my esteemed Medium peers, anyone with a voice in any form, speak, write, art, vote, post on social media, and publish as much as you can to create an overpowering culture of the truth against this counterculture of whiteness that is destroying our country.

I have added a non-exhaustive list of resources with links for those who want to educate themselves about what really happened in America and how it impacts us today.

Books:

1. “The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism” by Edward E. Baptist. Link
2. “The Underground Railroad” by Colson Whitehead. Link
3. “Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States” by United States. Work Projects Administration. Link
4. “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” by Harriet Jacobs. Link
5. “12 Years a Slave” by Solomon Northup. Link
6. “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration” by Isabel Wilkerson. Link
7. “The Origins of American Slavery: Freedom and Bondage in the English Colonies” by Betty Wood. Link
8. “The Slave Ship: A Human History” by Marcus Rediker. Link
9. “Black Reconstruction in America” by W. E. B. Du Bois. Link
10. “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II” by Douglas A. Blackmon. Link

If you can’t afford to buy the books, many are available in libraries in the States that still believe in freedom. Join your local library, and get a library card. All you need is your ID. Then download an App on your phone called Libby. Once you enter your library card number, you can read and listen to audiobooks for free on these subjects on your smart phone, computer or tablet.

Here are just a few website resources.

Websites:

1. National Museum of African American History and Culture — Smithsonian
2. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
3. National Museum of African American History and Culture — Online Exhibitions
4. Library of Congress — African American History
5. Equal Justice Initiative — Lynching in America
6. The New York Times — 1619 Project
7. Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture — Slavery and Resistance
8. American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) — Racial Justice
9. NAACP — Criminal Justice Fact Sheet
10. Teaching Tolerance — Slavery’s Lasting Legacy

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