Wednesday, May 09, 2018

Lynching memorial: Facing our ugly history



From Daily Kos:

Last week, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in Montgomery, Alabama to pay tribute to the nearly 4,000 documented black victims of racial lynching and terror in the United States. 

And because our country’s response to anything that forces us to confront our racial history and its legacy is both ridiculous and sophomoric, you can imagine that some folks are already saying that it is completely unnecessary and that we should leave the past behind us...

Here’s a very unpopular truth that needs widespread telling: Americans have a very convenient and particular way of denying the truth of our history. Like any big dysfunctional family with terrible secrets and skeletons in the closet, we refuse to risk the consequences of telling each other the truth. So we minimize and sweep unpleasantness under the rug. We also lie about it entirely. 

This is how some white Southerners can bastardize history, worship the Confederacy as a heritage worth preserving...

Rob's comment:
Our national history is a nightmare: The United States is a Country That Tortures People.

So is California's: See History: A nightmare from which we never awake.

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