Re-Learning History
An introduction to my western story seminary paper:
My brother and I were among the first black children to graduate from our town’s elementary school that was established in 1999. While growing up as kids we did not correlate a person’s color with his or her behavior or culture. We were essentially colorblind kids. I hardly noticed a difference between the white kids in my class and myself until now when I look back at that time. I am sure I found it somewhat strange that white boys and white girls were fascinated by my hair and would often rub or pat it with their hands. However, I did not notice any difference in how I was being treated or perceived by my white peers or by my white teachers. According to what I am able to remember, it was not until a history lesson in the second grade when I first began to realize that there was a vast difference between me and my white peers and white teachers. The history lesson was a revelation of slavery in the United States.
The teacher shared our nation’s history of black people from Africa being brought to the New World as slaves. She, the white teacher, shared the brutality of slavery in the Southern States of the U.S.A which includes North Carolina: the state I was born in and where my paternal ancestors come from. My white peers glanced at me throughout the history lesson. One of my white female friends apologized to me about what had happened to my people. I remember feeling uncomfortable but was hiding the feeling in my body. I remember internally telling myself that despite this historical revelation I am no different from my white peers.
Over the years I began to learn that my blackness was connected to a culture in the country. A culture that is different from my white peers because of our different starting place in this country. My people were considered slaves and partly citizens and my white peers’ ancestors were slave owners, land owners, a powerful people group who had dominated the New World many in the name of the Christian God. There was a difference between me and my white peers in second grade.
History revealed the difference. History matters. It communicates how we got to where we are today. It helps us make sense of the events that happen now and the beliefs people hold. History of the U.S.A reveals the oppression of black and brown bodies. Of my body. Of my community and culture’s bodies. It is for this reason that discussing the Western Story is a personal endeavor to me. Not merely an abstract retelling of major western events that led to a seductive humanistic worldview and religion, but a story that directly impacts my black life and all black lives in the U.S.A to this day.
In this paper I will write pieces of the western story as it relates to the birth of the U.S.A. alongside the development of white supremacy. The majority of my communication of the western story will be through the lens of white supremacy told in three acts. I will share the racial myth in English history, the syncretism of the aforementioned mythology and Christianity alongside its world impact, then the white rule and dominance over the Western world. I will close by sharing how whiteness mixed with humanism is among the dominant religions ever present in the U.S.A.
