How you control a people and change history

[nadinbrzezinski]

It was amazing this exchange this afternoon.

So I took the trolley to campus to get some documentation I needed. I also took with me my sony reader to continue reading primary sources now on slavery and plantations. I also have a problem reading that screen, so had larger font on it.

So I am reading instructions from plantation owners to their overseers, oh circa 1850. As you can well imagine the N word is in there... as well as the S(lave) word. So a kid, yes African American, decided to challenge me for reading racist material... and granted there was plenty of that in those documents, but after I pointed to the date, and what I am doing, he calmed down and actually started asking some pretty good questions. Here is the problem, he never knew, and I find that a tad hard to believe, that the N word was in common usage oh... all the way to about 1965, and it wasn't even a bad word, but rather something to be proud off. (Why it was in the census people)

In case you haven't figured this out, I have pretty white skin.

Now here is the problem with this. In my view, this hiding away of history is really a means of control. If you don't know history... or rather the echos of history... it is easier to control you.

Oh and after fifteen minutes I wished him well in his first year in College. I hope that in his academic career he is introduced to this history that we seem to be burying all the time. Oh and yes, he is the first in the family to even make it that far... and I sincerely hope he does well, and takes some of that knowledge back home.

[Ozymanithrax]

1. I grew up in Blackwell, Oklahoma in the 50's and 60's.

There was a sign on the bridge across the Chikaski river that read, "The sun doesn't set on a n_____ in Blackwell." There were no black families living there, and laws that said they were not allowed in the town after sunset remained on the books until after the civil right act of 1964. Even today, according to one of my friends, there is only one black family in Blackwell Oklahoma.

Yes, that word was once part of normal speech. No one thought anything about it.

[jtuck004]

4. I grew up in Oklahoma City, born in '54. We bought a home

in 1985 or so in, North side, in the Village. Got to reading the title. I kept it so I could have proof, and it's around here somewhere, but it stated something to the effect that:

"If this proerty is sold to someone of the Negroe race, this title will revert to the builder and all sums of money
paid will be forfeit".

I got that title in about 1993, somewhere in there. The provision was clearly illegal, written long ago, but still on the records. I noticed that when they created the new title for our sale about 10 years later, that part had disappeared.

For people who like to tell me about how the Community Reinvestment Act was responsible for our housing crash (true, but very minor compared to the trillions the hedge funds screwed us all out of) I like to point out that it was necessary because those same people who had blocked sales for so many years still lived in those neighborhoods. They are the real estate agents and mortgage brokers. And even if the words are gone now, they still keep people from buying. The CRA was one of the few tools that could fight that.

I have shown the title to others. It is truly amazing how many people think the thing to do is to create a new title and "disappear" those words, make it as if it never existed. I used it in a grad class for teachers once, because they didn't believe it existed. One person thought I ought to burn it. But just because you burn it doesn't mean the thoughts behind it are gone.

People have funny ideas about what makes things better...but sunlight cleans so many things.

[Ozymanithrax]

5. Such documents should be kept.

I moved to San Diego years ago. In La Jolla, long after the civil rigths act, people selling houses would put a certain color of sign in the window of their car when they brought some on an unapprove lineage to buy. It was well know bit of racism here in San Diego.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. And I wonder if this is still, to a point, done

just not in La Jolla anymore. After all that group moved to Rancho Bernardo a while ago...

[jtuck004]

11. It is in Spokane, and Coeur d'Alene

Noticed that when we moved here from Oklahoma. My generation and younger seemed to be the dividing line there, for the most part. Here it seems to be the kids about 15-16 who have kind of moved past it. So maybe they are they are just a generation or two behind the larger cities. I sometimes challenge people gently, (helps keep the defenses down, I think), and many of them are not really aware of their attitudes, since there is not much to challenge them here.

However Coeur d'Alene, 25 miles from here, is probably 2-3 generations further away, from the attitudes I have seen there. It is just South of where the Aryan Nations lost their property in a big lawsuit with the Southern Poverty Law Center a few years ago. Mark Furhman and a lot of ex-police, some from LA, have moved there. Kind of a Whitopia, as described in Richard Benjamin's book.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. I predict it will get much worst

before we get over it. As the country moves into a multicultural society, and multi racial and whites lose that status... we will have an explosion of it. We might be on the leading edge of it, since we have a black president.

And yes, partly younger generations are moving away from it since the culture is starting to move away.

[jtuck004]

2. You are correct. Unfortunately it's also a means of giving power to

others.

For example, because it's considered impolitic to use the "n" word in even discussions, people's use of it give's them power to hurt others. And the people who insist it not be used grant that power.

But we live in a world where, if people knew too much they wouldn't be as easy to control. And if we could
discuss such things freely, we might get over all that, and we would have to go find something else to battle over.

Like who has the money and how they control the frame the rest of us live in, perhaps?

So who's interest is it really in to worry about what some kid in a pickup with a confederate flag uses for words
in an impolite conversation, when the big battle is why neither one of us can get a decent job while big bonuses are
being paid to people who, frankly, use any damn words they want to about others?

And why can't the organizations and people who want to push this reliquish that power and free us to go after the really
important stuff? Maybe they think they will lose what little power they have?

Powerful questions you are asking there.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Well part of the project on the history of labor

also involves putting slavery, both white and black in context. As I told this kid, at one time, indentured servants and slaves rose up together. He had that look of disbelief...

But the racial tension is an echo going back to the time when slaves (and indentures) were used to depress wages. Think of illegal immigration these days. There is a reason why nobody in power mostly goes after the employers.

[SoCalDem]

9. In 1970 I went to work at an employment agency

The new applications had no block for race, but the owner of the agency made us use a pencil to put a "random" mark somewhere near the bottom of the page..left side was for "negroids" ..right side was for "mexicans".....(those were his terms for them)..

I asked him if he was aware that it was illegal to do that, and he said.."That's why we use pencil":eyes:

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. Well race has not completely disappeared but I suspect it is

lessening. Back in the 70s it was bad.

Ok, let's clarify, will lessen after we have a bad back to the future series of events due to whites becoming a minority.

[Make7]

3. U.S. Census Bureau -Index of Questions

 

Index of Questions

The first censuses in 1790 and 1800 were "simple" counts of population that fulfilled the U.S. Constitution's requirement. While later enumerations met this constitutional mandate, they also gathered greater detail about the nation's inhabitants. As a result, the census has grown from a "head count" to a tool enabling us to better understand the nation's inhabitants, their pursuits and activities, and needs.

Expansion of the census began in 1810, when enumerators also asked questions related to the industrial pursuits of the nation's inhabitants. In 1850, the census began collecting "social statistics" (information about taxes, education, crime, and value of estate, etc.) and mortality data. Subsequent censuses gathered more detailed data on race and ancestry, health, housing, and transportation.

An examination of the questions asked during each census illustrates a change in our understanding of race, the impact of immigration, growth of the Hispanic population, and computer usage. As a result of the census's evolution, the constitutionally mandated census has grown to provide volumes of data about the U.S. population and its housing. Coupled with data from the separately conducted economic census and demographic and economic surveys, the Census Bureau provides governments, scholars, and planners with the data they need to build schools, plan highways, and distribute the billions of dollars in federal spending that sustains a growing population.


http://www.census.gov/history/www/through_the_decades/index_of_questions/

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. Oh absolutely

and historians love the damn census for that reason...

Give me a good census form to tell me things like oh the role of women in the economy.

Here is a piece of trivia... using this we can trace how women moved from being mostly the ones catching babies, to mostly banned from midwifery by the 1880s...

That is just a piece of trivia that always makes me smile.

Oh and there are instructions to the overseers as well, as to what to do with midwives and black women who were pregnant... I mean they were property, as horrible as this is, and their well being (and child) made them valuable to the slave owner.