Let’s Get Our Story Straight
Most everyone has stories about family—their current household, family of origin, and their ancestors. Sometimes they’re very good stories. Humorous. Or chilling. Always something that feels important to the storyteller.
Upon hearing these stories, I’ve often encouraged people to record their tales—at least for their descendants, if not for a broader audience. Personal history marks how we got here and what we’re made of. And sometimes reminds us to stick to the straight and narrow—in the case of ancestors who’ve behaved badly.
Perhaps some familial histories get embellished to make them more interesting, or abridged to make them more suitable for mixed company. But most folks I know who preserve ancestral stories do their best to stick to the truth.
When it comes to our nation’s history, however, there’s often an inclination to alter the storyline to make it more palatable. It’s easier to teach kids how pilgrims and Indians got along, than to explain how Indigenous cultures were violently displaced. Or that slavery wasn’t really all that bad (“enslaved people learned marketable skills”) rather than admit that ancestors bought and sold actual people and declared these human beings to be less than human by virtue of their skin color.
People living today are not responsible for the behavior of those who went before. But they are responsible for their own behavior.
A white Arkansan recently told me the childhood story of a loving father slapping his young offspring’s face for suggesting that Black Americans were just like whites. But this Arkansas native continues a personal challenge to disregard skin color when judging the worth of other people, despite the familial lessons.
I can’t imagine. Any more than I can imagine what it’s like to be Black and have to train youngsters to always mind their Ps & Qs in front of white people, lest they unwittingly “provoke” violence. Neither of these scenarios factored into my own upbringing.
I know whites who feel superseded by people of color—certain the bank loan they were denied would have been offered had they been Latino or African American. I believe they’re mistaken, but I lack the pertinent statistics to prove them wrong. To suggest their story isn’t accurate, without clear evidence, would kindle ire that can’t easily be resolved. We’ve had enough anger in recent months.
Some folks are dead set on closing the country’s borders because they’ve heard tales of what immigrants will do to us (and our pets). But my paternal grandparents were immigrants, as was my husband’s mother. They became law-abiding Americans, and we hold them dear in our family history.
It was young students from south of the border who first taught me about El Chapo, the Mexico-based crime lord notorious for drug trafficking and controlling his interests with rampant violence. My students’ families came here to escape drugs and violence—not to spread them.
I am writing this prior to election day, but by the time it’s published, you will likely know who our next president will be, unless we find ourselves in a ballot debacle—or civil unrest— that clouds the official tally. Doubtless, stories abound about how we got here—whatever the outcome. News stories. Politicians’ stories. Stories on Xformerlyknownastwitter and other platforms. I hope you will search for truth among these stories.
The nation has some healing to do. I think getting our national story straight would go a long way toward recovery. Yeah, maybe I’m just a sprout-eating, tree-hugging libtard who wants a better world for everybody. But what’s so terrible about that?