People Twitter

Anyone offended by history needs to reflect on their priorities and identity.

I'm not offended that white people claimed this land at the point of a sword, and even worse, in the embrace of a smallpox blanket. Horrified, yes, but not offended. I'm not offended that the backbone of the economy for a hundred years was built on the backs of stolen people on stolen land.

I'm not offended by history.

What I am offended by is the present. I'm offended that people who have been oppressed and started out life with less than nothing have been told by the privileged elite to "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps like the rest of us did". That's fucking vile. I'm offended that we keep trying to whitewash confederate slave owning generals, instead of teaching who they really were, and what they really killed for, and ordered other people to die for. Be offended about what we are doing now, and use history as the reason why we should change it.

Regardless of what's being defended, this is a "poisoning the well" fallacy, and should be avoided as a rhetorical tactic. This particular example serves no purpose than the stroke the ego and sense of moral superiority of those on one side, and alienate those on the other, and create a divisive binary where there isn't one, and shouldn't be one.

Suppose someone argues that the solution is making sure no historical figures are diminished due to their race, not just during a certain month, but always, and therefore doesn't believe that focusing on a single race for an arbitrary amount of time is productive. Well, OP would dump them squarely into the 'enslavers and segregationists' camp, where they obviously do not belong.

I'm reminded of my gay friends who hate many modern pride events because they feel they do the opposite of normalizing homosexuality in focusing on garish oversexualized public displays. They'd be called homophobes by the equivalent of the OP--isn't that a bit ridiculous?

If you treat minorities (or really, people in general) with respect, then you should have no qualms about learning about how they've been poorly treated in the past.

Sadly, conservatives never treat minorities with respect, and so they don't want to learn about how history judges bigots like them.

I went to school in the UK. We had to learn a whole lot shittiness that we did in the past. It's sort of funny because I'm ethnically Chinese and I moved to Canada later on. Whenever something bad that the British did came up, I would always be made fun of.

I moved back to the UK from Canada again at a later date and we were watching a video about more bad stuff the British did as apart of our curriculum and I immediately felt flush with embarrassment. Then I remembered that everyone around me was British too.

I sometimes wonder if the Americans that chastise the Chinese for wiping out history like Tiananmen Square are those that advocate for wiping out Black History Month and wanting to wipe contribution from minorities on their websites right now.

To be clear, I think that Black History Month should just be apart of American history. Like integrated into the curriculum and books and stuff. However, you can't trust Republicans to just wipe it out entirely. They "say" they will and just never get around to doing it properly because Heaven forbid you feel a bit uncomfortable while learning things.

I really want either a miniseries or a bunch of movies telling the story of the Haitian Revolution. Sadly, that seems to never be able to get funded. It’s almost as if Americans or the French, who would be most likely to tell the story, don’t want people to know this story.

I don't have strong feelings one way or another, with one exception: why in the hell did anyone think it was okay to own a person and why the fuck did it continue for as long as it did?

That's seriously fucked up.

I'm not a person of color, so I don't think my opinion matters much in the discussion. Black history is just a part of the history of humanity. It should not be erased, it should be viewed as a lesson, like most of the rest of history.

"B-b-b-b-but where's WHITE history month????? uncontrollable sobbing"

nothing triggers fragile white nationalist bumpkins like 1/12th of the year being set aside to recognize black people

George Washington Carver, IS NOT the man that carved up George Washington...Bart. He is probably one of my most revered entities because I genuinely don't know if he actually expected to find all of the uses he did for peanuts. His genius borders on insanity and I love it. I mean what single other person can say they found food, industrial, and cosmeceutical, uses for a single thing like the peanut? Most the other mass use products I've found had maybe 1 founder that found something interesting,(there is a few standouts including the creator of vaseline-he ate a spoonful a day for health go figure) but George Washington Carver turned peanuts into something that is still the cornerstone of industries(they remove the oil from peanut butter and sell it for industrial uses cuz it's worth so much, which is also why I'm upset at Mr Carver, peanut butter with the oil is delicious, but I digress that's a bit off topic). A quick glance at his Wikipedia indicates he actually did a ton more than peanuts, but the amount of uses he discovered personally has always astounded me. Those who are offended by history are likely trying to recreate a stupid mistake already made by others.

If you have morality doesn't it kind of suck to hear about century after century of slavery, violence, and exploitation?

Honestly I feel like if any type of history "slaps" then you're probably viewing it through a very narrow lens that omits an immense amount of human suffering. History is depressing as fuck. It can definitely serve a purpose to focus on the cool events and forget about the rest at times, but it's also misleading if that's all you do.

Is this... controversial? o.O

It's fucking insane to watch watch happening in the US from other countries.

edit to make my position clearer, Django is a fucking awesome movie not because it shows slavery, but because it shows black history making me better able to empathise with it and it has crackers getting what they deserve (and I'm white btw and used to be I thought "cracker" meant the colour of like crackers as in biscuits, but then later learned it's because they're cracking a whip, which makes much more sense).

If you use the word "slaps" you're not talking to the population as a whole, you're talking to specific people. And likely ones who already agree with your point.