Thank you for this. I have run into the opinions, “Why can’t we just let it alone? Why bring it up, it’s over. I never owned slaves. My ancestors didn’t massacre Native people.” (I.e. I shouldn’t be made to feel guilty). What we are experiencing right now is what happens when we refuse to look at truth—we repeat the lies. Along with every other point you made, there are also pure pettiness and entitlement at work here. White, western-European male culture does not want to give up its elevated position and the myths that surround it. Admitting that we are all slogging around in this mess called humanity, and NO ONE is special, is a bitter tea they do not want to drink.
There is some equivocation here between 'male culture' as a thing women can be implicated in, and 'THEY do not want to drink bitter tea', which suggests those men of foresaid culture. Women are very much implicated in the torture, rape and murder of black men.
I suspect this is an attempt at trolling me, someone who has published a substack about a feminist network that psychology abuses, sexually assualts and systematically drugs men. A Scotsman who loves to camp in glen Cailleach. Someone they can see is a fan of William F. Spivey's substack, having shared his last post on his feed. Someone who uses some of the phrases you have selected for your comment, following a pattern of trolling me on every Substack I subscribe to. Someone they know is a post-colonial feminist, and knows something of what white women have done to black men through history.
Network of white feminsts are not just drugging men today, but sexually assualting them, but they do not publish all actions on their group chats. Many people presume the men must have done something to deserve the drugging, in great part, because of myths about gender. White women are still considered a source of purity and innocence in history. Many have not learned anything about woman's relationship to the disgusting Other. British and American women should be forced to face their shared history. So that women can't revel in their power of avoidance. So they can't troll men, men that have been sexually assaulted and drugged by feminist activists, about their powerlessness, their whiteness and their maleness.
As my response was not a response to you, I cannot see how it can be seen as directed at you—troll or otherwise. The Cailleach is a figure from Celtic mythology, primarily known as a goddess of winter, weather, and the land. She is also a fierce, and wild figure who embodies the transition between seasons, particularly from autumn to winter. You are correct that western-European, white culture also includes females, and that those who embrace and embody this culture are complicit. As to your wild assertion that I might be part of a raving pack of feminists who are drugging, psychologically torturing and abusing men is laughable. Really- I did laugh. My cats thought it was funny too and hacked up a couple of fur balls. I suggest you consult your therapist….sincerely, Not a Troll, but definitely a Witch.
This essay brings clarity to something I've been processing. I've just been watching The Handmaid's Tale. Of course it's horrifying given the current state of this country, but there's more. Every white woman will denounce the atrocities in the story without realizing that it is actually an almost literal description of what White USians actually did to Black and Indigenous people in this country for 400 years.
The denials of whiteness run so deep. The power of avoidance is what keeps us trapped in these repeated horrors.
Nearly all minorities have suffered some type of persecution, the Chinese, especially in California, Latinos in the Southwest and Texas and Native Americans.
The Yellowstone spinoff TV show, 1923, is one of the first times I remember seeing the cruelty of the Indian schools exposed on TV. Not only is it an entertaining show, but it shines a spotlight on this disgraceful practice.
Thanks, once again, for the reminder of this propaganda they're attempting to feed the next generations. I hope you compile these essays into a book. We need this information ♡
Dear Mr. Spivey, I cherish you, man! You are a great historian and an outstanding teacher. You've helped me learn so much that was hidden from me throughout my life. From Partus Sequitur Ventrem to "All deliberate speed" you exposed the propaganda, lies, and cover-ups that support white supremacy as America's founding and enduring principle. I can never thank you enough for helping me understand that none of us can be free unless and until all of us are free.
What I despise even more about Prager U and Dennis Prager is that Candace Owens allowed herself to be a grifter to espouse its racist and right-wing views. It was through Prager that she came to prominence.
Great article! It’s amazing how much is selectively left out of history books in schools & colleges regarding our nation’s sordid, barbaric history.
I recently decided to google lynchings where I have lived, & where some of my relatives lived as well, it was only 3 towns as there was so much to read. I was shocked to learn about the lynchings that took place- how hundreds to thousands participated each time, how bloody they were, & how they, more often than not, also lynched some of the relatives of the victim & drove many of the black people out of town. I don’t recall seeing any historical markers or any other forms of acknowledgment for these events in the towns. I wish my older relatives & neighbors were still around to look them in the eye & ask them about it, even though I would more than likely be disgusted by their answers.
What they want to hide tells you everything about them. How badly they need it, the way they twist themselves into knots and bend over backwards to control the narrative of the nation is criminally telling. It is as if white America, close-minded, unenlightened, happily non-woke White Man America wants to profit from the continued social, economic and political bias against All Comers but now, it wants it under the mantle of benign platitudes like "We Meant Well", "Not All Men", "Not All White People", "Not Now, That Was Then", "And Didn't We End Up With A Great Country, Any How...?"
'The Unpaid Debt' indeed. Unpaid, unacknowledged, unwanted, unadmitted. "Don't Bring That Crap In Here!" "This Is The Greatest Nation On The Planet." "Can Do No Wrong." "We Just Want To Think In Dick and Jane, Nineteen Fifties, Self-Aggrandizing terms when we think about Our America." Oh, and we don't want to upset our children...
You know what. I think the Kids Could Handle The Truth. It's your own Adult Issues and a Desire To Escape Reality That Needed The Buttressing, the Walls Erected Against Fact and Truth and Consequence. "The Tender Minds Of Our Children" is a dodge, a sidestep, a lie. It's self-protection wearing a plastic shield and waving a foam sword at a living, breathing Truth Dragon.
Teaching the truth matters. Learning the truth matters even more, a value that seems to be lost.
People yammering about freedom often miss the point: the truth will set you free. Unfortunately, truth itself is not always free. Telling - and hearing - information one does not want to hear - or tell - is not easy.
Be a truth-teller anyway. Speaking as an old white guy, we need this information about Washington's teeth and Jefferson's rapacious self-dealing. The power imbalance between Tom and Sally is the very definition of rape.
We all need to see with open eyes. This old white guy has never felt so much need to be "situationally aware" when he leaves his property. Even out by the road, I maintain a heads-up mentality and have begun to imagine what it might be like to be black or brown, looking over my shoulder and listening for traffic. Be safe and keep writing!
It was instructive to read my Mex-Am great- great- grandfather's autobiography. When he first met white Americans, he was treated kindly--he was, after all, just a little orphaned boy. He was incredibly bright, he learned fast, and he had a good heart. He wanted to do well for these people who took him in. His interactions with slaves were fairly perfunctory, and he adopted the unfortunate perspective he was given by his "teachers"--until the Civil War. By then, he was a man who'd held jobs, and he joined the south not for politics, but to swear loyalty to the people who had shown him kindness. It was sometime later when he realized his fellow Mex-Am soldiers were being lynched by white Confederate soldiers that he understood "his place" among the whites. It must have been jarring for him. His words on the matter were pretty much "this happened"--but I got the feeling it was much more than that, as he returned to Texas a very different person. It took a long time before he allowed himself to trust again.
THAT'S why you can't erase all of the truth. Everything touches everyone, no matter what. To say otherwise is to lie to one's self.
In my novel Restive Souls, Jefferson receives a grim payback, according to the historian who annotates the novel's narrative:
"Jefferson’s death is known as one of the most gruesome that occurred during the many skirmishes that gripped the nation in the two decades following the Colonial Rebellion. Monticello was famous among local slaves for its nailery. It was equally infamous for its child labor. Children as young as nine years old were brought in as slave labor for the nailery. Upon hearing of their emancipation, the slaves that worked the plantation and its slave tunnels captured Jefferson and nailed him from neck to toe to a tree with nine-inch nails (celebrated in song by the acclaimed modern eponymous musical group), reportedly while he was still alive."
That business about Geo Wash's teeth is nasty. First I heard of that one.
I heard about the teeth thing here. Telling thing, that. To be OK with ripping healthy teeth out of another person's mouth so you can have a full set of choppers. Couldn't be baser, more animal-husbandry, more torturous. The NAZIs did that, tearing gold teeth out of gassed victims' skulls. You know, to have the gold.
I tried to explain some of these things, or similarly uncomfortable facts, about US history to the college classes I used to teach. Most of the students liked the content. They appreciated getting a fuller story. But the board of the college hated me for it.
Thank you for this. I have run into the opinions, “Why can’t we just let it alone? Why bring it up, it’s over. I never owned slaves. My ancestors didn’t massacre Native people.” (I.e. I shouldn’t be made to feel guilty). What we are experiencing right now is what happens when we refuse to look at truth—we repeat the lies. Along with every other point you made, there are also pure pettiness and entitlement at work here. White, western-European male culture does not want to give up its elevated position and the myths that surround it. Admitting that we are all slogging around in this mess called humanity, and NO ONE is special, is a bitter tea they do not want to drink.
Guilt goes well with iced tea. Deservedly so.
There is some equivocation here between 'male culture' as a thing women can be implicated in, and 'THEY do not want to drink bitter tea', which suggests those men of foresaid culture. Women are very much implicated in the torture, rape and murder of black men.
I suspect this is an attempt at trolling me, someone who has published a substack about a feminist network that psychology abuses, sexually assualts and systematically drugs men. A Scotsman who loves to camp in glen Cailleach. Someone they can see is a fan of William F. Spivey's substack, having shared his last post on his feed. Someone who uses some of the phrases you have selected for your comment, following a pattern of trolling me on every Substack I subscribe to. Someone they know is a post-colonial feminist, and knows something of what white women have done to black men through history.
Network of white feminsts are not just drugging men today, but sexually assualting them, but they do not publish all actions on their group chats. Many people presume the men must have done something to deserve the drugging, in great part, because of myths about gender. White women are still considered a source of purity and innocence in history. Many have not learned anything about woman's relationship to the disgusting Other. British and American women should be forced to face their shared history. So that women can't revel in their power of avoidance. So they can't troll men, men that have been sexually assaulted and drugged by feminist activists, about their powerlessness, their whiteness and their maleness.
https://interpocula.substack.com/about
As my response was not a response to you, I cannot see how it can be seen as directed at you—troll or otherwise. The Cailleach is a figure from Celtic mythology, primarily known as a goddess of winter, weather, and the land. She is also a fierce, and wild figure who embodies the transition between seasons, particularly from autumn to winter. You are correct that western-European, white culture also includes females, and that those who embrace and embody this culture are complicit. As to your wild assertion that I might be part of a raving pack of feminists who are drugging, psychologically torturing and abusing men is laughable. Really- I did laugh. My cats thought it was funny too and hacked up a couple of fur balls. I suggest you consult your therapist….sincerely, Not a Troll, but definitely a Witch.
PREACH!
This essay brings clarity to something I've been processing. I've just been watching The Handmaid's Tale. Of course it's horrifying given the current state of this country, but there's more. Every white woman will denounce the atrocities in the story without realizing that it is actually an almost literal description of what White USians actually did to Black and Indigenous people in this country for 400 years.
The denials of whiteness run so deep. The power of avoidance is what keeps us trapped in these repeated horrors.
Nearly all minorities have suffered some type of persecution, the Chinese, especially in California, Latinos in the Southwest and Texas and Native Americans.
The Yellowstone spinoff TV show, 1923, is one of the first times I remember seeing the cruelty of the Indian schools exposed on TV. Not only is it an entertaining show, but it shines a spotlight on this disgraceful practice.
Thanks, once again, for the reminder of this propaganda they're attempting to feed the next generations. I hope you compile these essays into a book. We need this information ♡
Dear Mr. Spivey, I cherish you, man! You are a great historian and an outstanding teacher. You've helped me learn so much that was hidden from me throughout my life. From Partus Sequitur Ventrem to "All deliberate speed" you exposed the propaganda, lies, and cover-ups that support white supremacy as America's founding and enduring principle. I can never thank you enough for helping me understand that none of us can be free unless and until all of us are free.
What I despise even more about Prager U and Dennis Prager is that Candace Owens allowed herself to be a grifter to espouse its racist and right-wing views. It was through Prager that she came to prominence.
Enlightening. Yet more evidence why this amnesiac, ignorant country has been lied to and swindled since it’s inception.
Great article! It’s amazing how much is selectively left out of history books in schools & colleges regarding our nation’s sordid, barbaric history.
I recently decided to google lynchings where I have lived, & where some of my relatives lived as well, it was only 3 towns as there was so much to read. I was shocked to learn about the lynchings that took place- how hundreds to thousands participated each time, how bloody they were, & how they, more often than not, also lynched some of the relatives of the victim & drove many of the black people out of town. I don’t recall seeing any historical markers or any other forms of acknowledgment for these events in the towns. I wish my older relatives & neighbors were still around to look them in the eye & ask them about it, even though I would more than likely be disgusted by their answers.
What they want to hide tells you everything about them. How badly they need it, the way they twist themselves into knots and bend over backwards to control the narrative of the nation is criminally telling. It is as if white America, close-minded, unenlightened, happily non-woke White Man America wants to profit from the continued social, economic and political bias against All Comers but now, it wants it under the mantle of benign platitudes like "We Meant Well", "Not All Men", "Not All White People", "Not Now, That Was Then", "And Didn't We End Up With A Great Country, Any How...?"
'The Unpaid Debt' indeed. Unpaid, unacknowledged, unwanted, unadmitted. "Don't Bring That Crap In Here!" "This Is The Greatest Nation On The Planet." "Can Do No Wrong." "We Just Want To Think In Dick and Jane, Nineteen Fifties, Self-Aggrandizing terms when we think about Our America." Oh, and we don't want to upset our children...
You know what. I think the Kids Could Handle The Truth. It's your own Adult Issues and a Desire To Escape Reality That Needed The Buttressing, the Walls Erected Against Fact and Truth and Consequence. "The Tender Minds Of Our Children" is a dodge, a sidestep, a lie. It's self-protection wearing a plastic shield and waving a foam sword at a living, breathing Truth Dragon.
I like the comments I've read above, because of their honesty and information. Thanks.
Teaching the truth matters. Learning the truth matters even more, a value that seems to be lost.
People yammering about freedom often miss the point: the truth will set you free. Unfortunately, truth itself is not always free. Telling - and hearing - information one does not want to hear - or tell - is not easy.
Be a truth-teller anyway. Speaking as an old white guy, we need this information about Washington's teeth and Jefferson's rapacious self-dealing. The power imbalance between Tom and Sally is the very definition of rape.
We all need to see with open eyes. This old white guy has never felt so much need to be "situationally aware" when he leaves his property. Even out by the road, I maintain a heads-up mentality and have begun to imagine what it might be like to be black or brown, looking over my shoulder and listening for traffic. Be safe and keep writing!
It was instructive to read my Mex-Am great- great- grandfather's autobiography. When he first met white Americans, he was treated kindly--he was, after all, just a little orphaned boy. He was incredibly bright, he learned fast, and he had a good heart. He wanted to do well for these people who took him in. His interactions with slaves were fairly perfunctory, and he adopted the unfortunate perspective he was given by his "teachers"--until the Civil War. By then, he was a man who'd held jobs, and he joined the south not for politics, but to swear loyalty to the people who had shown him kindness. It was sometime later when he realized his fellow Mex-Am soldiers were being lynched by white Confederate soldiers that he understood "his place" among the whites. It must have been jarring for him. His words on the matter were pretty much "this happened"--but I got the feeling it was much more than that, as he returned to Texas a very different person. It took a long time before he allowed himself to trust again.
THAT'S why you can't erase all of the truth. Everything touches everyone, no matter what. To say otherwise is to lie to one's self.
In my novel Restive Souls, Jefferson receives a grim payback, according to the historian who annotates the novel's narrative:
"Jefferson’s death is known as one of the most gruesome that occurred during the many skirmishes that gripped the nation in the two decades following the Colonial Rebellion. Monticello was famous among local slaves for its nailery. It was equally infamous for its child labor. Children as young as nine years old were brought in as slave labor for the nailery. Upon hearing of their emancipation, the slaves that worked the plantation and its slave tunnels captured Jefferson and nailed him from neck to toe to a tree with nine-inch nails (celebrated in song by the acclaimed modern eponymous musical group), reportedly while he was still alive."
That business about Geo Wash's teeth is nasty. First I heard of that one.
I heard about the teeth thing here. Telling thing, that. To be OK with ripping healthy teeth out of another person's mouth so you can have a full set of choppers. Couldn't be baser, more animal-husbandry, more torturous. The NAZIs did that, tearing gold teeth out of gassed victims' skulls. You know, to have the gold.
It is so creepy.
I tried to explain some of these things, or similarly uncomfortable facts, about US history to the college classes I used to teach. Most of the students liked the content. They appreciated getting a fuller story. But the board of the college hated me for it.
Thanks for two good posts today. I enjoyed both.