World events over the past few years have led me to re-examine certain historical events that either I believe or believed I understood. There is no doubt that I have been strongly motivated by recent efforts the present administration along with many of its allies and supporters are actively trying to ignore aspects of American history.
While I have a particular interest in how the history and living experiences of Black people are being omitted, rewritten, whitewashed, or disappeared, I am not giving in to my disheartened, even angry feelings.
However, when an effort is made to deny or destroy Black American history, more light is shone on it. Though I have major concerns about the growing power of AI technology, it has become a valuable tool in the preservation and sharing of information. We are no longer dependent on carefully edited textbooks or the limited resources found in the Collier’s or Britannica encyclopedias.
As Professor Henry Louis Gates demonstrates in his PBS Series, “Finding Our Roots,” there are volumes of recorded facts about who we are, and the lived experiences of the people Americans are descended from. While Gates’ series tends to focus on celebrities, or well known figures, it does not rewrite American history, or worse, lie about it by omission. It focuses on American people of all races. This has consequently whetted the appetite of a curious public generation of people who can handle the truth, understand, embrace and reconcile themselves .
I not only believe we need to educate ourselves about the truth of American history, but it is extremely important that we know more about the root causes of the conflicts and wars that are being waged all over the planet. There are enough culprits in human history to go around. They came disguised as religious orders or political ideologies, promoters of superior racial constructs. The constant characteristic among all of these players on the world stage is they rarely hold themselves accountable for the histories they have written and the futures they so desperately seek to control. They do not present intelligent ideas, they instead create weapons for more efficient killing. We have throughout history been in need of intelligent ideas that make life better on this marble suspended on an invisible string and spinning like a miracle in the vastness of space.
If we truly pause for a moment and look at the events in well documented history that are the core causes for the current wars being waged, a thoughtful person just might ask, “What did you think was going to happen?” What did you think was going to happen when artificial lines are drawn to define nations or geographical borders? The creators of these lines, in order to control the people and the resources, pit one group against another in forever wars.
Just reading the history of America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, the Caribbean, South America, or Europe will not bring the conflicts in the world to an end. It may, however, take us to the truth of how the conflicts began. Maybe, just maybe, the facts will set us all free.
