history – Page 5

‘It don’t be like that now’ — the English history of African American English

14Feb

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LIFESTYLE

‘It don’t be like that now’ — the English history of African American English

After students at a California high school were recently told to “translate” Black English phrases into standard English, a community member at a school board hearing said: “The last thing they need — our children — is to be forced to attend class and to be mocked and bullied by students because of a lesson plan used to highlight African American Vernacular English.” Few dialects of English have garnered so much negative attention. From the classroom to the courtroom, the place of African American Vernacular English is hotly debated. This is because people associate it with linguistic features now denounced as grammatically incorrect, like “double negatives” or verbs that don’t agree with their subjects. For example: You might as well not tell them, ‘cause you ain’t getting no thanks fo...

A brief history of black names, from Perlie to Latasha

23Jan

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Journalism

A brief history of black names, from Perlie to Latasha

Most people recognize that there are first names given almost exclusively by black Americans to their children, such as Jamal and Latasha. While fodder for comedians and social commentary, many have assumed that these distinctively black names are a modern phenomenon. My research shows that’s not true. Long before there was Jamal and Latasha, there was Booker and Perlie. The names have changed, but my colleagues and I traced the use of distinctive black names to the earliest history of the United States. As scholars of history, demographics and economics, we found that there is nothing new about black names. A 2012 ‘Key & Peele’ sketch poked fun of historically black names. Black names aren’t new Many scholars believe that distinctively black names emerged from the civil rights move...

White ladies cooking in plantation museums are a denial of history

13Dec

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Journalism

White ladies cooking in plantation museums are a denial of history

Fall is almost gone and winter is coming, as are hundreds of hearth cooking demonstrations at countless historic homes and plantations throughout the nation. Like an automated clock, historic kitchens become the center stage for historical storytelling at this time of year. In New England, these stories sit firmly in the mythos of Thanksgiving, focusing on sterilized versions of the 1621 feast between Pilgrims and Wampanoag. In the mid-Atlantic, these stories blend their Amish, German and Dutch roots to talk about Colonial fare in early America. But while these two regions must always deal with issues of accuracy, the South’s historic sites have remained locked in a myth of their own. Misrepresenting reality I spent a decade researching and writing about enslaved plantation cooks and le...

11Jun

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GAMING

Rewrite history in ‘Imperator: Rome’

They’re complicated, difficult and take forever — 20, 30, 100 hours into one play-through if you’re up for it. “Imperator: Rome” $39.99 for PC All-ages (but very complicated) The grand strategy games from Paradox Interactive are some of my greatest gaming guilty pleasures. These are games where you control a country on the world stage over the course of centuries, and so unlike other guilty pleasures (cookies, cheesy horror movies, sleeping in) there’s nothing sweet and easy about a Paradox game. They’re complicated, difficult and take forever — 20, 30, 100 hours into one play-through if you’re up for it. And I’m up for it. Whole weekends have disappeared down the grand strategy rabbit hole. “Imperator: Rome” is the latest game from Paradox. In it you take control of ancient Rome a...

The History and Political Power of Black Motherhood

27Apr

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Journalism

The History and Political Power of Black Motherhood

Author Dani McClain wants us to stop pathologizing Black mothers’ experiences in this country. I first became a mother at 20 years old and was 22 when I had my second child. What I learned about the technicalities of being pregnant and what to expect came from what some have called the pregnancy bible, What to Expect When You’re Expecting. But, like many mothers, the practicalities and examples of motherhood came from the women in my family: my mother, my six aunts, and my maternal and paternal grandmothers. From them I learned what I wanted to do—and what I didn’t want to do. I made mistakes. But looking back, I realize I worked at it—hard. I find labels like, “stay-at-home mom,” “homemaker” “housewife” and “single mom” disparaging; there’s something even backhandedl...

3 Things Schools Should Teach About America’s History of White Supremacy

4Apr

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IN OTHER NEWS

3 Things Schools Should Teach About America’s History of White Supremacy

Lesson plans tend to gloss over the U.S.’s deeply entrenched institutional racism. Here’s what should be added. When it comes to how deeply embedded racism is in American society, Black and White people have sharply different views. For instance, 70 percent of White people believe that individual discrimination is a bigger problem than discrimination built into the nation’s laws and institutions. Only 48 percent of Black people believe that is true. Many Black and White people also fail to see eye to eye regarding the use of blackface, which dominated the news cycle during the early part of 2019 because of a series of scandals that involve the highest elected leaders in Virginia, where I teach. The donning of blackface happens throughout the country, particularly ...

Remembering Our History of Racial Injustice Through Soil

28Feb

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Journalism

Remembering Our History of Racial Injustice Through Soil

The Equal Justice Initiative is using soil to document the lynchings of more than 4,400 African-descended people between 1877 and 1950. In July 1898, a Black ice cream vendor by the name of John Henry James was accused of assaulting a White woman just west of Charlottesville, Virginia. He was dragged off a moving train by an angry mob, hanged from the branch of a locust tree near the train tracks, and shot multiple times. This past summer, 120 years later, John Henry James was taken on a pilgrimage from Charlottesville to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, which memorializes the victims of racial violence in the United States. James, symbolically represented by a jar filled with soil collected at the site of his lynchi...

Social Media Offers a New Teaching Tool for Black History

21Feb

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Journalism

Social Media Offers a New Teaching Tool for Black History

Race Women on Instagram spotlights generations of Black women trailblazers. Have you heard of Rosetta Douglass Sprague? I hadn’t. Then I came across a black-and-white photo on Instagram of a stately yet solemn-looking Black woman who lived during the 19th century that made me stop scrolling through my feed. It’s Black History Month, and here’s an image of someone, although similar to those of which I’m familiar—Ida B. Wells, Phillis Wheatley, Sojourner Truth—I’d never seen. As I read the post, I learned that she was the daughter of abolitionist Frederick Douglass. But she was also a trailblazer of U.S. history in her own right. Although her name is rarely, if ever, mentioned, Sprague was a founding member the National Association of Colored Women, the largest federa...

His Traveling Museum Is Bringing Black History to a Town Near You

14Feb

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Journalism

His Traveling Museum Is Bringing Black History to a Town Near You

As a social studies teacher in Detroit in 1994, Khalid el-Hakim used African American artifacts he collected to supplement information about Black history he found lacking in middle school textbooks. It was a charge, el-Hakim says, by Minister Louis Farrakhan at the Million Man March in 1995 to men to go back to their cities and “join a community organization and try to make some type of contribution to our community,” that was the catalyst to start a mobile museum. El-Hakim went from having tabletop displays at meetings of the local organization he joined to setting up exhibits for various organizations and institutions—first throughout the city and then across the state and nationwide. His Black History 101 Mobile Museum travels throughout the year from coast to coast sharing A...

6 Tips for White People Who Want to Celebrate Black History

12Feb

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Journalism

6 Tips for White People Who Want to Celebrate Black History

We’ve come a long way from Negro History Week to Black History Month and yet too often the celebrations that are planned in predominantly white spaces are nothing short of lackluster, rarely bringing a modern-day context to the celebration or acknowledgement that Black history is a continually evolving living history in which we all play a role. Part of the problem is that for non-Black people, too often there is a sense of being a passive celebrator. Yet, in this current climate there is immense opportunity. We can make real racial change by moving from passive observation to active engagement if we move past our own internal roadblocks and fears of messing up. Black history is more than just the named activists, agitators and changemakers—it encompasses the full scope of Black hum...