My Fellow Americans

Am I an American? No, I am not an American. I am the American. ― Mark Twain

It is my contention that white Americans would be poor citizens without the experiences and history of Black Americans.

Would they be able to even define citizenship? Would they know their rights and their responsibilities? Would they understand the need for activism and agitation to ensure that what is theirs isn’t stolen? Would they understand that sometimes it takes decades or centuries of work to realize even a small measure of progress?

I would say that the average white person in this country does not think in these terms. And many of them (not all, thankfully) operate as if so-called minorities don’t exist as people, but as interlopers who have the audacity to be exactly who they are: Americans with agency and history going back hundreds of years.

Recent movements to suppress the teaching of true black history in public schools and to remove black books from libraries are pitiful and ultimately fruitless attempts to lie about the full story of our past as American people. We are Americans and these are our truths. History doesn’t care about your lies and your screwy reasons for telling them.

Even though our country is a young one, its history is complex and instructive. To contract rather expand our understanding of those complexities is to endorse lying instead of learning. And to assume that young minds are incapable of understanding the truth is ridiculous. Children are not stupid.

Those young minds that today seem too sensitive to handle real history might one day be the adult minds that wonder.why you kept it from them. You had better be ready with an answer.

Copyright 2023 By Phyllis Alesia Perry