Still width Problems in America
The america was build in multy-racial people from the old world at the beggining, then came the Africans and the people from south-america. Of course the indians where already there. You have a connecting democracy that was built 200 years ago, and still have problems.
We will have in Africa more then 200 years of regional wars betwen the people, and all almost because off economic reason´s, that is the base of almost comflits in the earth.
Help us to cut this not to 100 years, not to 50 years..but to 20 years at least, begging by teaching the young chikdren to defend democracy and integartion is the world.
Best Regards, Zuzuzu Commision
Multiracial Harmony in California
A recent northern California survey on racial stereotypes has left the chattering classes tongue-tied. Asians, for example, are three times as likely as whites to report that they wouldn't stand for it if a black or Hispanic moved in next door. Hispanics are about twice as likely as whites to say they wouldn't have a black neighbor and three times as likely to say they wouldn't have an Asian neighbor. Whites are supposed to be the big racists in this country, so commentators were reduced to wringing their hands over "how quickly immigrants learn racism in America." Some racial activists insisted that the questions were ambiguous. When asked whether blacks could pull themselves up to better positions if they worked harder, 65 percent of Hispanics agreed, followed by 58 percent for both blacks and Asians. Only 42 percent of the whites agreed; most dutifully blamed society for black poverty. When asked if Hispanics could get ahead if they worked harder, the percentages were similar except that an even larger number of Hispanics (72 percent) agreed. [Steve Johnson, Survey Finds Bay Area Tolerant of diversity, SJ Merc, 11/17/91, p. B1.] Hispanic activists were no doubt annoyed that their people weren't more worried about "institutional racism." If this survey shows anything, it is that of all the races in California, whites have been most successfully browbeaten into giving evasive answers on whom they would accept as neighbors and into pretending that non-whites can't get ahead no matter how hard they try.
Private black schools have gone the farthest (see sidebar). Some reject America, and teach their pupils that they are the African diaspora. Many teach patent nonsense, claiming that the ancient Egyptians and even King Solomon were black. Nevertheless, even if some of their material is ridiculous, Afro-centric teachers have recognized something that white teachers have forgotten: History has a point of view; it cannot be all things to all people.
Is a Multiracial Nation Possible?
The Meaning of 'Multicultural' Textbooks Is it possible to write histories that satisfy everyone? Blacks understand what is at stake even if whites do not.
Of all the ways in which a nation defines itself, few are more important than what it teaches its children about itself. In the history classes of its public schools, a nation retells its own story and instills a national identity in the minds of young citizens. In today's America, where competing racial, cultural, and linguistic claims now make it nearly impossible even to speak of national identity, questions about history have become a struggle for the possession of America's past.
The multicultural, multiperspective history that has arisen from this struggle is not merely a departure from the history America has always taught its children. It may be the first time that a nation has abandoned the single identity of its origins and set out deliberately to adopt multiple national identities.
Significantly, the understanding by many non-whites of multicultural history is entirely different from that of whites. For whites, the central concepts are "inclusion" and "pluralism." American history is to be rewritten so that racial and cultural perspectives that were once "ignored" or "neglected" will get equal treatment. For many non-whites, however, multicultural history is merely a step on the way to an explicitly racial, Afro-centric or Hispanic history. Their goal is separation rather than inclusion.
The "conservative" view is that explicitly racial histories are illegitimate. America, it is argued, must be united by a common history, and exclusionist histories will disunite us. This position is logically correct; exclusionist histories are divisive. But as we shall see, the "conservative" position is wrong — practically, emotionally, and even morally. America is already disunited by race, and no approach to history can change that. Just as it would be impossible to use the same history book in both France and England, it is impossible to write a single American history that satisfies, white, black, Indian, Hispanic, and Asian.
Schooling as Assimilation
The purpose of American public education has never been simply to impart knowledge. One of its central goals has been to make children into Americans. American schools fly the American flag and students pledge allegiance to it. The central events of history are from the American past. The most glorious achievements are American achievements. There is nothing odd about that. Every nation gives its children a national education.
Nevertheless, American schools have had an even more explicitly nation-building purpose than others because of the need to assimilate immigrants. John Quincy Adams wrote that immigrants "must cast off their European skin, never to resume it." Horace Mann argued that "a foreign people . . . cannot be transformed into the full stature of American citizens merely by a voyage across the Atlantic." One of the strongest motives for building public schools was, therefore, the need to make Americans out of Europeans.
Europeans weren't going to be made into Americans by teaching them about the contributions of Africans, Mexicans and Indians. The old, standard history united Americans because it had a coherent purpose and a single voice. It emphasized one point of view and ignored others. To put it bluntly, it was history about white people for white people.
This history served the country well, so long as the population was overwhelmingly white, and the two traditional minorities — blacks and Indians — did not have voices. All this changed, beginning in the 1960s. The civil rights movement gave voices to blacks and Indians, and changes in immigration laws brought a massive influx of non-whites. It was the end of a certain kind of America.
History has winners and losers, and they see the same events with different eyes.
Non-whites began to complain about a version of history that left them out. The nation-building history that had bound Europeans into a single people had not bound whites and non-whites into a single people. "Multicultural" history was therefore to be a broader, more inclusive history that would give every American his rightful share of America's past. At the same time, "culturally relevant" history would keep blacks and Hispanics in school and stop them from dropping out at ever-increasing rates.
Squaring the Circle
Something that well-meaning whites did not understand is that an "inclusive" history — one that would be all things to all people — is impossible. History has winners and losers, and they see the same events with different eyes. At the same time, virtually every non-white group sees the conflicts of the past as struggles with whites, so multicultural history becomes a collection of perspectives that are often not merely non-white but anti-white.
How, for example, is a multicultural history to treat the discovery and settlement of North America by Europeans? The old history called it a triumphant advance for civilization. But for Indians, the same historical events are an unending sequence of defeats and disasters. Does a multicultural textbook call this a triumph or a disaster or both or neither?
What about the Spanish-American War? At the time, it was thought a glorious success because it added huge chunks to the American West. But was it instead, an imperialist atrocity? Are today's school children to rejoice that California is part of America or are they to weep over the stolen birthright of their Hispanic brothers?
Slavery poses a similar riddle. Blacks want to make it the centerpiece of their history, and in many ways it is. For nearly 300 years, most American blacks were slaves, and virtually everything that blacks did or thought was circumscribed by slavery. Today, it is still the centerpiece of black history, because it excuses failure and can be used to extract benefits from whites.
For whites, though, slavery is a minor historical event. Except for the Civil War (which was set in motion and fought by whites) the course of the nation's history would hardly have been different if there had been no slavery. To give it a prominent place in white history is a transparent effort to manipulate the way that whites think about the present.
Once slavery is promoted to the status of unparalleled evil, much of the past becomes incomprehensible. Is George Washington both the Father of his Country and a wicked man because he owned slaves? Is Abraham Lincoln the storied savior of the Union or is he a fiend because he thought blacks were inferior and should be sent back to Africa?
Those of us who went to school when American history still had coherence are likely to learn about the new, multicultural history only by accident. One such accident is that this year is the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America. A typical multicultural problem has thus spilled out of the classroom and gotten wider notice: Was Columbus a great explorer or was he a genocidal tyrant? Are we to celebrate half a millennium of European America or are we to hang our heads in shame? Or are we to do both?
Problems and Uncertainties
Multicultural histories, by their very nature, cannot answer these questions. And because they cannot, they present American history as a bundle of uncertainties, as a series of unsolved "problems." Unlike the old history, which viewed the past with pride and the future with confidence, multicultural histories are diffident and perplexed. Unlike the old history, which at least gave white children a firm foundation for national identity, multicultural history says, in effect, that America has no identity. The only thing left to unite a multicultural America is geography.
One way to understand the impossible task that multicultural history has set itself is to imagine how one would write a school history book to be used in both France and Britain. How would it treat Napoleon? The very geography of London — Waterloo Station, Trafalger Square — is a monument to Englishmen who killed Frenchmen. Napoleon's tomb, Austerlitz station, and street names like Jena and Ulm all mark the pride the French take in their ancestors' readiness to slaughter foreigners. A "multicultural" history book of the Napoleonic wars would be an absurdity, and everyone knows it. And yet, it would be no more absurd than the history books American children use today.
Non-whites have a much keener sense of their group interests than whites. They see very clearly that the future will have its winners and losers, just as history had them. Thus, while virtually every school district with a white majority is trying to square the circle by teaching a history that is everything to everyone, school districts with black majorities are beginning to replace the old "Euro-centric" curriculum with one that is openly "Afro-centric." They are not interested in supplementing the traditional history with different points of view. They want a single, African point of view.
In Atlanta, where 92 percent of the public school students are black, history and social studies courses have been rewritten from an "African-American" perspective. New York's public schools recently authorized a curriculum revision based on an openly anti-white position paper drafted, in part, by the black-supremacist professor, Leonard Jeffries (see AR, October, 1991). In California, school districts in heavily-black Oakland and East Palo Alto started the 1991/1992 school year without social studies textbooks. They decided to develop their own black-centered materials because they could find nothing suitable.
Building a Nation
Blacks, then, are learning the kind of history that whites once learned — a history that builds identity and certitude. White children are learning that every interpretation is valid, that nothing is certain, that their nation's past is all paradoxes and unsolved problems. Patriotism will not grow in the heart of a child who cannot look back with pride upon his nation's past. We have come a long way from schooling that made Europeans into Americans. We now make Americans into nothing at all.
Multicultural history is like affirmative action. Just as whites are to step aside to give hiring preferences to minorities, whites are to set aside their own point of view and study those of others. Non-whites, on the other hand, are free to promote their own interests and exclusionist histories.
Like affirmative action, multicultural history is possible only because the majority has abandoned its position at the center. If whites insisted on their own history as strongly as non-whites insist on theirs, the inevitability of separate histories would have been recognized long ago. Nor will whites be willing to forego their own history for ever. They will eventually realize that only they are studying a past with no answers and no certainties. They will eventually see that there cannot be one history that satisfies all. And they will begin to wonder whether there can be one nation that satisfies all.
Blacks, then, are learning the kind of history that whites once learned — a history that builds identity and certitude. White children are learning that every interpretation is valid, that nothing is certain, that their nation's past is all paradoxes and unsolved problems. Patriotism will not grow in the heart of a child who cannot look back with pride upon his nation's past. We have come a long way from schooling that made Europeans into Americans. We now make Americans into nothing at all.
Multicultural history is like affirmative action. Just as whites are to step aside to give hiring preferences to minorities, whites are to set aside their own point of view and study those of others. Non-whites, on the other hand, are free to promote their own interests and exclusionist histories.
Like affirmative action, multicultural history is possible only because the majority has abandoned its position at the center. If whites insisted on their own history as strongly as non-whites insist on theirs, the inevitability of separate histories would have been recognized long ago. Nor will whites be willing to forego their own history for ever. They will eventually realize that only they are studying a past with no answers and no certainties. They will eventually see that there cannot be one history that satisfies all. And they will begin to wonder whether there can be one nation that satisfies all.
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To the World, at this moment we know there is big difernt world´s in our world, there are wars, there are religions, there are rich, there poors, there are hungry ..there are a lot of hate , width or widthout reasen. But we can discut all things in a simple Blog, we just want to make the world a little lite better. For that me and my organization are commited to do small projects in Africa. Because of our rots, i stablish severel projects in the Island´s of São Tomé e Principe.
Of course that width good people o can do a lot of things, but widthout any money i don´t go anywere. For obtaining funds we just will NOT ask for donation´s.
The www will pay all these projects width the help of is user´s. For that it will be lunch several promotion, that you sometimes only have to click and in the other´s putting a small formularions. WE will explain everyting when we are promoting one projects, the fund´s need, the time and how can you help without speding any money at all.
Besides the projects, we also will give informations about the evolution of this small country.
Thanks for your colaboration, we will start as soon as possibel.
Best Regards, to you and to the world
The songs
This collection consists of 1,305 pieces of African-American sheet music dating from 1850 through 1920. The collection includes many songs from the heyday of antebellum black face minstrelsy in the 1850s and from the abolitionist movement of the same period. Numerous titles are associated with the novel and the play Uncle Tom's Cabin. Civil War period music includes songs about African-American soldiers and the plight of the newly emancipated slave. Post-Civil War music reflects the problems of Reconstruction and the beginnings of urbanization and the northern migration of African Americans. African-American popular composers include James Bland, Ernest Hogan, Bob Cole, James Reese Europe, and Will Marion Cook. Twentieth century titles feature many photographs of African-American musical performers, often in costume. Unlike many other sorts of published works, sheet music can be produced rapidly in response to an event or public interest, and thus is a source of relatively unmediated and unrevised perspectives on quickly changing events and public attitudes. Particularly significant in this collection are the visual depictions of African Americans which provide much information about racial attitudes over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Linking to songs
Linking to songs
The Rots of America
Black History of the Seacoast
Written by Various Authors
STORIES RARELY TOLD
African American history in New Hampshire begins as early as 1645. Hundreds of blacks, enslaved and free, lived in the seacoast in the 1700s. Black men fought in the Revolution and the Civil War. Their stories are among the most popular on this web site. Articles are based on and inspired by the work of historian Valerie Cunningham and Mark Sammons, authors of the upcoming book "Black Portsmouth".
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"Roots and Branches" artwork
© Richard Haynes. Jr
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