Rewriting And Rewronging History

August 17, 2023

We are living through, at this very moment, what will one day be called history. Many pundits claim, likely with good reason, that this is a particularly pungent time what with our immediate past president being indicted (or indicated according to one of his recent covfefe-addled online hissy fits) four times and all.

As we attempt to extricate ourselves from Trump’s Keystone Coup Plotters and the subsequent legal battles, replete with mob-boss-like death threats to prosecutors, judges, jurists and witnesses let’s take a quick, albeit nauseating, look at the history of history. 

Another perfect phone call from a kleptocratic kook

It is said that history is written by the victors. Unfortunately, what goes unsaid is that those victors are often big losers when seen from different perspectives. Also, some victories are more enduring than others.

Much of what passes for the history of the United States is horribly flawed – both the actual history and too much of what we are taught of it in school, not to mention much of what we are told in real time. As if the victors’ version of our history wasn’t wrong enough, fascists like Ron DuhSantis are feverishly attempting to re-wrong many important aspects of the American story.

DuhSantis has been busy doubling and tripling down on his disgraceful, racist, borderline insane insistence that Black people benefitted from being enslaved by learning skills they were able to translate into financial independence once slavery was outlawed in America.

Even if that was true, who gives a fuck? Would you want to go through being whipped, raped, tortured or killed just to learn a skill? I believe that traditional apprenticeships would have been much better ways to learn skills. But what do I know? Plus, being dead sort of makes the acquisition of any skill kind of a moot point going forward.

Thriving While Black

And when on June 1, 1921 a town full of Black folks in the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma who not only survived slavery, but thrived to the point that their neighborhood became known as Black Wall Street, what do you think happened? You guessed it, the town was attacked on the ground, bombed from the air, and eliminated from the map by a bunch of psycho White people. Up to 300 dead of the town’s residents were killed during the attack. Some 10,000 were rendered homeless while 35 blocks were destroyed. No one was ever charged.

Why? Because thriving while Black.

Black Wall Street before and after the race massacre

You may have also guessed that more than 100 years later some pathetic White people are hurling alternative facts, implying that the Tulsa race massacre had nothing to do with race. So it goes.

I. Mangrey remembering and reminding.