Debbie Kates: Column on slavery, Black experience spoke the truth

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Published: 06-24-2025 9:50 AM

Thank you columnist Tolly M. Jones for your important My Turn,” Free-ish since 1865” [Recorder, June 18]. So much truth is spoken in this piece, it should be required reading for all white people. This country was built on genocide and slavery, yet this actual truth is not taught. Racism by erasure.

The Texas Board of Education Standards oversaw the printing of history text books citing states’ rights as the main cause of the Civil War, with a scant mention of slavery. There was no mention of systematic racism, no mention of the KuKlux Klan, no mention of the Jim Crow laws. Enslaved Africans were referred to as “workers” or as part of an “involuntary relocation.” This lying, this hideous whitewashing of the brutality of slavery sickens me.

And it’s not just in the south where lies are taught and the truth is omitted. I went to a big, integrated New York high school. Was I taught about the Tulsa Race Massacre? No. Was I taught about the centuries of slavery in the North? No. Was I taught how the formerly enslaved routinely had their land stolen? No. Was I taught how Black people couldn’t safely travel in the U.S.? No. Was I taught how white people stole Indigenous peoples’ land? No. I could go on.

Black genius built this country and they didn’t get paid, but they made white people rich. Reparations are owed. A reckoning is way overdue.

Debbie Kates

Greenfield