top of page
Writer's pictureblackcoralinc2021

JIM CROW HISTORY & CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE: Quietly Being Removed from American textbooks!



Southern History textbooks have a long history of deception and lies...Ronald L. F. Davis, Historian Some American's longing for a return to an age of "Jim Crow Etiquette" while at the same time seeking to remove its Truthful history from textbooks!


"Textbooks celebrated the violent overthrow of democratically elected, multiracial governments. Lynching went unmentioned. The evils of slavery got cursory acknowledgments — and quick dismissals. “It should be noted that slavery was the earliest form of social security in the United States,” a 1961 Alabama history textbook said, falsely." (BRIAN LYMON Montgomery Advisor)


The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) spent decades shaping and reshaping textbooks to put a strong emphasis on Lost Cause views of the Civil War and Reconstruction, which glorified the white supremacist foundations of the Confederacy and was used to justify segregation and authoritarian Jim Crow governance. In the 21st century we have misinformation platforms like Prager U and mainstream media outlets like FOX news to disseminate what it calls Entertainment news meaning legally it's not meant to be taken as truth only opinion paid for by advertisers to espouse to the public. This way the question of ethics in reporting doesn't have to be answered.


PragerU is especially highly Questionable based on extreme right-wing bias, promotion of propaganda, the use of poor sources who have failed fact checks, and the publication of misleading information regarding immigration and climate change.


According to a new report by PEN America, a free speech advocacy organization. The groups pushing for books to be taken off library shelves and removed from the curriculum in school districts range from national advocacy groups with several branches across the country, including Moms for Liberty, No Left Turn in Education, and MassResistance, to local-level Facebook groups. Together they are responsible for at least half of all bans, PEN America found. The groups have a strong focus on banning information about global black history, also they want to ban books about and by LGBTQ and BIPOC people. It’s not only direct climate action that’s corrupted by censorship, but also all sorts of everyday government decisions especially about the extent climate has to do with global economics and demographics.


Climate education advocates have asked that states adopt new materials because despite they include substantial climate content that explains the science underlying the current climate crisis; Some supporters of the fossil-fuel industry, and lobbyists say the books represent "an infiltration of “the radical climate lobby” into education, and these paid employees of the fossil fuel industry have asked people to pressure schools to reject them.


"Most southern white Americans who grew up prior to 1954 expected black Americans to conduct

themselves according to well-understood rituals of behavior. This racial etiquette governed the actions, manners, attitudes, and words of all black people when in the presence of whites. To violate this racial etiquette placed one's very life, and the lives of one's family, at risk. Blacks were expected to refer to white males in positions of authority as "Boss" or "Cap'n"... Sometimes, the white children of one's white employer or a prominent white person might be called "Massa," to show special respect.


If a white person was well known, a black servant or hired hand or tenant might speak in somewhat intimate terms, addressing the white person as "Mr. John" or "Miss Mary." All black men, on the other hand, were called by their first names or were referred to as "Boy," "Uncle," and "Old Man"--regardless of their age. If the white person did not personally know a black person, the term "nigger" or "nigger-fellow," might be used. In legal cases and the press, blacks were often referred to by the word "Negro" with a first name attached, such as "Negro Sam." At other times, the term "Jack," or some common name, was universally used in addressing black men not known to the white speaker. On the Pullman Sleeping cars on trains, for example, all the black porters answered to the name of "boy" or simply "George" (after the first name of George Pullman, who owned and built the Pullman Sleeping Cars)."


"Whites much preferred to give blacks honorary titles, such as Doctor, or Professor, or Reverend, in

order to avoid calling them Mister. While the term "nigger" was universally used, some whites were

uncomfortable with it because they knew it was offensive to most blacks. As a substitute, the word

"nigra" often appeared in polite society. Black women were addressed as "Auntie" or "girl." Under no circumstances would the title "Miss." or "Mrs." be applied. A holdover from slavery days was the term "Wench," a term that showed up in legal writings and depositions in the Jim Crow era. Some educated whites referred to black women by the words "colored ladies." Sometimes, just the word "lady" was used. White women allowed black servants and acquaintances to call them by their first names but with the word "Miss" attached as a modifier: "Miss Ann," "Miss Julie" or "Miss Scarlett," for example.


This practice of addressing blacks by words that denoted disrespect or inferiority reduced the black

person to a non-person, especially in newspaper accounts. In reporting incidents involving blacks, the press usually adopted the gender-neutral term "Negro," thus designating blacks as lifeless and

unknown persons. Usually it was expected that blacks would step off the sidewalk when

meeting whites or else walk on the outer street side of the walk thereby "giving whites the wall." Under no circumstances could a black person assume an air of equality with whites without whites becoming threatened. Black men were expected to remove their caps and hats when talking with a white person. Those whites, moreover, who associated with blacks in a too friendly or casual manner ran the risk of being called a "nigger lover."(Note this moniker could endanger their lives or access to employment.)


Blacks and whites were not expected to eat together in public. It was okay for blacks to enter a restaurant to buy food to take out or to stand at the end of a lunch counter until their order was taken. Usually, they would then leave and wait outside for their food to be brought to them. Black money was always desired but not prolonged Black presence in so-called white spaces. In fact the most segregated places in the South were the Southern churches. Most likely because Black Bibles were so heavily censored.


The loss of this oppressive and racially stratified world is what many older white Americans and Right Wing extremists bemoan. Racial fears of an awakened growing racially diverse majority prompts, “stand your ground” laws and an increasingly violent political climate that is emboldening scared and angry White people across America. "It’s not the “radical Islamic terrorist” that I fear the most. Nor is it the brown immigrant or the fiery Black Lives Matter protester, or whatever the latest bogeyman is that some politician tells me I should dread. It’s encountering an armed White man in public who has been inspired by the White men who cultivate and wear their fear of otherness like a license to kill. Kyle Rittenhouse, Charlottesville, Nazi Party and Klan revivals all driven by irrational fear and lust for power to receive unearned social status, access and privilege based only on their skin color.


In American history, slavery constituted a strict caste system that distinguished Black slaves by their skin tones. Lighter-skinned slaves were usually mixed-raced children of rape and favored by White slave-owners. These lighter-skinned slaves were frequently fathered by White slave-owners (typically from nonconsensual sexual relations with female slaves) and were, therefore, privileged (Brown, Ward, Lightbourn, & Jackson, 1999; Keith & Herring, 1991); unlike dark slaves, lighter-skinned slaves were spared physically strenuous, outdoor work and instead held domestic indoor jobs like housekeeping in closer contact to Whites.


Over time, these privileges in the antebellum period allowed lighter-skinned Blacks to become more educated (Wirth & Goldhamer, 1944) and to own more property (Frazier, 1957). Furthermore, to maintain their elite status and privileges, lighter-skinned men engaged in social practices to exclude darker-skinned Blacks from entering their social circles; these practices included the “Paper Bag Test,” (which banned Blacks from joining college or masonic fraternities if their skin tones were darker than a brown paper bag), the “Comb test,” (which banned Blacks with coarse, nappy African hair if combs could not glide through it) and the “Blue veins” society (which banned Blacks whose skin tones were too dark to see the blue veins on their arms) (Bond & Cash, 1992). These findings consistently indicated that light skin tone resulted in clear social and economic advantages.


Because of the history of Antebellum slavery some communities may believe modern Black people want to be white phenotypically something only the most juvenile or emotionally damaged of Black people would aspire to. A phenotypically white-dominant culture also operates as a social mechanism that grants advantages to white people, since they can navigate society both by feeling normal and being viewed as normal. Persons who identify as white rarely have to think about their racial identity because they live within a culture where whiteness has been normalized. This culture also can only be held onto while whites maintain a numerical advantage once that is lost, they are no longer the norm and the system crumbles. Ironically it is not any Black Power movement causing this to happen but White greed and a system that stalls and denies the growth of green industries in order to maintain the value of the failing Petro-dollar thus increasing global climate change and LOWERING GLOBAL NON-MELANATED BIRTHRATES!


Comments

Rated 0 out of 5 stars.
No ratings yet

Add a rating
bottom of page