How many times have you heard that phrase, especially in regards to social media? Life has become a series of show-and-prove moments. While standing around and talking to friends, if you mention something spectacular you’ve done but don’t have accompanying media, then you’ll get some haters doubting your story. We’ve all been there.
This got me to thinking about how history is recorded. Imagine being a researcher for history books, particularly before the social media age. I’d liken this work to a family genealogist who digs through historical documents to track the whereabouts of a long lost uncle or aunt. Newspapers can be a major source of family stories that make up the historical record.
Now, let’s consider the biased inaccuracy of the historical record. HIStory is written from the perspective of the mainstream male culture. Thus, newspapers have tended to be edited according to common business practice to leave out certain key information that might be important to minority ethnic groups while emphasizing the narrative of the mainstream ethnicity…who probably have access to political and financial influences. So, even though tragedies occurred to people of color, they were not accurately reported in the local newspaper, and thus not recounted in history books. For example, horrors such as the devastation of Rosewood, FL, or the decimation of Greenwood, OK, both by angry White mobs prompted by racist rumors against a Black citizen, were dismissed by history because the newspapers overlooked the tragedies. Pause for that significant fact: sources of public record, as a business practice, failed to document a major incident that destroyed businesses and neighborhoods, and resulted in dozens…hundreds…of murders of its own citizens because the victims were not White. This circumstance to varying degrees happened thousands of times across the United States of America, if you also include frequent lynchings in the South.
Now, extrapolate the likelihood, from centuries of digesting skewed reporting, that generations of mainstream U.S. citizens would be open when people of color call out racism they have repeatedly experienced or seen. Up until the social media era, average citizens relied on their local newspaper to present details of their world to them appropriately. For decades, the job of balanced and full representation…
