You’ve heard it. At dinner tables. In comment sections. From politicians with clean hands and full bank accounts. It’s delivered like wisdom. Like patience. Like a plea for unity from people who have never been asked to share anything.
But “stop making everything about race” isn’t a request for peace. It’s a shield against the receipt.
If it’s not about race, then the wealth gap is a mystery. If it’s not about race, then the poverty is a personal failing. If it’s not about race, then the history is just history, and the present is just the present, and there is no line connecting the two. If it’s not about race, there is no bill to pay.
The line exists. The bill is due.
In 1947, a white veteran used the GI Bill to buy a home in Levittown, Pennsylvania. The house cost $8,000. The VA guaranteed the loan. The FHA insured the mortgage. The suburb was built for him. For people like him. The deed included a racial covenant. The house could not be sold to a Black family. The neighborhood would stay white. The wealth would stay white.
That house is now worth $500,000. It paid for his children’s college. It paid for the next down payment. It paid for the trust fund. It paid for the head start that became a dynasty. The white family’s wealth started with that house.
The Black veteran came home to the same country. He had fought the same war. But he did not have the same GI Bill. The bill was written by a segregationist Congress and administered locally on purpose. So that the VA office in Jackson, Mississippi, could refuse him. So that the bank in Birmingham, Alabama, could deny him. So that the college in Austin, Texas, could reject him. The bill was technically colorblind. The implementation was designed to exclude him from the start. He was restricted to the redlined neighborhood. The house he could buy didn’t appreciate. The school his children attended wasn’t funded. The wealth didn’t compound. The head start didn’t happen.
The white veteran’s house is the racial wealth gap. It has a street number. It has a deed. The past isn’t history. It’s the current bank account.
In 1942, the Tsukamoto family grew strawberries in Florin, California. They owned the land. They built the soil. They grew the fruit that fed a region. Then Executive Order 9066. The family was forced into a camp. They were given days to sell. They sold the land for pennies. The white neighbors bought the farms. The white neighbors built the agribusinesses. The white neighbors kept the profits.
The Tsukamotos came home to nothing. The land was gone. The soil was gone. The decades of labor were gone. The white neighbor’s grandchildren still own the farm. The Japanese family got an apology and $20,000 forty years later. The farm is worth millions. The past isn’t history. It’s the current profit margin.
In 1868, the United States signed the Fort Laramie Treaty. The Black Hills belonged to the Lakota. The treaty said so. The ink was dry. Then gold was found. The treaty was broken. The land was seized. The Black Hills were taken. Mount Rushmore was carved into the sacred mountain. The faces of colonizers on stolen rock. A monument to the people who broke the promise.
The US government now holds the land. The US government leases the mineral rights. The US government runs the tourist attraction. The Lakota refuse the $1 billion+ settlement because the land is not for sale. The theft is ongoing. The past isn’t history. It’s the current oil field.
In 1935, Rubin Stacy was lynched in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He was accused of frightening a white woman. He was hanged from a tree. A mob of white people watched. They took photos. They made postcards. The photo shows white children in the crowd. A little girl in a white dress, looking up at the body. The terror was a tool. The terror was a message. The terror was a system.
The reason they ban the history is simple.
You can’t teach the picture-perfect-postcard while teaching the terror. You can’t teach the terror without teaching the motive. The motive was economic suppression and racial control. The Black family that saw the body didn’t start a business. The Black family that saw the body didn’t demand a loan. The Black family that saw the body stayed in their place. The terror worked. The past isn’t history. It’s the current trauma.
The stolen house in 1947 is the trust fund today. The stolen farm in 1942 is the corporate revenue today. The stolen mountain is the tourist attraction today. The wealth didn’t vanish. It transferred. The past is the present bank account. The racial wealth gap is not a mystery. It is a ledger. The entries are documented. The amounts are calculated. The bill is due.
And now they pass laws to ban the teaching of this history.
Florida’s HB 7, the “Stop WOKE Act,” signed by Governor Ron DeSantis in 2022, prohibits instruction that would cause students to “feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress” based on their race. Texas HB 3979, signed by Governor Greg Abbott in 2021, bans teaching that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another” but also removes requirements to teach the history of white supremacy, the Ku Klux Klan, and the civil rights movement. The laws don’t ban the dates. They ban the receipt. They ban the mechanism. They ban the “why.”
If the child doesn’t know how the wealth was stolen, the child won’t ask for it back. If the child doesn’t see the postcard, the child won’t understand the trauma. If the child doesn’t learn about the redlining, the child will think that their poverty is a personal failing. Ignorance is the final cover-up. The laws are the shredder.
“Stop making everything about race.”
The phrase is a shield. The phrase is a shredder for the receipt.
But the blood’s in the soil. The money’s in the bank. And the invoice is still due.
Everything is about race because the money is still in the hands of the race that stole it.
And they want you to stop talking about it so they never have to give it back.
The little girl in the white dress grew up. She had children. They had children. They inherited the world that Rubin Stacy’s death helped build. They inherited the silence. They inherited the comfort. They inherited the house in Levittown and the farm in Florin and the mountain in the Black Hills. They inherited the stolen wealth and they called it hard work.
The Black family that saw the body also had children. They also had grandchildren. They inherited the trauma. They inherited the redline. They inherited the poverty that was designed for them. They inherited the silence too. But their silence wasn’t comfort. Their silence was survival.
The bill is still due.
The receipt is still in the ledger.
The blood is still upon the soil.
The phrase “stop making everything about race” are the incoherent mouth-sounds of the people who owe the “money,” closing the door on the people who are here to collect.
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“…that would cause students to “feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress” based on their race. ”
This completley imaginary supposed “harm” as opposed to the *real* and medically documented stress from systematic discrimination that Black people (and others) suffer right here in this country right now and have been for hundreds of years.
This has been studied for decades now and accounts for a big chunk of the gap in health outcomes between white people and Black people.
Anything, though, to avoid having to deal with this country’s “original sin” in some way (like we should have done back then with a *real* Reconstruction instead of the limp effort that was curtailed by Confederate sympathizers in the end).
“(like we should have done back then with a *real* Reconstruction instead of the limp effort that was curtailed by Confederate sympathizers in the end)”
The Confederate sympathizers were Southern Democrats, also known as Redeemers.
This is a very simplistic understanding of the Civil War and everything that has occurred since then that re-aligned the two sides across conservative versus liberal lines.
Pick up a book. Or have AI regurgitate it to you, which you seem to really enjoy.
I just pointed out a fact about who the Confederate sympathizers were that you brought up.
I’m sorry if that bothers you.
She’s pointing out that who the Confederate sympathizers are differ from who they were initially, sorry if you failed to understand that.
I would recommend Eric Foner’s “Reconstruction”
No thanks, I did a little AI search about Eric Foner and found what I thought I would find:
“The New Criterion, argue his work displays political bias in the academy”
“Some critics in the Claremont Review of Books and London Review of Books label him a left-wing or Marxist historian”
LOL. Only one of the most respected historians around, but your AI apparently knows better.
Meanwhile, here on earth: “In 2011, Foner’s The Fiery Trial (2010) won the Pulitzer Prize for History, the Lincoln Prize, and the Bancroft Prize. Foner previously won the Bancroft Prize in 1989 for Reconstruction. In 2000, he was elected president of the American Historical Association. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018.”
Also point out both your citations are RIGHT WING sources.
So basically what you did: Did a quick “AI search” – Pulled ideological critiques (you must have your AI trained on right wing sources) and used that to dismiss the historian entirely – one of the most preeminent and respected historians on this subject, mind you.
According to Google AI:
“Eric Foner is a prominent American historian, widely recognized for his work on the Civil War and Reconstruction, often characterized as a progressive, liberal, or “New Left” historian. While he acknowledges being “powerfully influenced by Marxist insights,” he does not self-identify as a Marxist”
“He has been recognized as a prominent intellectual in the “radical Leftist” tradition, with deep familial roots in the old New York left.”
Good job, you trained your AI to discount Eric Foner. You should be proud.
I just asked if he was a biased leftist, which is what I pretty much figured, and those were some of the findings.
Given that you’ve never read him…. I don’t really care what your AI prompt says about him.
David, how often do you use AI?
One has to give AI a prompt in order to get info on the subject they’re addressing.
You’re saying AI just reflects prompts—but you used it to pull critiques from conservative outlets and presented them as neutral. How do you know the two sources you cited are correct about Foner?
You’re correct about two of the sources but it appears not The London Review of Books.
“No, the London Review of Books (LRB) is not considered a conservative organization. It is widely recognized as a left-leaning or radically liberal publication.”
Part of the problem is, you’re not citing an actual article from London Review of Books that we can evaluate. So we end up in this useless debate over who is left and who is right without actually discussing specific material.
If you understood history, you’d know that traditionally Reconstruction was treated as a disaster that marginalized the South. This was the Dunning school. WEB Dubois wrote a history of Reconstruction that turned it on its head, but it took a later generation of mainstream historians, of which Foner is one of them, to overturn that view of Reconstruction and situate it closer to our contemporary understanding. That’s why I recommended the book. Unfortunately, just as it’s impossible to have a meaningful conversation with Oertel on housing, it’s impossible to have a conversation with you that doesn’t devolve into this crap. There are some interesting discussions to be had, but not if you haven’t read the material and simply attempt to discredit it by pointing out certain sources that suggest bias.
“incoherent mouth-sounds”
What do you need explained to you?
If we’re going to continue making everything about what happened to dead people, wouldn’t logic dictate that the black family (in the article below) be required to “give back” the $20 million they received for this land to whatever tribe claims to have occupied this area?
If not, can someone please explain the logic of NOT doing so?
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/04/1146879302/bruces-beach-la-county-california