wcaleb’s avatarwcaleb’s Twitter Archive—№ 12,100

    1. 1. Just did an interview with @KPRC2 about the controversy surrounding the Texas textbook referring to slaves as immigrant workers.
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    2. I stressed that the use of such euphemisms is part of a broader reluctance among many Americans to confront slavery’s history.
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      3. I also noted a misleading part of the caption in question that hasn’t received as much attention.
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        4. The caption says the Atlantic Slave Trade brought “millions” of Africans to “southern U.S.” The actual number is closer to 600,000.
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          5. By 1860, 4 million enslaved people of African descent lived in the U.S., but most were born in America.
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            6. White Americans passed laws enslaving the kids of the enslaved; the laws “we” passed, not a trade done by “others,” fueled slavery here.
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              7. There’s a double erasure in implying millions of African Americans are an “immigrant” story. Most were born here, not "brought" here.
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                8. I also told @KPRC2 that university history professors watch these K-12 textbook controversies closely.
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                  9. It matters to us whether the students in our college classes are well-prepared. If captions like this are what they see, they won’t be.
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                    10. To be clear, the Atlantic slave trade did bring millions to the Western hemisphere, but fewer directly to U.S. slavevoyages.org/tast/assessment/estimates.faces