{"id":30194,"date":"2016-09-01T05:00:16","date_gmt":"2016-09-01T09:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=30194"},"modified":"2016-08-31T13:10:52","modified_gmt":"2016-08-31T17:10:52","slug":"american-history-the-national-anthem-and-isolated-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/09\/american-history-the-national-anthem-and-isolated-racism.html","title":{"rendered":"American History, the National Anthem, and Isolated Racism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

When American history is taught in school, it tends to be segmented and broken up into pieces. Here you have a bit talking about the origins of African slavery and the triangle trade. Then we\u2019re off to talk about the Salem Witch Trials, or the First Great Awakening, or the French and Indian War. And then the Revolution and the\u00a0Constitution and changes in production and family patterns and Native American removals and the War of 1812 and women reformers and then suddenly the textbook remembers slavery and throws in a chapter on the antebellum South.<\/p>\n

Then we\u2019re off to talk about Jacksonian Democracy and Seneca Falls and Manifest Destiny, and then we get to the Civil War, so we have to talk about slavery again. After touching on Reconstruction and the instatement of Jim Crow, we\u2019re off to talk about immigration and industrialization and progressive reformers and populism and strikes and the temperance movement and women\u2019s suffrage and the roaring twenties and the Great Depression and WWII and then, just as we get started on the Cold War, the textbook remembers that there are black people, because the civil rights movement gave them no other choice.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing: Black people didn\u2019t experience it like this. They didn\u2019t just go conveniently disappear every time our history textbooks take\u00a0their focus off of them. I\u2019ve been thinking about this a lot in the wake of San Francisco 49ers quarterback\u00a0Colin Kaepernick\u2019s decision to sit<\/a> during the National Anthem. I\u2019ve seen a lot of people express shock that a\u00a0verse of the\u00a0National Anthem touches on slavery, and surprise that the War of 1812 had anything at all to do with slavery.\u00a0Well I\u2019m sorry, but slavery didn\u2019t stop existing between the section\u00a0on the triangle trade and the chapter the antebellum South.<\/p>\n

So let me tell you some things you probably did not know.<\/p>\n

During the American Revolution, the British offered freedom to<\/a> any slaves that defected to areas they occupied. Thousands did, and left with the British\u00a0at the end of the war; most were taken to Nova Scotia, where they began new lives as free people.<\/p>\n

Slavery wasn\u2019t limited to<\/a> the South. At one point, every northern colony had slavery; slavery persisted after the Revolution in many states. Slavery didn\u2019t end in New York until 1827, in Rhode Island until 1842, or\u00a0in Connecticut until 1848.<\/p>\n

In the early 1790s, white Americans\u00a0opened their homes to<\/a>\u00a0white refugees of the slave rebellion in Haiti.\u00a0After the rebellion succeeded,\u00a0U.S. refused to recognize Haiti\u2019s\u00a0independence\u00a0for over fifty years, worried American slaves would copy it.<\/p>\n

In 1800, Virginia slaves plotted to\u00a0capture<\/a> Governor James Monroe and hold him hostage to bargain for the freedom of the state\u2019s slaves. They came close enough to success that the Virginia legislature toyed with abolishing slavery as too risky.<\/p>\n

The Texas Revolution<\/a>\u2014of Alamo fame\u2014was motivated in large part\u00a0by Anglo Texans\u2019 desire to continue practicing slavery, which had been banned by the Mexican government. The Republic of Texas immediately reinstated slavery.<\/p>\n

After the Civil War, some southern states\u00a0allowed former masters<\/a>\u00a0to claim as \u201capprentices\u201d black children whose parents were unmarried or poor, allowing them to re-enslave African American children<\/a>. In some states\u00a0this went on\u00a0for fifty years.<\/p>\n

Eleven-year-old Sarah Rector became a millionaire<\/a> when the Standard Oil Company struck oil on her land. At the time, Oklahoma law required that\u00a0African Americans with significant property be given\u00a0white guardians to \u201cmanage\u201d\u00a0their wealth.<\/p>\n

During the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, black residents were treated poorly<\/a> in relief camps managed by Herbert Hoover, conscripted into forced\u00a0labor and shot if they resisted. This was when black voters began to shift to the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

Beginning in 1934, the Federal Housing Administration created a rating system that shaped the mortgage loan industry for the next three decades. Neighborhoods with black residents were de facto given bad ratings, making it difficult to obtain loans.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m willing to bet that almost none of my readers knew all<\/em> of these things.<\/p>\n

Over and over and over again I see people treat slavery as though it was simply an isolated mistake. We did a bad thing, we realized it was a bad thing, we fought a war to end it, and then it was over. They don\u2019t see it as something that is threaded through American history. They don\u2019t see it as something that is threaded through America today\u2014something that isn\u2019t truly over yet. They don\u2019t see it as something that affects every bit<\/em> of American history. Instead, they see it as something they can set aside. Something that is unfortunate, but can still be ignored.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen so many people, these last few days, say \u201csure, those lines of the National Anthem were racist when they were written, but we\u2019re not racist anymore today, so the context is different.\u201d Or they\u2019ve said \u201cit\u2019s just that one verse, and no one remembers it anymore, the rest of the song is fine.\u201d All though the greater point were not that racism has been so intertwined with our nation for centuries that it even has a place in our national anthem. As though racism is something that can just be \u201cover\u201d and forgotten. As though closing your eyes makes fixes everything.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When American history is taught in school, it tends to be segmented and broken up into pieces. Here you have a bit talking about the origins of African slavery and the triangle trade. Then we’re off to talk about the Salem Witch Trials, or the First Great Awakening, or the French and Indian War. And then the Revolution and the Constitution and changes in production and family patterns and Native American removals and the War of 1812 and women reformers and then suddenly the textbook remembers slavery and throws in a chapter on the antebellum South.<\/p>\n

Click through to read more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":30198,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAmerican History, the National Anthem, and Isolated Racism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When American history is taught in school, it tends to be segmented and broken up into pieces. Here you have a bit talking about the origins of African slavery and the triangle trade. Then we're off to talk about the Salem Witch Trials, or the First Great Awakening, or the French and Indian War. 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