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A Thomas Jefferson descendant explains why Critical Race Theory is a "white supremacist's nightmare"
This is an excerpt, but please click on the link to read the full Facebook post. Every word he writes is important.
Cousins.
by Lucian K. Truscott IV
You are looking at a photograph of me and my cousin Shannon Lanier. It’s a photograph that illustrates why the 1619 Project is such a white supremacist’s nightmare, teaching that racism and slavery played a major role in the founding of this nation. It’s a photograph of the truth exposed, at least in part, by critical race theory, an academic discipline that teaches the same thing. It is not only a photograph, it is a fact. It is history staring you in the face, history in flesh and blood, history that cannot be rewritten, cannot be buried, cannot be denied, because we are alive to tell it.
That’s Thomas Jefferson’s grave we’re standing on. We are 6th great grandsons of Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s third president long idolized as a founding father of the United States. Shannon is descended from Jefferson’s 36 year relationship – if relations between an enslaved person and a slave owner can be called that – with Sally Hemings, who is his 6th great grandmother. I am descended from Jefferson’s relationship with his wife Martha, who is my 6th great grandmother. Shannon’s great grandmother was enslaved by my 6th great grandfather. We are tied together not only by blood but by the stain of slavery on our family and our country. We are cousins, and we are also blood brothers. We carry in our souls the legacy of the slavery that brought our great grandparents together. We are descendants of slavery. It lives within us.
..
I appeared with Michelle Cooley, one of my Hemings cousins, on the Today Show. Shannon and Michelle and I gave interviews to television crews from places like Bangkok and Paris and Moscow. And that afternoon, the death threats started. They came by email and by phone at first. Later, they would come in the mail to my home in Los Angeles, more than a hundred them.
One I remember very, very well because somehow this man had gotten my phone number, and he called me in the middle of the night. He threatened me, told me he knew where I was staying in Charlottesville and where I lived in California. When his threats had finally sputtered to a stop, I asked him why, and it led to a conversation that lasted about five minutes. He called me a traitor to my race and several other things involving the “N-word.” I asked him why he felt so strongly the way he did. He told me I was trying to change the way things had always been, that Black people were inferior, that they didn’t deserve to be treated the same way as whites. I asked him if he thought Black people should have the right to vote. He said, of course not. They weren’t real Americans. He said something like, “you don’t know it yet, but one day we’ll get things back to the way they used to be, before n-----s had rights and everything went to hell in this country.”
Today on its front page, the New York Times informs us that the state of Texas is entertaining “a flurry” of laws that would “reframe Texas history lessons and play down references to slavery and anti-Mexican discrimination that are part of the state’s founding.” The states of Idaho, Louisiana, New Hampshire, and Tennessee are all considering bills that would ban teaching about slavery and segregation and ban using the 1619 Project in state school curriculums. One Texas bill would “promote patriotic education” by omitting the introduction of slavery when Texas achieved independence from Mexico in 1836. Another bill would ban exhibits at the Alamo that show major figures in the Texas Revolution were slave owners. Another bill would constrain teachers from discussing how racism determined the legal system in Texas. The bills do not address how to teach about the Texas state constitution which legalized slavery the day it was passed, but “playing down” references to slavery isn’t going to help.
Earlier this week, the University of North Carolina refused tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, last year’s recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for commentary for her role in creating the 1619 Project. She had been hired by the university’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media to be Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism, a position which in the past had come with tenure. Stories in the Times, The Hill, the Charlotte Observer and elsewhere attributed the refusal of tenure to “a backlash among conservatives” on the UNC Board of Governors. Ms Hannah-Jones accepted a five year contract as a professor with an “option” for tenure review on completion of the contract.
This kind of stuff has been going on for a long time and it’s not stopping. But it is folly. They can pass all the laws they want, but they’re not going to erase the fact that slaves built Monticello, slaves built the United States Capitol, slaves built the White House, and slaves built practically every capitol building in every southern state, not to mention most of the county courthouses throughout the south. They can ban the 1619 Project from public schools, but they cannot hide from what it says about slavery being a part of the founding of this country.
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10158807216500369&set=a.10150207028560369|
by Lucian K. Truscott IV
You are looking at a photograph of me and my cousin Shannon Lanier. It’s a photograph that illustrates why the 1619 Project is such a white supremacist’s nightmare, teaching that racism and slavery played a major role in the founding of this nation. It’s a photograph of the truth exposed, at least in part, by critical race theory, an academic discipline that teaches the same thing. It is not only a photograph, it is a fact. It is history staring you in the face, history in flesh and blood, history that cannot be rewritten, cannot be buried, cannot be denied, because we are alive to tell it.
That’s Thomas Jefferson’s grave we’re standing on. We are 6th great grandsons of Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s third president long idolized as a founding father of the United States. Shannon is descended from Jefferson’s 36 year relationship – if relations between an enslaved person and a slave owner can be called that – with Sally Hemings, who is his 6th great grandmother. I am descended from Jefferson’s relationship with his wife Martha, who is my 6th great grandmother. Shannon’s great grandmother was enslaved by my 6th great grandfather. We are tied together not only by blood but by the stain of slavery on our family and our country. We are cousins, and we are also blood brothers. We carry in our souls the legacy of the slavery that brought our great grandparents together. We are descendants of slavery. It lives within us.
..
I appeared with Michelle Cooley, one of my Hemings cousins, on the Today Show. Shannon and Michelle and I gave interviews to television crews from places like Bangkok and Paris and Moscow. And that afternoon, the death threats started. They came by email and by phone at first. Later, they would come in the mail to my home in Los Angeles, more than a hundred them.
One I remember very, very well because somehow this man had gotten my phone number, and he called me in the middle of the night. He threatened me, told me he knew where I was staying in Charlottesville and where I lived in California. When his threats had finally sputtered to a stop, I asked him why, and it led to a conversation that lasted about five minutes. He called me a traitor to my race and several other things involving the “N-word.” I asked him why he felt so strongly the way he did. He told me I was trying to change the way things had always been, that Black people were inferior, that they didn’t deserve to be treated the same way as whites. I asked him if he thought Black people should have the right to vote. He said, of course not. They weren’t real Americans. He said something like, “you don’t know it yet, but one day we’ll get things back to the way they used to be, before n-----s had rights and everything went to hell in this country.”
Today on its front page, the New York Times informs us that the state of Texas is entertaining “a flurry” of laws that would “reframe Texas history lessons and play down references to slavery and anti-Mexican discrimination that are part of the state’s founding.” The states of Idaho, Louisiana, New Hampshire, and Tennessee are all considering bills that would ban teaching about slavery and segregation and ban using the 1619 Project in state school curriculums. One Texas bill would “promote patriotic education” by omitting the introduction of slavery when Texas achieved independence from Mexico in 1836. Another bill would ban exhibits at the Alamo that show major figures in the Texas Revolution were slave owners. Another bill would constrain teachers from discussing how racism determined the legal system in Texas. The bills do not address how to teach about the Texas state constitution which legalized slavery the day it was passed, but “playing down” references to slavery isn’t going to help.
Earlier this week, the University of North Carolina refused tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, last year’s recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for commentary for her role in creating the 1619 Project. She had been hired by the university’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media to be Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism, a position which in the past had come with tenure. Stories in the Times, The Hill, the Charlotte Observer and elsewhere attributed the refusal of tenure to “a backlash among conservatives” on the UNC Board of Governors. Ms Hannah-Jones accepted a five year contract as a professor with an “option” for tenure review on completion of the contract.
This kind of stuff has been going on for a long time and it’s not stopping. But it is folly. They can pass all the laws they want, but they’re not going to erase the fact that slaves built Monticello, slaves built the United States Capitol, slaves built the White House, and slaves built practically every capitol building in every southern state, not to mention most of the county courthouses throughout the south. They can ban the 1619 Project from public schools, but they cannot hide from what it says about slavery being a part of the founding of this country.
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10158807216500369&set=a.10150207028560369|
42 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Whether they know it or not.
and by relations to Jefferson...
Thanks for this post!
