For all the teen boys in the recent Civil War documentary who thought talking about racism made things worse, here's proof that they are not original thinkers.
In 1859, the New York Times ran an editorial about abolitionists that said essentially the same thing:
That's right, “silence on the part of the north concerning slavery would be the best policy.”
As noted in the Twitter thread where I found this, the early 1960s Times editorial board also advocated that the first few Freedom Rides were enough, that John Lewis and others should stop upsetting the good people of the South, for surely they would now work out all the nasty stuff on their own.
As we go backwards in a new wave of overt white supremacy, it's revelatory to see these primary sources prove the same arguments are reused again and again to prop up the status quo and existing power relations.
No comments:
Post a Comment