Slavery was like 4 humans from me ago and Jim Crow is 1 human from me. The past be a lot closer than people think especially if you can draw a straight line to aspects of your life today.
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This is why memory matters. Not to dwell, but to understand. Because some of us are still living in the echoes. And others are still holding the microphone.
It baffles me that we can’t get past biology. I guess I’m just autistic like that. I raised my kids to see everyone as human, end of story. How hard is that?
Looking around us, it's pretty hard.. If you are coloured, there are always people around you who are afraid of you. If you are white, there are always people around you willing to obey you..
I grew up in a tar paper shack with no running water , no indoor plumbing, no central heat and hunger gnawing at my belly and no "health care" in the 1950's... I can see we are much closer to that than Universal Housing, universal healthcare and guaranteed food.
My grandmother's best friend was a black woman, when it became legal to marry outside your race my grandmother was so excited to get to see her friend get married legally. Her other friend told her she shouldn't go to the wedding. It was the only time I ever heard my grandmother say "Fuck you!".
If people did an honest inventory of their relative wealth and how it’s accumulated over 3-4 generations, they’d begin to understand how all of Black American history is vitally present today.
Immigrants > Depression Era > WWII and GI Bill > College becoming standard > Wealth begetting wealth
2/ break an axle along that journey and you’re fully paid for Ivy education, the internship with Dad’s partners, and the 2.5m starter home all evaporate.
In a 1000 ways your life is different, your friends, your spouse, your vocation
“I worked hard for what I have, no one helped me” is nonsense.
I'm an older white woman. As a child I witnessed Jim Crow laws. Mad then & now when I hear others dismiss your history. I ALWAYS correct and accuse their fear of supression. It's not until we all admit our own history of privilege and shameful bigotry that equality for all is truly achieved.
Truth. America has only been a fledging democratic republic since the Civil Right Acts of 1964-5. When people go, “The Founding Fathers would be appalled at our time,” they betray their ignorance of who the Founding Fathers were and what America was then. They’d be happy seeing rich white flexing.
My great grandfather told me stories about working in sales in the south during Jim Crow and meeting former slaves. He worked in travelling circuses in Europe and western Asia as a young man and had zero prejudice and treated his customers as such. He told me very often that racism was stupidity.
Yeah, my grandad had two uncles at Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg.
When my Dad was born in 1918 (somewhat unplanned lol) his father named him after one of the boys who stopped the Confederates that hot July day in 1863.
Sadly, there are still many laws, land documents, and ways of teaching that reflect a time many would rather ignore. Slavery, internment camps, concentration camps pass generational damage. We need to use this era to create a better world.
Teaching is something else to ponder: I am teaching in 2025, and some of my elementary teachers would have been getting their teaching credentials in the 1920’s, taught by vestiges of the old south’s system.
I am often left to my own discretion to sort through the layers of science education!
Teaching is an art. History and science requires a balanced view to teach horrible facts and hope for the future. I am thankful for the teachers that were truthful. As an adult raised in Virginia, I am angry at some because their truth lacked substance and fact.
According to a family history, my great grandfather was a Kentucky slave holder. I grew up in the final years of Jim Crow. I have a half black granddaughter who is going to transcend all of that.
I hate seeing this. My life was always about freedom. My friends, family, and so many impacted now. WTF. Old white lady that marched, voted, found liberty finally. This sucks.
The people who received that money has not been made public, but when folks admire all those stately homes & palaces, like Downton Abbey, just know A LOT of them were decorated, bought, & refurbished through the profits of slavery, including those of the Windsors.
Did you read the article you posted? It critiques the post and is very clear that indeed the list of recipients of the compensation is readily available.
My dad literally watched the Rodney king riots from his bedroom window. My grandma remembers all her homegirls from the neighborhoods warning each other about being mindful at the doctors bc they liked to “snatch up uteruses.” My grandma is on Facebook right now.
I am a human who remembers when Indigenous women were being sterilized without their consent in the 1970s. And I remember when no woman could open a bank account or line of credit without a man.
My husband is 6 years older than me and remembers the sign at the neighboring town stating if you are black don't let the sun hit your back. My great-grandfather fought for the north in the civil war. My dad and his friends fought Nazis in WW2. Not that long ago at all.
This seems true now. I grew up near the headquarters of the KKK. I thought things had improved. And, honestly, in many ways they have. We were moving in the right direction. But now I see that the racists were holding on to their fear-filled beliefs. They were biding their time, teaching their
Yeah and we ain’t going back. Not now, not everrrrrr. Especially to these incompetent racists.
Not going to happen, don’t forget it! We will not go back! Ever!
Maybe the better question is: Is motivating discrimination such as Jim Crow the only way that slavery four generations ago detrimentally and measurably affected Black people today, or is there a more direct impact as well?
The biggest impact is on our legal system. This country would look *very* different if black people had the right to vote a couple of hundred years earlier. There would be no wealth gap today either.
The 100 years of de jure racial discrimination after slavery ended *is* a direct impact. Jim Crow is a continuation of slavery. They cant be separated from each other.
America has always allowed for compromise with slavers. That includes the end of slavery wherein the 13th amendment carved out an exception for prisoner labor
My granny’s sisters got indoor plumbing in the ‘70’s. My G granny refused to meet my mom & us kids because we were “halfbreeds from that whore”,my mom is Italian born during WW II. My last name is that of a Reb General
History lives through all of us. The good & bad. We owe all to save it
Do all people have the collective memory loss of most Americans? Or have the white supremacists been holding meetings under their rocks -planning for a comeback since desegregation? I’m starting to think the second. It never really went away… it just went underground. 😔
That last part, the remaining effects, is key. If we didn’t still have such racial wealth disparity, driven by centuries of oppression, I think we could say, “Yeah, our ancestors were assholes, but they’re dead now.” But there’s no moving on when the results of the sins remain.
I'm old enough to remember the faded remnants of "white only" signs on buildings. Faded but still visible. And the grocery store labeling macadamia nuts as n* toes. Or, what people on my side of town calling the other side of town.
My mom was born in 1942. She fought for equal rights.
I'm sad she's gone from this earth because I can no longer see or touch her. On the other hand I'm very happy she passed while Biden was in office. She stopped voting Republican because of the 🍊💩🤡. I wonder if her ashes are whirling in her urn...
My maternal grandmother left Alabama, in the ‘20’s, when the Klan became ascendant. She knew how fuktup it would get, for Black, Jewish and Catholic folks. She got active in union work, in Ohio. I learned some things, from her, about the past and the South.
Always. For a few years I lived with someone born shortly after reconstruction. Her life overlapped those of Louisa May Alcott and the victims of the Whitechapel murders
Modern slavery just has extra steps. In the end the results are the same.
You focus on culture when you should be focusing on class.
All races throughout history have been oppressed in the name of profit and power
If one of the steps is compensation, benefits, OSHA and at will employment laws, those are extra steps are not leading anywhere the zip code of slavery.
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Sharecroppers = grandparents
Slaves = great grandparents
In some cases
Both the erasure of history and racism of today are intentional. Do not go back. Don't comply in advance. MAGA is a minority.
Immigrants > Depression Era > WWII and GI Bill > College becoming standard > Wealth begetting wealth
1/
In a 1000 ways your life is different, your friends, your spouse, your vocation
“I worked hard for what I have, no one helped me” is nonsense.
None of this was long ago.
I'm just 41.
Naw, it wasn't that long ago at all for real.
#SlaveryRacism
My Grandfather was born on April 14, 1865 at 8 am, 25 miles from Gettysburg.
12 hours later President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in DC.
We are not very far removed from dark history.
When my Dad was born in 1918 (somewhat unplanned lol) his father named him after one of the boys who stopped the Confederates that hot July day in 1863.
My GGF was born 1821 the day Napoleon died.
He went on to be a Major WW2.
Crazy Puritans!
And then you see the folks dead set on dragging us back, and yeah, we really should be doing a lot better.
I am often left to my own discretion to sort through the layers of science education!
Not going to happen, don’t forget it! We will not go back! Ever!
My understanding was that drawing such a line from Jim Crow is easy, but from slavery is not so much so.
Maybe the better question is: Is motivating discrimination such as Jim Crow the only way that slavery four generations ago detrimentally and measurably affected Black people today, or is there a more direct impact as well?
History lives through all of us. The good & bad. We owe all to save it
It wasn’t that long ago.
America is truly an evil nation and finally everyone is seeing it.
I'm sad she's gone from this earth because I can no longer see or touch her. On the other hand I'm very happy she passed while Biden was in office. She stopped voting Republican because of the 🍊💩🤡. I wonder if her ashes are whirling in her urn...
Working 60hours just to exist ain't living.
You focus on culture when you should be focusing on class.
All races throughout history have been oppressed in the name of profit and power
Modern day oppression still sucks though