this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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Many, many people have died for the ideal that is America - created equal endowed by a creator with rights that cannot be taken away.
We strive to live up to that standard and it's worth fighting for. We fall short but it's important not to let go of the aspirations set by those that came before us
100%
In my opinion one of the failings of the current population, isn't just the dislike of the direction America is going (that's fine) but a doomism about everything America has ever done. We're never going to improve this country if we don't want to.
The thing is, saying that it's doomism about everything America has ever done is really reductionist to the actual point being made:
Like, one part of the actual CRT discussion (not whatever Florida/Praeger U thinks CRT is) is pointing out that post WWII, many families were able to take advantage of the GI bill and the prolific creation of new housing projects to get a higher education, get a house out in the 'burbs, and pull themselves out of poverty.
But at the same time, many benefits of the GI bill were denied to vets of color, and red lining meant that many they could not buy houses in the cheap new housing developments. So many black families weren't able to join the new middle class, and weren't able to start accruing generation wealth, and between what I've stated and many other policies that families of color were still barred from, and many things I'm glossing over, are still poor now.
And, okay, cool, that happened. The US did a racist thing, and it has repercussions into today. But if you try and have a conversation about what to do about it, you get this response that... well I didn't do that, that happened in the '40s-'50s, I wasn't even alive, why should I care? You just hate America.
And they're right, it's not the fault of most people alive today. But people are still reaping the generational benefits of those policies, and people of color are not. Other families are still impacted by a lack of generational wealth. People alive today.
And there is a real conversation to be had about what to do next about it. Are there policies in place that disproportionate impact the poor, who are disproportionately people of color because of the policies above? Iunno. But not talking about it only benefits the people who have already benefitted.
So it really is a conversation about what to do next, but one with any historical context at all.
But instead you have this Praeger U response, which says that we shouldn't teach children that anything bad ever happened in history. We weren't racists because slaves wanted to be slaves. Therefore people of color who are poor today are just lazy (even if they did the same things your family did to get out of poverty), and we don't need to talk about it.
Edit: removed an extra "the"
Thank you for expressing this so eloquently!