IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 7 ENGLISH | Page 67

town. I believe Sundown Towns were
also places where its residents condoned
lynching of Black people as a public
form of torture and also the murder of
Black men who were not staying "in
their place." was allowed.It seemed sickening that lynching happened with brazen terroristic frequency all across the
United States. Places like Staten Island,
NYC; Sanford, FL; Cleveland, OH; Ferguson, MO; and so many more. Who
holds the stories of the lynching of the
past? Not only the further past , but also
the most recent one? The past does not
seem so distant. The terrorism of white
people lynching Black individuals and
thus traumatizing Black families and
communities continues. Why is it so
difficult to recognize that the trauma and
terror of racism and its manifestations
and its violence are not just harmful to
African Americans and People of Color?
Racism hurts everyone! Racism also
hurts me as a white person. I have to
give up, bury, alienate, kill, part of my
humanity in order to keep hold of the
privileges of Whiteness and to remain
unfeeling and unmotivated and unashamed in the face of racist violence
toward Black folks. I want to be wholly
human! As for the local Sundown Town,
this morbid bit of local history is not
something I could learn even if I had
wanted to in any of the normal channels
of education, historical, social, or otherwise. In fact, I remember the cursory
treatment of sharecropping and Jim
Crow that my high school text books
gave. Certainly disrespecting and dishonoring the truth and hard reality of

Black farmers in the U.S. in the time
after slavery. The teachers were fine
with barely touching the story of what
happened and how it gave rise to today,
let alone to do any critical thinking about
the "facts" presented. What I received
was Lack of information, and that taught
me that it was not something to be talked
about, to be inquired about, and that it
was not significant enough to warrant
any in-depth or further treatment. In that
way, White Silence has been informing
my desire to unlearn racism and White
Supremacy for as long as I can remember. I recently had a third grade memory
resurface, where in a special classroom
for intellectually and creatively "gifted"
children, a girl asked the small group of
students and the teacher, what was the
meaning of the name "Ku Klux," because she had heard it in reference to the
Ku Klux Klan. She clearly was ignorant
of the significant of that name and history. I remember the teacher looking uncomfortable and saying, Don't say those
words, it's something very bad from the
past. You'll have to ask your parents to
explain it to you. Just don't say it." Why
couldn't he have used this moment for
teaching instead of perpetuating silence
and shame? What was he afraid of doing
if he had even briefly mentioned the
terrorism and brutal violence inflicted on
Black families and individuals by white
people calling themselves the KKK?
Lynching, cross burnings, arson, destruction of life and property during an
era of racial segregation. Even this, one
of the most obvious racist pieces of
American history, could not be taught. It

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