July 15
GUEST: Dale Kretz, Assistant Professor African American History, Civil War and Reconstruction, Race and Slavery, Health and Medicine at Texas Tech University, talks about his recent article in Jacobin Magazine, "Juneteenth Is About Freedom."
Juneteenth Is About Freedom
Dale loves to talk about the historical facts about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow. It is a complicated story of subjugation and resistance, and of racism and redemption. It is mostly a story that white America does not know.
We have our own story, of course. It has been carefully crafted to let us off the hook for slavery, possibly the most defining event in our nation's coming of age. For slavery doesn't have an aftermath. The effects of slavery are still very much with us, and the proof is the huge underclass of Black people in our society.
Activist Radio was fortunately able to get Richard Rothstein as a guest last year. His book, The Color of Law - A forgotten History of How Our government Segregated America, informs white people of our government's historic mistreatment of Blacks in America. Rothstein's book is full of surprises, and destroys much of the mythology of white thought on race and equality.
So maybe having white people researching and presenting the sordid history of Black subjugation in our country is not such a bad thing. For it is whites who don't know about our country's racism. And it is whites, who in their ignorance, often justify further repression.
