Oh, Bélizaire...

Oh, how so apropos is it that this landed on my inbox. But why am I surprised this was going on? Of course, trying to erase Black people and Black history is nothing new. It's just gotten much, much more blatant:

The "Stop WOKE" law was part of the national GOP’s war on what they dubbed “critical race theory” (“CRT”) designed to curtail, and even ban, discussions on race in schools. Florida is one of 18 GOP-controlled states that enacted such law between 2021 and 2022. So-called CRT bans are supported by supported by 80% of Republicans nationwide, which the ambitious DeSantis fully grasps.

Republican voters’ hostility to teaching Black history in school did not happen overnight but has been building over the past two decades. As Michael Tesler, a political science professor at the University of California at Irvine noted in a 2018 analysis for The Washington Post, in 2000, the percentage of Americans who thought too much Black history was being taught in public schools was in the single digits for Democrats and in the single digits for Republicans. Tesler noted that “Democrats haven’t changed in the past two decades. Republicans, however, are now 30 points more likely to say schools should teach less black history.”  

@msnbc

When I was learning about Bélizaire, could not help but think about the inescapable fragility of those who want to erase a past that needs to be remembered and studied because those who do not study history will be more likely to repeat it. 

And for those who sometimes give me the 'both parties'...

“Black history is American history. Living history. Breathing history,” Harris, the first Black woman to serve as vice president, said at a Black History Month reception. “History that we create every day. And history that we then must teach and celebrate. A history that helps us to understand how the past has influenced the present, and potentially our future. 

“And let us all be clear — we will not as a nation build a better future for America by trying to erase America’s past,” Harris continued. “This month, and all year round, we must recognize the full arc of our nation’s history.”

Biden, speaking after Harris, echoed her message about the importance of giving Americans an accurate depiction of the nation’s past.

“It’s important to say from the White House, for the entire country to hear, history matters, and Black history matters,” Biden said. “I can’t just choose to learn what we want to own. We learn what we should know. We have to learn everything, the good, the bad and the truth, and who we are as a nation. That’s what great nations do.”

@thehill

When Bèlizaire was erased from that portrait, it was one of the many ways some white people try to make amends with the racism that has defined this country for more than three hundred years, while trying at the same time to find a way to explain why they do not want that history to be remembered. 

XOXO