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@mekkaokereke Driving through rural TN I saw a pickup truck with a humongous Confederate Flag mounted on the bed of the truck. This was around the time that Howard Dean was getting shit for talking about rural people with Confederate Flags on their pickups. They are everywhere around here. Sometimes things become a stereotype for a reason.

@mekkaokereke This whole thread! When I moved to Chicago from New England, I learned that folks who grew up in Illinois (look! We have Abe!) learned an entirely different version of American History than I had (look! We're dumping the tea!) and then I moved to Atlanta.... And then the PacNW.... It's honestly fascinating to me how much we *can't* teach our kids because the country is huge. My favorite thing is asking locals what American history they learned.

@mekkaokereke @Adoxograph thank you for providing a lens I can see into yet more of my blind spots. It’s not just the US though - what I was taught of Canadian history growing up in the 60s/70s whitewashed a massive amount of stuff and I’m starting to learn it now. So late… so much to learn

@mekkaokereke @Adoxograph this is always been a very nonsensical argument to wherever it's applied. My favorite is when people use them argue against public transit, as if the existence of vast emptiness in Montana has anything to do with why we can't have a good rail transit system in Los Angeles

@Adoxograph @mekkaokereke when I moved to the south from MN I learned that everyone down here took state history classes.

@mekkaokereke

I wasn't taught in school that he the United Daughters of the Confederacy hold significant resposibility for those text books. They still exist and don't see the problem.

@mekkaokereke
Related, I highly recommend "Lies My Teacher Told Me", James W Loewen. It points out, in detail, how American history classes have completely failed us even in stereotypically "liberal" parts of the country.

Biased school boards and political structures have created American history textbooks and classes that do outright lie to students.

@IntentionallyBLANK @ToddVierling I think that's a great approach from the individual level, and it's an excellent answer to give! To shift how our society operates we need to fix it at a systemic level. Unfortunately the Right seems to always have more stomach for things like pushing school boards or textbook publishers to make curriculum changes.

@ToddVierling @IntentionallyBLANK BUT note that a lot of non-text info (political cartoons are the first thing that comes to mind) will be lost in that format. Alas.

@ToddVierling @mekkaokereke I know someone who grew up in Santa Monica, California (!) and somehow learned in school not to “demonize” Robert E. Lee.

@ToddVierling @mekkaokereke@hachyderm. "As an educator, all I want to do is tell the enormously long and difficult story of humanity in a way that exclusively lionizes the people who sign my paycheck and the people who pay the taxes that fund it, while leaving the children with the exact same opinions and beliefs as if I'd never said anyhing at all. Is that so wrong?"

@mekkaokereke sadly it extends beyond the American border. The confederate flag regularly makes an appearance in Canada. Publicly, those flying it will claim it represents "rural rights" or other coded dog whistles.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/hamilton-home-confederate-flag-1.6431668

@Habigelo @mekkaokereke also, I've heard that neo-nazis fly the confederate flag in Germany, since they can't fly the nazi flag. Apparently they recognize the commonality; why can't everyone else recognize it?

@mekkaokereke Tangent, because I am Adderall stimming: I get upset when I see confederate flags flying in rural areas of the North, like Vermont or Upstate New York. Its part of the homoginization of white rural culture, which includes things like native rural accents dying off and being replaced with some variant of an Arkansas accent. These are, of course, the product of the same forces that have been trying to homoginze _all_ aspects of American culture.

@mekkaokereke in the UK the same applies to Winston Churchill and Empire, except there’s still an unwillingness to accept the truth

@mekkaokereke "It was about state's rights"

Riiiiight.

I have a link to the secession statement of South Carolina in my phone ready for some poop head to say that to me.

The second sentence:

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”

They seceded because they couldn't get their slaves back. Modern day people citing Article 4 are completely ignoring the 13th amendment. Fuck them.

@mekkaokereke
And what a tragedy that the clowns running Florida just successfully pressured the College Board to water down its AP African American Studies course – education is one of the antidotes to racism, because as you point out, a good chunk of people will change once they understand the true history of those symbols.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/01/us/college-board-advanced-placement-african-american-studies.html

@mekkaokereke I feel like I've been yelling about this (and the consequences of this) for years. MAGA folks and their ilk didn't develop their views out of a vacuum, they were misled and manipulated and molded and then, sadly, made the best decision available to them based on piss-poor education and a lack of resources to correct that (which of course makes me a sound like a goddamn coastal elitist to say).

I was in the NCCC. I worked in the southwest region, and I remember my first deployment in Arkansas made my head spin. I was a "good white kid" from New England and the Midwest, and suddenly I was hearing old white men showing us around where we'd be working for the next two months and telling us the history of the "good slave owner" who's former property made up portions of Hobb's State Park. I heard the N-word used in real life for the first time, yelled at my team by a passing pickup truck with the stars and bars on the plate. Each time something like this happened I went into an indignant Yankee rage, and couldn't comprehend how these people could say and do such things when they were educated by the same country I was.

It's because they weren't. They "knew" everything they knew in the same way I did, because the information and world views I had been preloaded with at that point came from people and institutions in my life that I implicitly trusted at the time, as they must have.

My time in rural America in general confused the hell out of me for a while, because while the people I interacted with said and believed awful things, most of them were wonderful people. It made my head spin. I had never once experienced the same hospitality in the city anywhere near on the same level I had in rural America, in New England as well. The folks in Arkansas, New Mexico, Arizona would invite us into their homes, feed us well, absolutely roll out the red carpet, then say some of the most goddamn ignorant shit to my black team mates, who all had much more grace than I (because of course they did, that grace was a matter of survival to them). I couldn't understand the people saying those things, and I couldn't understand how my black team mates could just take it in stride. These weren't good people. They couldn't be, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

I've been living in the Boston area for the past decade now, occasionally getting work somewhere rural for a season or too in an attempt to maintain my sanity. I don't know what the solution is. All I do know is most of the city people around me seem real willing to write off our current problems as a rural disease, and be content with the possibility of amputating them from our consideration and national identity at the first possible opportunity. Never mind that strangers from those regions took me in and fed me at the drop of a hat, and when I was struggling in the city the most I ever got was a "that's tough buddy, good luck!" from my closest friends... They are the problem and if we could just move on without then we'd be a better nation!

They are us. And the only way we get out of this and bring them on board is by maybe being humble enough to admit we don't have it all figured out either. Maybe we all need to learn from each other instead of just assuming our other half has nothing to offer us.

I feel uncomfortable leaving it there, as lot's of people are under existential threat from folks I am encouraging empathy for. Your empathy is not more important than your survival. But maybe, if you can afford to, if you have the privilege to have these interactions safely, use it.

I am not the person who should be taking up space this month on this topic. This is a time for people like me to listen, but I was also taught active listening involves contribution and support. I hope I managed to provide that and not detract from the conversation.

@mekkaokereke unfortunately, even the most liberal states teach fairly absurd things about the Civil War. I didn't get a somewhat accurate picture until I was in my 30s. I also don't think the one you see now was ever used... so it's kind of just wrong?

@mekkaokereke Your assumption here is that much/most racism can be explained by ignorance. The very autochthonous american black/white racism is about power and wealth. Not ignorance. Symbols might be eschewed, people might call themselves “allies” but two weeks after they claimed to be horrified by the George Floyd murder, they dropped their tenuous support for police reform and voted for the “law-and-order” candidate when exposed to some FoxNews clip about higher crime in Chicago, say.

@mekkaokereke I am an immigrant and I have always been very interested in US history. As someone that went looking for the books to learn it, it always puzzled me how states would have the confederate flag in/as their flag, the people that defend it, and the monuments built to the confederacy.

Reading your threads from the last few days has been very eye-opening, thank you.

@mekkaokereke I didn't know this. I didn't know about the Articles of Secession. I grew up in the south. I feel gross and lied to and angry.

@mekkaokereke

I didn't grow up here. I visited the Statue of Liberty and I consider myself fairly well informed about American history. Yet I did not know this. Thank you for sharing this.

@charvaka @mekkaokereke I was today years old when I learned this, too, in spite of not only having visited the Statue myself, but having lived in New York City for 9 years.

@mekkaokereke

To me ridicule and mockery are great tools to fight racism. They work pretty good.

There's a lot of unintentional self-mockery: hold up a particular flag -- say something stupid.

Racism is bad, mockery of racism is a legitimate good (imho).

I am from that "culture" [quite a word to use here]. When you know literally nothing else from birth it can take quite a struggle to SEE it.

Some good mockery exposes the stupid to the light.

Mom always said hate the sin not the sinner.