We are several months removed from the 38th Black History Month of the 2013th White History Year.
Hopefully, it will be the last of both.
Perhaps you heard it from Morgan Freeman. Perhaps you heard it from someone else. Perhaps you are hearing it for the first time. Setting aside a month for Black History encourages tokenism and promotes the sort of marginalization that the creation of Negro History Week in 1926 tried to combat. Continue reading
(Editor’s Note: This is a college essay I finished on 11/10/05. It’s one of the best papers I’ve ever written and it’s about one of the most unappreciated and underrated figures in American History. I hope you get something from it.)
At first glance, Nathanael Greene appears to be a most unlikely candidate for savior of a fledgling nation. His father scorned formal education. He walked with a limp and had problems with one eye. He was also given to asthma attacks that would keep him awake all night. Most damning of all was his Quaker background. In spite of all these perceived defects, Nathanael Greene was the man who the embryonic United States needed to secure its liberties and guarantee independence. Without General Greene, the ideas advanced by more intellectually perceptive patriots would not have had a country in which to take root. Nathanael Greene’s ideology leading up to, and role during, the American Revolution created an ardent patriot who led with action rather than prose and a nationalist who was bound to be discouraged by some of the conditions following the war.
(Editor’s Note: This is a slightly updated version of something posted as a Facebook note several years ago. Also, I got the house!)
Many of you know that I am buying a house. Last Tuesday, I paid a home inspector to check out my (hopefully) future abode. After he looked it over, he asked me what I did for a living. I told him I was a history teacher. Without missing a beat, he asked, “You’re not teaching that ‘new history,’ are you?” I charmingly told him that I teach the truth and nothing but the truth. I didn’t think about it again until today. Continue reading
As we speak, twelve human beings, fraught with fallibility and riddled with bias, will decide whether or not an approximate tenth of our nation’s citizens are entitled to the protections afforded all Americans by the 14th Amendment: “No State shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Despite my knowledge of and interest in constitutional law, I really can’t merit a guess as to how the Supreme Court will rule. With eight justices probably already decided, my gut tells me that Justice Kennedy is leaning towards overturning Prop 8. Whether or not that leads to an end to the discrimination against our gay brothers and sisters for simply being who they are remains to be seen.
However, come June, we will await our Brown v. Board despite the very real possibility that we are only at Plessy v. Ferguson.
That is, however, my point. Continue reading
Nothing But The Rain 