I apologize for assuming  all readers of this blog are white, but what I want to say primarily applies to whites.

This is NOT becoming a political blog again.  Racism–both in the Black Lives Matter and at the southern border–is at a more encompassing, soul-spirit-heart-humane-brotherly love-compassion-yes, love-of-humankind  level.  Does nothing cut through to the quick of chaos?  Is a guilty conscience behind the attack on teaching honest history? Shame?

Prior to writing this brief blog I read more closely into the history of American slavery, and don’t want that to be the topic today. However, I learned that in 1789 a law was passed in the southern province to keep enslaved Africans in “submission and obedience,” by prohibiting them from writing or growing their own food.  

“Literacy among enslaved Africans was not always antithetical to slavery in the colonies.  It was once permissible for the enslaved to read Bibles, but when colonists realized the skill could be a gateway to liberation, literacy was outlawed.”   North Carolina passed a law in 1829 that made it illegal to teach slaves to read and write, saying it “has a tendency to excite dissatisfaction in their minds and to produce insurrection and rebellion to the manifest injury of the citizens of this state.”  (Mother Jones, Sep-Oct, p. 9.)

 Did the law mean “other” citizens, or were the enslaved not citizens either?  They are now, for what it’s worth. –I take that back.  I know citizenship for people of color is valued. but…I’ll be quiet now.