According to Neil DeGrasse Tyson, an African American astrophysicist, “One of the great challenges in the world is knowing enough about a subject to think you’re right but not enough about the subject to know you’re wrong.” This quote is important especially in light of the fact that racists want to eliminate Black and Brown studies programs at schools and universities. They want to teach white or Eurocentric falsehoods. They don’t want us to know about white supremacy that has been a part of the education system for hundreds of years. They prefer lies, myths, and fake legends and the reason is simple—to maintain the system of white supremacy.
Greg Abbott and governor Ron DeSantis of Florida don’t want us to know that in 1775, Carl Linnaeus, and later Johann Blumenbach, developed the invented notions of race which produced scientific racism and the term Caucasian. Linnaeus fastened personalities from a white supremacist perspective on these made-up groups by claiming that Indigenous People were “quick tempered, choleric, and eager,” and Africans were “slow and negligent,” and of course “whites” were said to be “swift, clever, and inventive.” Subsequently, these racist falsehoods were cultivated by Blumenbach who created another invention of human types he called Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and others that provided one of first “scientific” racist explanations of humankind. This racist mold was used to wed principles about the inferiority of non-whites and was taught in schools for hundreds of years.
There would never have been a need for Black, Brown, or Native American study programs if the history of non-whites had not been was not suppressed with white racist lies and false white hero worship. Now, we are telling history in a way that exposes the false concept of whiteness and the global problem of white supremacy. Racist historians have purposefully designed the educational system to circumvent any discussion of white supremacy and inequality directly connected to America’s birth as a nation. Hence, a sanitized version of the birth of America was passed on from one generation to generation. We need to teach what actually happened in American history and not the continued white washed version of the historical record. It is important to understand that this explains why those who have been accepted white supremacy do not want to discuss these things, and will often accuse anyone that brings up the issues of genocide, ethnocide, racism, slavery, and injustice against minorities as engaging in some sort of “reverse racism.” In order to carry on established myth in perpetuity, all views that contradict the established vision are sneered at or simply disregarded. In the case of Florida, Governor DeSantis is perhaps the worst bigot in current times as he wants only “white history” taught in schools.
If this racist trend continues, we can expect more fake history that makes the following ludicrous claims. We have heard the ignorant say that the Civil War was not about slavery, that supposedly the Battle of the Alamo was not connected to slavery, that Christopher Columbus discovered America, that U.S. Presidents were good men—when they were slave owners, that police brutality is only rare, that the 3/5th Compromise had nothing to do with racist hatred and slavery, and hundreds of other racist myths. White supremacists want to make America an even more hateful nation, as it was during Jim Crow, using red hats and walls. We will not surrender to this madness that has been manufactured by the newly born bigots of the 21st Century who want to undo social progress.
