If you happen to’re a part of the 45-to-60ish crowd, likelihood is you grew up watching — and singing alongside to — “Schoolhouse Rock.”
The Saturday morning schooling sequence started airing in 1973 and was initially developed to assist children with math earlier than increasing to different core topics similar to grammar and science. The three-minute vignettes earned a Grammy nomination and have been embraced by educators as a supplemental studying device. In celebration of America’s two hundredth birthday in 1976, the inventive power behind “Rock” determined to give attention to U.S. historical past and commenced its third season with the episode and music “No Extra Kings”:
The pilgrims sailed the ocean
To discover a place to name their very own.
Of their ship Mayflower,
They hoped to discover a higher dwelling.
They lastly knocked
On Plymouth Rock
And somebody stated, “We’re there.”
It could not appear like dwelling
However at this level I don’t care.
The one visible acknowledgment of the individuals who have been already dwelling on this land was through the three seconds it took us to sing the road “however at this level I don’t care.”
The catchy music spoke of prosperity and progress within the 13 colonies, however no point out of the transatlantic slave commerce that drove the worldwide economic system for hundreds of years. No acknowledgment of the kidnapped Africans working within the fields earlier than and after the Mayflower’s arrival or the tribes and free Black individuals who fought alongside the colonizers through the Revolutionary Warfare. Later episodes of “Rock” highlighted the development of the railroad system through the California gold rush, however not the 1000’s of Chinese language immigrants from the Canton Province who made up a lot of the workforce.
In 1976, a number of the strongest individuals in media determined to inform the following era of Individuals singalong fairy tales about who we’re versus the reality. And right here we’re — 50 years later, getting ready to rejoice our 250th — and highly effective individuals in media face the identical check of integrity: inform the following era the reality or double down on revisionist historical past.
“Now we have relegated DEI to the dustbin of historical past, which is strictly the place it belongs,” Vice President JD Vance just lately instructed the gang on the Turning Level USA’s AmericaFest 2025 occasion in Phoenix, referring to range, fairness and inclusion.
In fact range is what made this nation potential.
The true risk to America has at all times been racial hierarchy and a white supremacist worldview that encourages commerce with out advantage, one thing warned towards by Montesquieu — the French thinker whose e-book “The Spirit of the Legal guidelines” formed the American founders’ view of society and offered the Structure’s infrastructure.
“It’s nearly a basic rule that, in every single place that there are light morals, there’s commerce, and that in every single place that there’s commerce, there are light morals,” he wrote.
This explains why Montesquieu was one of many strongest critics of slavery through the so-called Age of Enlightenment. He identified that it’s unnatural for a human to dominate one other and that enslavement encourages cruelty — not unity — in a society. His phrases have been revealed 30 years earlier than the American Revolution, greater than a century after the primary kidnapped Africans arrived within the English colony of Virginia.
The one approach to justify writing “all males are created equal” whereas sustaining an financial system that represented the antithesis of Montesquieu’s teachings, was to inform future generations of Individuals a fairy story that folks of coloration have been savages with out advantage — and even higher, to convey that they didn’t even must be acknowledged or thought-about.
That dangerous worldview would underpin not solely home coverage but additionally overseas exploitation. For instance, John Watson Foster, who was secretary of state for under eight months, led the U.S. to overthrow the monarchy in Hawaii in 1893, writing “the native inhabitants had proved themselves incapable of sustaining a good and accountable authorities.” The monarchy had been acknowledged internationally for practically a century earlier than a gaggle of businessmen from the U.S. and Europe — with the backing of our navy — needed the land for sugar manufacturing. As a substitute of commerce for the advantage of all, a fairy story was instructed to justify the cruelty.
Quick ahead to 2025, and we’re instructed by the present administration that the individuals of coloration being despatched from america to El Salvador’s mega jail, CECOT, have been all gang members, rapists and different criminals. Seems that lower than 10% had convictions for violent crime or property crime and that 80% had by no means been convicted of something, even an immigration violation or a site visitors infraction. The fairy story of white supremacy — that poisoned mindset from our nation’s founding — does actual hurt to this present day.
It’s the identical worldview that led to the overthrowing of democratically elected leaders in nations all through the Caribbean and Central America and in Iran. It’s the identical worldview that worldview that has at all times stored America from its true promise.
Possibly for our 250th, as an alternative of gifting ourselves parades, ballrooms and fairy tales, we should always give attention to telling the following era the reality.
YouTube: @LZGrandersonShow
