yieldsigns (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
yieldsigns) wrote2010-02-10 01:15 am
yieldsigns) wrote2010-02-10 01:15 am
(no subject)
According to the song's Wikipage, "My Old Kentucky Home" isn't racist and Frederick Douglas was convinced that it was sympathetic to slaves. Also from that page is the news that in 1986, the Kentucky General Assembly changed the lyrics to exclude the mention of "darkies," which, if you ask me, amounts to revisionist history.
I don't want to come from a country that erases evidence of the torture and enslavement of dark-skinned persons, just so someone in 1986 can feel like they're stomping out racism. I want to come from an America wherein one looks back at the terrible events of its past and wonders that it ever happened in the first place, because it has since come so far.
I know it hasn't happened yet, but might it not, someday?
Btw: Black History Month (which is apparently opposed by Morgan Freeman, on account of how it relegates black history to one month, thus implying it shouldn't be studied all the time, as regular ol' history), so go read some James Baldwin or something, Whitey. Gawd.
I don't want to come from a country that erases evidence of the torture and enslavement of dark-skinned persons, just so someone in 1986 can feel like they're stomping out racism. I want to come from an America wherein one looks back at the terrible events of its past and wonders that it ever happened in the first place, because it has since come so far.
I know it hasn't happened yet, but might it not, someday?
Btw: Black History Month (which is apparently opposed by Morgan Freeman, on account of how it relegates black history to one month, thus implying it shouldn't be studied all the time, as regular ol' history), so go read some James Baldwin or something, Whitey. Gawd.