Ok. I get it. Slavery was bad. Slavery was wrong. Some slaves were mistreated. Black people suffered.
Thing is, I didn't do any of that. So I don't feel guilty about any of it.
Actually it actually provides some balance, vs, typical Howard Zinn propaganda.
Shennette Garrett-Scott, associate professor of history and African American Studies at the University of Mississippi. Myth 1: That enslaved people didn’t have money..They saved money earned from overwork, from hiring themselves out, and through independent economic activities with banks, local merchants, and their enslavers. Elizabeth Keckley, a skilled seamstress whose dresses for Abraham Lincoln’s wife are displayed in Smithsonian museums, supported her enslaver’s entire family and still earned enough to pay for her freedom.
n fact, enslaved people also created financial institutions, especially mutual aid societies. ..Given the resurgence of attention on reparations for slavery and the racial wealth gap, it is important to recall the long history of black people’s engagement with the US economy — not just as property, but as savers, spenders, and small businesspeople.
LaGarrett King, an education professor at the University of Missouri Columbia. Myth 2: That Black revolutionary soldiers were patriots.. the term Black Patriot is a myth — it infers that Black and white revolutionary soldiers fought for the same reasons...Black revolutionary soldiers were fighting for freedom — not for America, but for themselves and the race as a whole....Once the American colonies promised freedom, about a quarter of the Continental Army became Black; before that, more Black people defected to the British military for a chance to be free.
Sowande Mustakeem, is an associate professor of History and African & African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. Myth 3: That Black men were injected with syphilis in the Tuskegee experiment
A dangerous myth that continues to haunt Black Americans is the belief that the government infected 600 Black men in Macon County, Alabama, with syphilis. This myth has created generations of African Americans with a healthy distrust of the American medical profession. While these men weren’t injected with syphilis, their story does illuminate an important truth: America’s medical past is steeped in racialized terror and the exploitation of Black bodies.
The 600 Black men in the experiment were not given syphilis. Instead, 399 men already had stages of the disease, and the 201 who did not served as a control group. Both groups were withheld from treatment of any kind for the 40 years they were observed. The men were subjected to humiliating and often painfully invasive tests and experiments including spinal taps.
Douglas J. Flowe, an assistant professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis. Myth 4: That Black people in early Jim Crow America didn’t fight back....Distressed by public racial violence and unwilling to accept it, many adhered to emerging ideologies of outright rebellion, particularly after the turn of the 20th century and the emergence of the “New Negro.” Urban, more educated than their parents, and often trained militarily, a generation coming of age following World War I sought to secure themselves in the only ways left.
Jason Allen, a public historian and facilitator at xCHANGEs, a cultural diversity and inclusion training consultancy. Myth 5: That crack in the “ghetto” was the largest drug crisis of the 1980s..Even though more white people reported using crack more than Black people in a 1991 National Institute on Drug Abuse survey, Black people were sentenced for crack offenses eight times more than whites. Meanwhile, there was a corresponding cocaine epidemic in white suburbs and college campuses that compelled the US to install harsher penalties for crack than for cocaine. [misleading]
Dale Allender, an associate professor at California State University Sacramento. Myth 6: That all Black people were enslaved until emancipation...In reality, free Black and Black-white biracial communities existed in states such as Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia, and Ohio well before abolition. For example, Anthony Johnson, named Antonio the Negro on the 1625 census, was listed on this document as a servant. By 1640, he and his wife owned and managed a large plot of land in Virginia. https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/2/18/21134644/black-history-month-2020-myths
Related to Myth 5 is medically reviewed research that reports (in part) that African Americans are overall overrepresented among drug abusers in the United States - with a number of cultural factors at play - but that they are also more likely to seek treatment for their drug addiction.
Past research reported that while the total substance abuse admissions among African Americans has been steadily declining since the 1990s, 21 percent of admissions to substance abuse treatment facilities were African American in 2006 in comparison to 12 percent of non-Hispanic population (HHS 2008a).[162]