Friday, April 8, 2022

Judge Jackson's Appointment and the Power of History

The importance of Justice Jackson's ascension to the United States Supreme Court cannot be fully appreciated without understanding the obstacles people of African descent faced throughout US history in exercising the most basic human rights as well as achieving full citizenship. Frightened legislators can try to push that history out the public schools, and even our universities, but they will not succeed. The story of Black people's impact on US History, which is being expanded by new research all the time, has been documented and preserved in hundreds of public archives and public monuments as well as thousands, possibly millions of books and articles. Without turning the US into a Putin-like dictatorship, there is no way of shutting down the evolving narrative of how the country was deformed by racism and white supremacy from the very time of its founding, and how the struggle against those undemocratic forces spawned some of the most powerful movements in US History. Those adding to this narrative through their research will not be silenced, nor will those seeking justice through new initiatives and new movements. History is more than a theory- it is the culmination of the thoughts and activities of all those who seek to understand and change the world they live in.

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