Just Read This

(to read the associated article, click on the title)

I am completely against American mythologizing of history. Romantic notions of both the "founding" (raping) of America and the "Gone With The Wind" and "Song of the South" spin on ante-bellum America make me just as sick as white and black bullsh*t concepts of the Civil Rights Movement. Even I, at times, fall into the trap. But I think that the link I'm giving might help whomever a little to free their mind of lies and spin.

I'll say this a million times: history is linear. At no point does it completely fracture so that the time line itself ceases to be a single history. Africa's pre-colonial history is just as much of the global narrative as China's, India's, the Aztec's, Mayan's, Olmec's, and Europe's. The appropriate timeline is global in concept. Not regional. We are learning history wrong. Nothing in history occurs in a vacuum. It all goes back to someplace or something. That being said, the Civil Rights Movement didn't "begin" in the late 50's and "end" in the late 60's. It began when Africans were first brought to America, and ends whenever the dreams of the African slave are fulfilled. So, what congress is talking about doing is exactly the same thing we've done to historical figures like Christopher Columbus, and George Washington or Thomas Jefferson. We're creating clear-cut binary figures of good and evil, when that has never been real. We need a postmodern perspective of history for our people, American people, all people to grow up mentally healthy. Read it, and decide. Speak out, think in.