I am a white male who went to elementary school through the 1960s

[deurbano]

22. I'm 68, and just graduated from Berkeley (BA, Sociology) on Saturday--returning last spring,

after decades away. Upon my re-entry, I found Sociology (and other disciplines) had finally discovered W.E.B. Du Bois! The last chapter of Black Reconstruction (an amazing work!), "The Propaganda of History," is all about how "history" had already (in 1935) been spun by white supremacists to obscure the real reasons for the Civil War, justify slavery, trash Reconstruction, perpetuate racist stereotypes, etc.. In the earlier chapters, Du Bois argues America was founded on racial capitalism (based on chattel slavery), and the stolen labor of Black people was pivotal to the young nation's staggering economic success. Black Americans were also indispensable to the Union's victory, and Reconstruction (with all its breathtaking promise) did not "fail" (as I learned in school), but was overturned by white supremacists, with Black citizens then subjected to new forms of coerced labor and oppressive restrictions, resulting in the tragic, ongoing racial disparities today.

My father was a member of the White Citizens' Council in the Mississippi Delta, and my mother was a member of the United Daughter's of the Confederacy. They knew the men who killed Emmett Till. So, I was a bit more knowledgeable than many white people about these issues, once I discovered my family history (and felt the obligation to educate myself)... but there was SO much more I had never learned about (like "convict leasing" ), even at Berkeley the first time around.

That's why the 1619 Project and the AP African American History course have provoked such white backlash. They are dangerous to the perpetuation of all the carefully crafted, white nationalist myths.