Learning Things: History

As I talked about in my last entry, I am re-committing myself to doing more and being better about using my privilege and power to work for equity. I've been working on myself in this area for a while now, but am going to start documenting my efforts here to try and hold myself accountable to doing this work more, not just when it's convenient. I'd also love to get ideas from others, if anything I write here is something you have thoughts on! I'm tentatively thinking I'll divide my efforts into the highly nuanced categories of "learning things" and "doing things," to try and make sure I am not doing entirely one or the other. I am going to always include what I've been doing so far (even if it's nothing), and what I'm committing to do next.

So, today's theme is learning things - history edition! One of the benefits of being in the dominant group is that you get to write your own history - that's how I went through school learning things like "the Indians helped the pilgrims and they all feasted together!" and "slaves were really treated like part of the family!" and "the Civil War was about state's rights!"  From my (non-American) parents I was often taught the second half of those sentences at home - "... and then the pilgrims committed systematic genocide against the Indians!" and "...only if you consider people in your family to be your property that you can beat, rape and murder!" and "....specifically, the right of states to base their entire economy on slavery!" So, I'm not coming into this with the view that everything I learned about history is the One Righteous Truth, but I do know that my knowledge of history is often lacking and one-sided. Since one of the ways that oppression works is erasing the history and culture of the oppressed, I am aiming to re-educate myself about American history (and maybe eventually world history, but I'm trying to not be overly ambitious at first) in an effort to resist that erasure.

What I have done so far: I have been somewhat sporadically learning about history as I find interesting articles and books, but I haven't been particularly purposeful about it.

• Ta-Nehisi Coates' The Case For Reparations is excellent, and brilliantly lays out how America as it currently exists could and would not exist without being built on the plundered lives and labor of Black people. I got to see him speak at Penn a few months ago, and he is equally brilliant in person - the video is online if anyone is interested.
• Because Ta-Nehisi Coates is the best, I made a twitter account so I could follow him, and he recommended A Sword Among Lions: Ida B Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching.Oh. My. God. I don't think I even learned about Ida B Wells in school, but she is AMAZING! I think I annoyed the crap out of Ben and everyone I work with while I was reading this biography, because I just couldn't shut up about her. Anecdote: She was riding in the "ladies car" of the train, and the conductor told her she had to leave because she wasn't White and therefore not a lady, but she resisted his efforts to remove her and even BIT HIM before he physically forced her out. Then she sued the train company for discrimination and won - in 1884. Unfortunately, the company appealed and the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the ruling in 1887. And that was one small blip early on in her lifetime of fighting for the rights of women and Black people.
• At the recommendation of a friend, I read The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration. I think the great migration was mentioned once in passing in my AP US History class, but I really had no idea about the magnitude of both the migration itself and its impact on the country. The whole thing is beautifully written - it's nonfiction but reads like literature. One of the parts that made a big impression on me was the utter bafflement of many White Southerners about why all the Black people were leaving - there are many letters, editorials, journal entries, etc... from the time that illustrate their complete inability to comprehend why Black people wouldn't want to stay in the land of sharecropping and lynching, because they genuinely believed that conditions were as good as they could be for Black people. I had previously thought that White people not understanding the reality that Black people live in was a recent phenomenon, but this book disabused me of that notion.
• I can't actually remember where I saw this book recommended, I think it might have been the Daily Show, but I also read and enjoyed Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barrack Obama. My previous understanding of the civil rights movement was very superficial (MLK was Professor X, Malcolm X was Magneto, a few new laws were passed, the end). This book complicates that linear narrative, and taught me a lot about how the different leaders interacted with and influenced each other throughout their lives.

What I'm committing to do next: I want to be a bit more systematic about filling in the holes in my history education, instead of (or at least, in addition to) my previous haphazard approach.

• I'm going to start with A People's History of the United States, because I keep seeing it suggested as the starting point for learning American history from the point of view of the colonized, not the colonizers. I figure that will give me some high level understanding, and then I can use the bibliography to pick what to read next.
• I'm also going to read Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Final Year. I saw it on the Daily Show and it looked really interesting, and I know I need to
  unlearn the sanitized "MLK just wanted everyone to get along" version I was taught in school, and learn instead about the radical who railed against the triple evils of poverty, racism, and militarism.
• Lastly (for now), I signed up with some work friends for a free online class on the history of American education reform. I think we often have a tendency to think that the work we do "really" started when we got here, so I want to better understand the history leading up to the education system as it currently exists, and the history of efforts to reform it, so I can better and more accurately situate my work in that context.