He Told Me To “Move On”.

Alright you guys…

So I don’t know about you, but I repost pictures that I want to remember or see again from Instagram onto my Facebook.  Will I ever get to looking back on these reposts…?  That’s besides the point.

Anyway so I got to reposting the cover picture above this article and had a couple comments.  One of which was from a guy from Mexico that I met while he was on vacation in the states.

 He wrote and I quote:

“I am agree, it sucks but I think we need to move on, to change the page, I mean its important to know about history, but I think its more important to move on. I am pissed of that Mexico was more bigger than US and US took us a big part of territory. That is not going to change Mexico.”

Now if I had a dollar every time a white person told “me lets forget the European and American historic past”  I’d be 100 times in the hole.  They are wayyy too concerned with stuffing our students brains with the Boston Tea Party, Shakespeare and lets not forget the Greeks and Romans… I’m lying?  Bare with me, I’m just going to expand on this point for a second.

 It seems to me that while everyone else gets to tell us how we should forget who we are and our past, white people are engraving their own history in the spaces now vacant.  Learning white history is deemed so important that it’s mandatory.  Where you going without that high school history credit, or that global studies class that seems to be way too focused on one particular region (to put it lightly).

And best believe that has some serious effects.  Here are three examples:

1. One day my high school history teacher spent a quarter of the class teaching us that slaves were not treated as poorly as we think.  “Most owners had one or two and couldn’t afford to damage their property”.  Makes sense doesn’t it?
   1. I actually stuck with this notion.  It was so logical.  But then I went to Howard University and learned that treatment wasn’t as poor as I thought… It was worse.  I brought some narratives written by former slaves and did some more independent research to double check this time, and to my surprise it was worse than what I thought I thought.  
   2. Imagine the white benefits in believing that slaves were treated well.  Imagine the discredit of the emotional and mental trauma carried from generations, and the fluffy pillow that would give white people to sleep on today.
2. I was at work one day, and at my job there are a lot of students from American, George Washington and Georgetown University.   One of my co-workers told me about an American and European Philosophy class she was taking.  I forget exactly what it was I said, but her response to it was “well, don’t all philosophers come from America and Europe?
   • GIRL!  So you mean to tell me that according to this definition – Philosophy: the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline- No other race people or region thought about life, wrote it down and discussed it and their opinions with others?
   • The students in her class just have yet another subconscious bug on how white people have some sort of superiority, and that is just not true.
3. Lastly remember the mother who Facebooked the word workers used to describe slaves in her sons textbook? 

• I won’t go in like want to on this like I want to, but I’m telling you these things have grave effects.  I know it.  You know it.

So, all that to say that for a people who think we should forget about history, they sure like to push their own… usually manipulating it in their favor.

My next point is that it is super important for people to know about their history.  Who they came from, their mistakes, what they overcame, their strengths, their wisdoms are all things that build us better.

Black people are so resilient, we constantly rebirth culture that was taken away from us, and everyone continues to want to get in on it.  The world is always trying to revolve around it.

To my Mexicans friends point, understanding and learning about our history doesn’t mean we’re not moving forward.  We study history so we can avoid mistakes of the past, and to use useful works of the past in our present + future.  It’s really hard to do that with a void.

To my last point.  Can anyone tell me the diaspora of people who are now Mexican?  I ask this because Hispanics get portions of their culture and history from Spain, just like Americans do from other European countries.  The trip is people from Spain are white, European, by and large.  Their features are a lot different than the Mexican guy.  Without knowing and understanding his own roots he has replaced in his mind that his culture is composed of this European connection when it’s so obviously not.  It could be African, it could be Native American, it could be Asian.  But how often do we talk about the roots of Hispanics?  Well white people anyway.  Not a lot, and I can only think that this is because for some reason they don’t find it to be their own best interest… hmmmm.  

#KnowThyself

#BlackAtItBlog