fandomhigh | Lies Your Other History Teachers Told You, Friday, Feburary 9, 2018

"As it's Black History Month right now, it's only fitting that we talk about some of the biggest lies that still perpetuate in America," Steve said, "namely that everyone has an equal opportunity to make something of themselves."

"The American Civil War was over, the armies of the North were victorious and everyone lived happily ever after," Tony replied. "Or at least those enslaved were now free. But what did that mean? Hundreds of thousands of people in a state of limbo where no one had a plan for what to do next."

"Most of them couldn't read," Steve said. "None of them had ever been paid before, and the folks still in the South weren't exactly...thrilled...at this new world order."

Understatement if the day!

Tony nodded along with that. "And then the president of the United States is assassinated by a rebel sympathizer. One of the few people with the power or clout to do something about this... gone. Leaving a Vice President with strong southern ties to take office."

"Andrew Johnson is widely viewed as the worst possible person to have taken over at that moment in history," Steve said. "He was a rigid, dictatorial racist who refused to compromise or to accept a political reality at odds with his own ideas. Instead of forging a compromise between Radical Republicans and moderates, his actions united the opposition against him. His bullheaded opposition to the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the Fourteenth Amendment eliminated all hope of using presidential authority to help fix the massive problems left from the Civil War. Johnson's strong commitment to obstructing political and civil rights for blacks is responsible for the failure of Reconstruction to solve the race problem in the South, something that continues to haunt us."

"These laws, called Jim Crow, were designed for the sole purpose of re-enslaving the newly freed black people in all but name," Tony said. "They involved the removal of black people from the political process with poll taxes, or grandfather clauses, or literacy tests. Removal from from the chance to gain an equal education by segregating schools. Removal from the economic process by taking back any lands that had been given over to newly freed men and women and turning to the process of sharecropping to keep them in debt to wealthy white landowners. So, we have political, educational, and economic oppression."

"And then, when people struggled, the ruling class collectively threw up their hands and said, 'must be something innate,'" Steve said, looking disgusted. "Jim Crow extended into hotel bookings, restaurants, public transportation, restrooms. 'Separate but equal' was anything but."

"In a very broad sense, these laws were ended put an end to in 1964 and 1965 with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, " Tony continued. "But realistically, the institutionalized system of oppression is still being fought against to the day with voter suppression and the racial inequality of the incarceration rates here in America."

Steve nodded. "Requiring identification cards to vote, then closing all of the DMVs within a reasonable distance, requiring paperwork that older people of color tend not to have, and, like in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, gerrymander the bejeezus out of districts so that people aren't being equitably represented in Congress, the state house, or city hall. It's essential that we squarely face our own, unique, American-made problems. And Jim Crow is a huge one with lasting impact even now."

"So, today leys discuss what, if anything, we think can be done to fix this. Is it too entrenched in the system to be rooted out? Or can we still fix it without breaking the board?" Tony asked.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Separate but equal. Such bullshit.

Gratuity Tucci

Bobby Drake

Norman Babcock

The ranty, ranty lecture.

What can be done to confront and end deeply entrenched economic and political disenfranchisement?

Just what you want to think about on a Friday, huh, kids?

"Stop pretending like being called out for racism is worse than the racism itself," Tip said. "You know, for starters."

Steve snorted. "Definitely. Or feeling ganged up on and bullied when a bunch of people tell you you're wrong? Because you're wrong?"

Steve had been spending a lot of time telling people on Reddit that they were wrong.

"Oh my gawd," Tip said, in her very best middle class white lady yoga mom voice. "Like, how dare you criticize my opinion, haven't you heard of freedom of speech?" She rolled her eyes. "Like making other people feel bad is a god-given right."

"Well, just other people," Steve said. "Not you. She'll probably want to speak to a manager about this."

"But she definitely doesn't have any biases. Because she had a black best friend in fifth grade."

"But then her mother complained and the school district lines changed?" Steve guessed.

"But that definitely wasn't because her friend was black. It was just because they were poor. Or maybe not as good a student. Or I bet the friend was probably related to a --" Tip paused, looked around, and lowered her voice to a whisper. "-- criminal!" Another eye roll. "All of which, of course, is code for 'black'."

Steve nodded. "Back when I was a kid, it could also mean 'Catholic', 'Italian', or 'Jewish,'" he said, "but that's because New York had its own kind of segregation. This kind of awful isn't just in the South, which is something else people could all stand to remember."

"When you were a kid," Tip said carefully. "Was that because they had way worse words they used for 'black'? I mean, I'm not saying they didn't also have worse ones for those groups, too, but still. No one's going around saying they thought America was better when Catholic, Italian, or Jewish people were property."

"Because they had way worse words," Steve said. "I didn't use them, but I definitely heard 'em."

Tip nodded. "We've come a long way since then," she said. And she didn't even know just when Steve was a kid. "A long way. I think that's why people who don't have to see racism all the time want to pretend it's totally gone. It's exhausting fighting back against all of it all the time. Half the time I don't even end up saying anything. I just stand there and hate everything and think people are idiots."

Steve nodded, looking earnest. "And it shouldn't be your job to be a one-woman spokesperson to every confused, ignorant, or rude person you run across. I'm sorry that it's exhausting to exist in public sometimes."

Bobby chewed on his lower lip for a moment as he thought about what to say. "Where- when- I'm from, that Civil Rights Act stuff was still pretty new," he said, finally. "And it didn't- it didn't really affect me, you know?" His worldview had mostly involved mutant rights, and 'intersectionality' was a concept he was still learning about, yes. "So I probably didn't pay as much attention as maybe I should have. But still, when I got to this time, I guess I was surprised? Because, I mean, I thought the future would've figured all this stuff out," he sighed. "So I dunno if we can ever really a hundred percent fix things, but we can't just go 'oh well it's better than it used to be so that's good enough I guess'."

"What do you think will help spur along more change for the better?" Tony asked. "For most of White America, their first exposure to the injustice of segregation came from the fact that it was televised. They couldn't remove themselves from it anymore. It was right there in their living rooms."

They're here to listen!

Long week was looooong.

Lies Your Other History Teachers Told You, Friday, Feburary 9, 2018

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Talk to Steve and Tony

OOC