Choice F
Write a comparative analysis between Get Out's "Sunken Place" and Frederick Douglass' experience in slavery and show how Douglass used literacy as a path to free himself from the Sunken Place.
Here's a breakdown and a few tips for each section of the outline you provided:
Paragraph 1: Summarizing the Major Points in Wisecrack’s "The Philosophy of Get Out"
In this section, you'll want to describe the metaphor of the "Sunken Place" as outlined in Wisecrack’s video. The video emphasizes how the "Sunken Place" represents social marginalization, dehumanization, and systemic racism, where African Americans lose control of their bodies and autonomy—symbolizing how Black individuals are pushed to the margins of society and often silenced. The video also touches on themes of free will, surveillance, and exploitation, aligning these with the experience of being socially “trapped” despite the illusion of freedom.
Paragraph 2: Summarizing the Sunken Place as Described in Douglass’ Memoir
Here, explain how Frederick Douglass' experience of slavery represents his "Sunken Place." In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Douglass portrays slavery as a state of physical bondage and psychological subjugation. Like the Sunken Place in *Get Out*, slavery is a condition where the enslaved are denied agency, control, and even the ability to recognize themselves as fully human. Douglass discusses how ignorance was used as a tool of oppression—keeping enslaved people "sunken" in a mental and social abyss.
Paragraph 3: Thesis Statement
This paragraph ties the two concepts together. You’re comparing Douglass' personal journey out of his "Sunken Place" with the symbolic one in Get Out. His acquisition of literacy becomes the catalyst that leads him to freedom, allowing him to reclaim his humanity and to articulate the horrors of slavery. Your thesis might look something like:
"Frederick Douglass’ literary transformation defines his journey out of the Sunken Place, evidenced by how literacy gave him an indelible thirst for freedom, made him a chronicler of slavery to fight historical revisionism, equipped him to combat racial stereotypes, and enabled him to advocate for civil rights and the emancipation of enslaved people, using even the Bible to counter racist misinterpretations."
Paragraphs 4-8: Supporting Evidence
For each of these paragraphs, you’ll break down different elements of how literacy shaped Douglass’ escape from his own Sunken Place, contrasting his experience with that in Get Out.
- Literacy and the Taste for Freedom: Discuss how learning to read and write gave Douglass a vision of freedom that transcended the physical chains of slavery. This mirrors how awareness in Get Out leads to attempts at breaking free from the psychological chains imposed by society.
- Chronicler of Slavery and Combatting Historical Revisionism: Douglass wrote extensively to ensure that slavery’s brutal reality could not be erased or rewritten. This act of chronicling can be compared to *Get Out*’s subversive use of horror to reveal modern racism’s insidiousness.
- Combatting Racial Stereotypes: Douglass worked to dismantle the damaging myths about Black inferiority. In a similar way, Get Out critiques how modern stereotypes continue to dehumanize Black people. The Sunken Place becomes the visual metaphor for this societal attempt to “control” Black identity.
- Advocate for Civil Rights and Emancipation: Through his speeches and writings, Douglass became a powerful advocate for justice, much like how the protagonist of Get Out eventually fights back against his captors. Discuss how Douglass' advocacy was directly tied to his literacy.
- Restoring the Bible to Universal Love: Douglass reclaimed Christian texts, arguing that the Bible, when properly interpreted, advocates for universal brotherhood. This can be seen as a way of using a dominant societal narrative to undo systemic oppression, a tactic that *Get Out* also employs by turning cultural assumptions upside down.
Paragraph 9: Conclusion
In your conclusion, you’ll want to restate your thesis but also leave the reader with a powerful takeaway. Something like:
"Frederick Douglass' journey out of his own Sunken Place shows that literacy was not just a tool of intellectual freedom but a revolutionary act against an oppressive system. In both Douglass' memoir and Jordan Peele's Get Out, breaking free from the Sunken Place requires not just awareness of the chains but the courage to dismantle them."
This outline and structure will help create a strong comparative analysis, weaving together Douglass’ narrative with the cultural critique of Get Out. The Wisecrack video and Becoming Frederick Douglass will provide rich contextual evidence, while your lectures will ensure you're on track with the course's framework.
***
Building Blocks for Prompt F:
Building Block A:
Write your first two paragraphs:
Paragraph 1: Summarize the Major Points in Wisecrack’s "The Philosophy of Get Out"
Paragraph 2: Summarize the Sunken Place as Described in Douglass’ Memoir
Building Block B
Write your third paragraph, which is your thesis paragraph.
For Essay 2, choose one from the following:
Choice A: Frederick Douglass Lifted Others Out of the Sunken Place
In recent years, there have been critics of teaching slavery, Jim Crow, and racial injustice in the classroom. These critics claim that such teachings have degenerated into biased and extremist political ideology that is intended to indoctrinate students into an anti-American mindset with America painted as the unredeemable devil; that this anti-American mindset encourages helplessness and victimization, and that this mindset has corrupted educational institutions so that rather than teach critical thinking, they foster “Woke” political indoctrination. However, some will counter-argue that such renditions of African-American history are a perversion of real African-American history, which through ignorance or malice twist the essence of African-American history to attack it and silence African-American voices. These defenders of African-American history will posit that while it's true there are political dimensions to the study of African-American history, there are also spiritual and psychological dimensions. To truly understand African-American history, we are well advised to look to Frederick Douglass whose writings were designed to uplift the oppressed from what Jordan Peele calls The Sunken Place. Based on the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, American Slave (available as a PDF online) and Clint Smith’s essay “Monuments to the Unthinkable,” write a 1,200-word essay that addresses the claim that teaching about the life of Frederick Douglass and learning about Germany’s post-World War II moral reform is a way of learning about racial injustice that avoids the aforementioned pitfalls because Douglass’ life and Germany’s moral reform embody the importance of helping others rise above the Sunken Place, bearing witness to the truth, embracing individual self-agency to resist societal injustice, fighting to redeem a society’s past racial sins, and championing the wisdom of the Ancients for our continual self-improvement. Be sure to have a Works Cited page in MLA format with 4 sources. For this assignment, I recommend two excellent books for further reading: Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight and The Pursuit of Happiness by Jeffrey Rosen. I also recommend the 2022 documentary Becoming Frederick Douglass.
Resources you must use for Choice A:
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, American Slave PDF.
- Clint Smith’s essay “Monuments to the Unthinkable”
- PBS New Hour YouTube video "Why Americans are so divided over teaching critical race theory."
- David Pilgrim's YouTube video "The Jim Crow Museum."
- Childish Gambino's YouTube video "This Is AmericaLinks." (optional)
Sample Outline for Choice A:
Paragraph 1: Summarize the arguments of those who oppose teaching slavery, Jim Crow, and racial injustice in the classroom because they claim these teachings are forms of political indoctrination based on woke ideology, CRT, and DEI resulting in an anti-American screed that encourages victimization and learned helplessness.
Paragraph 2: Your thesis--address the claim that the real purpose of teaching racial injustice is to bypass politics and encourage Frederick Douglass' moral calling for all: To identify the Sunken Place, a state of despair based on dehumanization, so that we can lift each other to strengthen democracy for all people and to never repeat the sins of the past.
Paragraphs 3-6: Your supporting paragraphs.
Paragraph 7: Your counterargument-rebuttal.
Paragraph 8: Your conclusion, a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Works Cited page with a minimum of 4 sources
Choice B: Frederick Douglass and the movie Black Panther Point to a Way Out of the Sunken Place
In recent years, there have been critics of teaching slavery, Jim Crow and racial injustice in the classroom. These critics claim that such teachings have degenerated into biased and extremist political ideology that is intended to indoctrinate students into an anti-American mindset with America painted as the unredeemable devil; that this anti-American mindset encourages helplessness and victimization, and that this mindset has corrupted educational institutions so that rather than teach critical thinking, they foster “Woke” political indoctrination. However, some will counter-argue that such renditions of African-American history are a perversion of real African-American history, which through ignorance or malice twist the essence of African-American history in order to attack it and silence African-American voices. These defenders of African-American history will posit that while it's true there are political dimensions to the study of African-American history, there are also spiritual and psychological dimensions. To truly understand African-American history, we can compare the themes in the 2018 Ryan Coogler movie Black Panther and Frederick Douglass whose writings were designed to uplift the oppressed from what Jordan Peele calls The Sunken Place. In this context, write an essay that compares the way we can learn the essence of African-American history in the movie Black Panther and the writings of Frederick Douglass. This comparison should address the importance of helping others rise above the Sunken Place, bearing witness to the truth, embracing individual self-agency to resist societal injustice, fighting to redeem America, and championing the wisdom of the Ancients for our continual self-improvement so that we can find our “Inner Wakanda.” Be sure to have a Works Cited page in MLA format with 4 sources. For this essay, I recommend the following YouTube videos: “Black Panther: Symbolism Explained” and “Black Panther--Creating an Empathetic Villain.”
Resources you must use for Choice B:
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, American Slave PDF.
- The 2018 movie The Black Panther (which you will have to watch on your own with a possible fee; $4 rental on Amazon Prime)
- PBS New Hour YouTube video "Why Americans are so divided over teaching critical race theory
- YouTube video: “Black Panther: Symbolism Explained.”
- YouTube video “Black Panther--Creating an Empathetic Villain.”
Sample Outline for Choice B:
Paragraph 1: Summarize the arguments of those who oppose teaching slavery, Jim Crow, and racial injustice in the classroom because they claim these teachings are forms of political indoctrination based on woke ideology, CRT, and DEI resulting in an anti-American screed that encourages victimization and learned helplessness.
Paragraph 2: Your thesis--address the claim that the real purpose of teaching racial injustice is to bypass politics and encourage the movie Black Panther's moral calling for all: To identify the Sunken Place, a state of despair based on dehumanization, so that we can lift each other to strengthen a Utopian Wakanda for all people and to repel the evils from "Outer Wakanda."
Paragraphs 3-6: Your supporting paragraphs.
Paragraph 7: Your counterargument-rebuttal.
Paragraph 8: Your conclusion, a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Works Cited page with a minimum of 4 sources
Choice C. Glory Vs. The Lost Cause
The Lost Cause is a perversion of African-American history, a fabrication that claims that God blessed slavery and that in the system of slavery, whites and blacks lived in peaceful harmony, but the evil North ruined this harmony through “Northern aggression” and the “violation of state rights.” Write an essay that addresses the claim that the Life of Frederick Douglass and the 1989 movie Glory provides an effective counter-narrative to the heinous mythologies behind The Lost Cause. Be sure to have a Works Cited page in MLA format with 4 sources.
Resources you must use for Choice C:
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, American Slave PDF.
- The 1990 movie Glory (which you will have to watch on your own with a possible fee; $4 rental on Amazon Prime)
- David Pilgrim's YouTube video "The Jim Crow MuseumLinks to an external site."
- John Oliver's YouTube video "ConfederacyLinks to an external site."
- Childish Gambino's YouTube video "This Is America." (optional)
- The YouTube video "The Lost Cause MythLinks to an external site."
- The YouTube video "How the 'Lost Cause' narrative became American history."
- The YouTube video "How Southern socialites rewrote Civil War history." (optional)
Sample Outline for Choice C:
Paragraph 1: Summarize the arguments of those who oppose teaching slavery, Jim Crow, and racial injustice in the classroom because they claim these teachings are forms of political indoctrination based on woke ideology, CRT, and DEI resulting in an anti-American screed that encourages victimization and learned helplessness.
Paragraph 2: Your thesis--address the claim that the real purpose of teaching racial injustice is to bypass politics and encourage Frederick Douglass' moral calling for all: To identify the Sunken Place, a state of despair based on dehumanization, so that we can lift each other to strengthen democracy for all people, reject historical revisionism such as The Lost Cause, and to never repeat the sins of the past.
Paragraphs 3-6: Your supporting paragraphs.
Paragraph 7: Your counterargument-rebuttal.
Paragraph 8: Your conclusion, a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Works Cited page with a minimum of 4 sources
Choice D. Misinformation Is the Enemy of the People
Write an essay that addresses the claim that the misinformation that fuels The Lost Cause as interrogated by the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Clint Smith’s essay “Why Confederate Lies Live On” and the the lies of Alex Jones evident in the HBO Max documentary The Truth Vs. Alex Jones makes a persuasive case that misinformation is the enemy of moral decency and a liberal democracy. Be sure to have a Works Cited page in MLA format with 4 sources.
Resources you must use for Choice D:
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, American Slave PDF.
- The HBO Max documentary The Truth Vs. Alex Jones (which requires a subscription fee unless I have time to show it to the class)
- Clint Smith’s essay “Why Confederate Lies Live On”
Sample Outline for Choice D:
Paragraph 1: Summarize the arguments of those who oppose teaching slavery, Jim Crow, and racial injustice in the classroom because they claim these teachings are forms of political indoctrination based on woke ideology, CRT, and DEI resulting in an anti-American screed that encourages victimization and learned helplessness.
Paragraph 2: Your thesis--address the claim that the real purpose of teaching racial injustice is to bypass politics and encourage Frederick Douglass' moral calling for all: To identify the Sunken Place, a state of despair based on dehumanization, so that we can lift each other to strengthen democracy for all people, resist weaponized misinformation and historical revisionism, and to never repeat the sins of the past.
Paragraphs 3-6: Your supporting paragraphs.
Paragraph 7: Your counterargument-rebuttal.
Paragraph 8: Your conclusion, a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Works Cited page with a minimum of 4 sources
Choice E. Condescension and Stereotyping
Comparing Jordan Peele’s movie Get Out with Cord Jefferson’s movie American Fiction, write a 1,200-word essay that analyzes the way both films are a critique of white liberal condescension toward African Americans and how this condescension can be a subtle cause of the Sunken Place. Be sure to have a Works Cited page in MLA format with 4 sources.
Resources you must use for Choice E:
- The movie 2017 movie Get Out, which requires an Amazon Prime subscription
- The movie 2023 movie American Fiction, which requires an Amazon Prime subscription
- The Wisecrack YouTube video "The Philosophy of GET OUT."
- The YouTube video "Jeffrey Wright Breaks Down Why the Satire in American Fiction Is So Relevant."
Outline for Choice E:
Paragraph 1: Write an extended definition of white liberal condescension and provide at least one salient example.
Paragraph 2: Your thesis: Explain how both movies present parallel illustrations of white liberal condescension and how this condescension is dehumanizing.
Paragraphs 3-7: Analyze 5 similar examples of condescension and subtle denigration in the two movies.
Paragraph 8: Your conclusion, a dramatic restatement of your thesis.
***
Getting Ideas for Essay Option E from ChatGPT:
Both *Get Out* and *American Fiction* brilliantly expose white liberal condescension toward African Americans, each in its own unique way. Here are seven parallel themes that emerge from the films:
1. **Tokenization of Black Identity**: In *Get Out*, the Armitage family fawns over Chris as though his blackness is a fascinating artifact, with their obsession over his physical traits and cultural background. Similarly, in *American Fiction*, the publishing industry fetishizes Monk’s racial identity, urging him to write stereotypical stories that fit their expectations of Black culture, reducing him to a caricature of "Blackness."
2. **Superficial Support for Black Struggles**: *Get Out* shows the Armitages' fake allyship, as Dean Armitage insists he "would have voted for Obama a third time," using it to assert his "wokeness" without truly engaging in any meaningful way with the real struggles African Americans face. In *American Fiction*, liberal elites gush over surface-level, sensationalized depictions of Black suffering, while ignoring deeper, authentic narratives that would challenge their comfort zones.
3. **Performative Progressivism**: Both films show white liberals who outwardly embrace progressive values but ultimately perpetuate harmful racial dynamics. In *Get Out*, the Armitages host a party where guests, though polite, casually commodify Black people’s bodies and experiences for their benefit. *American Fiction* mirrors this as the publishing world demands Monk write the “right kind” of Black stories, ones that will make white readers feel good about themselves rather than challenge their preconceptions.
4. **Cultural Appropriation**: In *Get Out*, white characters like Jim Hudson covet Black bodies and talents, symbolizing a deeper desire to appropriate Black culture while stripping it of its humanity. *American Fiction* highlights a similar theme as white publishers commodify Black trauma for profit, pushing Monk toward a hyperbolic, exaggerated narrative they deem acceptable for their liberal audiences.
5. **Invisibility of Authentic Black Voices**: In *Get Out*, Chris's discomfort is repeatedly ignored or downplayed by white characters who are too busy projecting their own fantasies onto him. Likewise, in *American Fiction*, Monk’s authentic writing is dismissed as not “Black enough,” demonstrating how white liberal institutions silence or distort genuine Black perspectives to fit their own narratives.
6. **Exploitation of Black Pain**: Both films illustrate how Black pain becomes a spectacle for white liberal consumption. In *Get Out*, the Armitages and their friends exploit Chris’s existence for personal gain, literally hijacking his body for their desires. *American Fiction* critiques the literary world’s obsession with Black trauma, rewarding stories that focus on Black suffering, as long as it fits a palatable formula that keeps white readers entertained and reassured.
7. **Patronizing Control over Black Narratives**: In *Get Out*, the Armitages exert control over Black bodies under the guise of benevolent paternalism, deciding who deserves to be “saved” or uplifted. *American Fiction* reflects this dynamic in the publishing industry, where white editors and publishers dictate what kinds of Black stories get told, maintaining control over the narrative and relegating Black authors to fulfilling stereotypes rather than telling complex, nuanced stories.
Both films starkly reveal how white liberalism, despite its outward proclamations of support, often perpetuates a deeper, more insidious form of condescension and control over African Americans.
***
Why do we study African-American history and Jim Crow?
- To resist the rewriting of history, which is designed to oppress the very people who suffered under Jim Crow.
- Because rewriting history is morally abhorrent and always has malevolent designs.
- Because people are still rewriting history with malevolent intent today.
- Because the racist ideas that fuel Jim Crow are alive today in an international cult of white nationalists who are dedicated to using social media to spread weaponized misinformation.
- Because denying representation and silencing voices is morally bankrupt and denies us the truth about ourselves and about people who have been historically oppressed.
- Because Jim Crow gave inspiration and instruction to racists throughout the world, for example, Hitler learned segregation techniques from America’s Confederacy creator Jefferson Davis.
- Because a moral inventory is essential for society’s moral reform, a process that the Germans have successfully done in the aftermath of World War II.
- Historical revisionism kills democracy and inverts morality. For example, the revisionist history of The Lost Cause results in over 200 public schools being named after America's worst racist Jefferson Davis, and millions of Americans praise the criminals involved with the January 6 Insurrection as "American Patriots."
- Because Jim Crow is built on troll culture and we need to build a society on critical thinking culture.
***
What Is Jim Crow 1.0?
Jim Crow was born of white southern resentment to losing the Civil War, losing slavery, and being told by the northerners that their way of life was evil.
Full of resentment, white southerners scapegoated black people by crushing them with a series of cruel and often ridiculous laws that were enforced by violence. These oppressive laws in the words of Isabel Wilkerson constituted a “feudal caste system” with the privileged and servant classes.
Jim Crow was a sneaky way white southerners brought back slavery “off the books” by making black people subject to violence and exploitation with no protection from the law. In other words, slavery was illegal but Jim Crow brought it back under another name.
In other words, the Civil War did not end slavery; it merely shifted slavery into another form called Jim Crow. This shift is chronicled in Douglas A. Blackman’s book Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.
Perhaps the best book ever written about Jim Crow from the point of view of African Americans is Isabel Wilkerson’s award-winning The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration in which six million African Americans fled the south to escape Jim Crow.
Wilkerson interviewed over 1,000 black Americans who lived in the terror of Jim Crow and fled for their lives to the Northern and Western states between 1915 and 1970.
Over six decades, six million African Americans fled the Jim Crow south not knowing what was in store for them. By the end of the Great Migration, almost half of all the black Americans in the south were gone. They had no job, no place to live, no assurance of the means to survive, but they went anyway.
That should tell us just how bad Jim Crow was. “I don’t know what’s in store for me, but I’m getting the hell out.” Jim Crow was a 24/7 Torture Chamber.
All they knew was one thing: Whatever they faced, it couldn’t be worse than living in the Jim Crow states.
Characteristics of Jim Crow
One. Jim Crow didn’t allow black people to flourish.
In 1953, a black doctor Robert Joseph Pershing Foster got out of Monroe, Louisiana, and headed for California. Why? Because even though he was qualified in the highest medical procedures, the whites wouldn’t let him practice surgery.
In the Jim Crow south, whites didn’t like to grant any rights to blacks that suggested that blacks were equal to them. Allowing a black man to practice surgery was just too much for the whites to bear. The mere suggestion that blacks were talented and intelligent was a scandal to white southerners and a threat to their carefully curated racist paradigm, so Dr. Foster got in his car and headed for California.
Two. Jim Crow was a living hell.
Jim Crow was so hellish that it created The Great Migration, the greatest migration ever recorded in America, a migration that far exceeded the California Gold Rush of the 1850s, and yet the Great Migration, Isabel Wilkonson points out, is underreported. Not much is known about a migration that completely changed America, sending black people to urban cities in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and other major cities.
Three. Jim Crow was a danger to black lives.
Isabel Wilkinson makes an astute observation: A lot of black people that we know about would not have existed except that their parents got out of the deadly Jim Crow south. She points out that James Baldwin, Michelle Obama, Miles Davis, Toni Morrison, Spike Lee, and Denzel Washington were “all products of the Great Migration” and might not exist but for the fact that their parents fled for their lives.
Four. Jim Crow celebrated the myth of The Lost Cause.
The Lost Cause is a re-imagining of slavery as “a good thing” in which slave owners and slaves were happy in a bucolic paradise where whites and blacks “knew their place” and were blessed by God. Such heinous chicanery was embraced by the United Daughters of the Confederacy who published propaganda books to brainwash children in the Jim Crow public schools.
The myth of the Lost Cause is so strong that to this day the great military heroes of the North who brought an end to slavery--Ulysses Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, George Henry Thoms, David Farragut are to this day hated and reviled in the south.
Five. Jim Crow is a stain on American History that America has tried to sweep under the carpet.
Wilkinson understood that you couldn’t really understand the hell of Jim Crow unless you saw how black people reacted to it: Fleeing for their lives in a mass migration. She was astonished that before her book virtually nothing was written about the mass escape from Jim Crow. It’s as if historians are too ashamed of this chapter or not interested in it. Wilkinson has remedied that by writing a 550-page masterpiece about the subject.
Six. Jim Crow’s tentacles reached into the smallest areas of black lives to create daily humiliations. Here are some:
- Black children had to learn in separate schoolhouses, always rundown with no resources.
- Black people had to sit in filthy waiting rooms at doctors’ offices while whites enjoyed clean waiting rooms.
- When black people walked opposite direction a white person on the sidewalk, the black people had to step off the sidewalk and walk on the curb.
- Black people had to give all the good parking spaces to white people. Whites parked close to stores. Blacks parked far away.
- No matter how slowly a white driver was going in a car, a black driver was never allowed to pass the white person’s car.
- When a white person was at fault for a car accident involving a black driver, the fault always was assigned to the black driver. “You’re black so it’s your fault.”
- Blacks and whites couldn’t play chess or checkers together because such a game suggested they were equal.
Seven. Jim Crow violated the Constitution.
As Wilkinson writes: “The South began acting in outright defiance of the Fourteenth Amendment of 1868, which granted the right to due process and equal protection to anyone born in the United States and it ignored the Fifteenth Amendment of 1870, which guaranteed all men the right to vote” (38).
The North tried to grant rights to blacks in the south, but by the mid-1870s, Wilkinson observes, the North bailed on the south and stopped their oversight.
Eight. Hostility towards blacks in the South was so acute that white politicians who fomented racism against blacks enjoyed popularity, which they leveraged for self-gain.
When political leaders spoke of black people deserving violence, the white masses saw this as “open season” to commit any violence they wanted against blacks with impunity.
Nine. Lynchings of black people became an epidemic that was normalized and glorified by white southerners.
In one of the most painful chapters to read in Wilkinson’s book, we read that a black man who was merely accused of looking at a white woman would be lynched. Petty crimes were always worthy of a lynching.
These lynchings, which included beatings, hangings, and being burned alive, were watched by “festive crowds” who brought their children and let their toddlers sit on their shoulders to enjoy the spectacle.
I’m reading this, and I’m thinking I’d be part of the Great Migration myself. I would be urgent to leave the south.
How frequent were these lynchings?
Wilkinson writes: “Across the South, someone was hanged or burned alive every four days from 1889 to 1929, according to the 1933 book The Tragedy of Lynching.”
According to Dr. David Pilgrim, there were 4,730 lynchings that we know about but no doubt many more.
***
6 causes of the Sunken Place
- Physical abuse and violence
- Docile role or persona
- Pseudo-religious definition as subhuman designed to to serve whites
- Erasure of culture and history
- Severed from family
- Erasure of language
Three Phases of Racism as a Tool of Oppression:
- Cynical Use of Religion: Pseudo-Religious Phase: a theory to justify slavery
- Propaganda Phase: nonstop weaponized misinformation to reinforce segregation
- Revisionist Phase, retell the history; say it wasn't so bad if it existed. Turn it into the Lost Cause.
***
Critical Analysis of “Monuments to the Unthinkable” by Clint Smith
**Acclimation to Evil**
In the opening paragraphs of Clint Smith’s essay “Monuments to the Unthinkable,” he presents the disturbing contrast between unimaginable cruelty and the everyday lives of German families during the Holocaust. He describes how, even as atrocities were being committed nearby, ordinary people continued their daily routines, seemingly oblivious to the horror around them. This stark juxtaposition serves to illustrate a profound human tendency: our capacity for denial and our alarming ability to become acclimated to evil, even in the most extraordinary circumstances.
Smith argues that to resist this acclimation to evil, we must engage in acts that force us to bear witness and remember these dark chapters of history. By doing so, we strengthen our moral resolve and work toward moral reform, ensuring that we do not become numb to the injustices around us.
**Questions of Public Memory**
Smith emphasizes his deep interest in “public memory,” particularly in how societies remember—or forget—their crimes, such as slavery and the Confederacy in the United States. He notes that public memory is often manipulated by misinformation and propaganda, leading to the veneration of Confederate figures as heroes, their images immortalized in statues, school names, and mascots.
In recent years, Smith observes, there has been a concerted effort by some American politicians to suppress the voices of African Americans who seek to preserve the true memory of these injustices. These politicians dismiss these voices as mere manifestations of "Woke ideology," "Critical Race Theory (CRT)," or the DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) agenda. In reality, these dismissals are thinly veiled attempts to "protect white children from white guilt" and to create a sanitized, mythical version of America—a Disneyland of innocence that erases the brutal realities of its past.
**Suppressing History and Weaponizing Misinformation**
Frederick Douglass, in his seminal memoir, sought to combat the whitewashing of history by telling the unvarnished truth about slavery. His work was a direct response to the emerging narrative of the Lost Cause, which falsely portrayed slavery as a benevolent institution beneficial to both blacks and whites. Douglass’s powerful narrative remains a crucial indictment of the tools used for racial oppression and a testament to the necessity of preserving historical truth.
Under the constant threat of violence and suffering from hunger, Douglass traded his food to learn how to read and write, eventually using his hard-won literacy to bear witness to the horrors of slavery. His work preserves the truth that no amount of revisionism can erase.
**Evil and Belief**
When confronted with acts of evil on the scale of American slavery or the German Holocaust, our initial reaction is often denial: "I can't believe anyone could do such a thing." This denial becomes a powerful tool for cynical historical revisionists who argue that "things weren't so bad" and that people are "exaggerating the evil performed."
There is a natural human tendency to cling to the idea that the world is fundamentally good, a place of mythical innocence. To face evil head-on is often seen as pessimistic or even morally questionable. However, Smith argues that memorials and acts of remembrance are acts of courage that confront us with the truth, forcing us to recognize the darkness in our history and inspiring us to work toward moral reform.
**Connecting the Holocaust to American Slavery**
Smith draws a powerful parallel between the Holocaust and American slavery, arguing that the memory of these atrocities must be kept alive to prevent their recurrence. He emphasizes that racism is not confined to a specific time, place, or people; it is a global and enduring pandemic. To reinforce this point, Smith quotes the renowned black scholar W.E.B. Du Bois near the conclusion of his essay:
In 1949, Du Bois visited Warsaw, where he witnessed the devastation left by the Nazis. "I have seen something of human upheaval in this world," he said. "The scream and shots of a race riot in Atlanta; the marching of the Ku Klux Klan; the threat of courts and police; the neglect and destruction of human habitation; but nothing in my wildest imagination was equal to what I saw in Warsaw."
This experience, Du Bois said, "helped me to emerge from a certain social provincialism into a broader conception of what the fight against race segregation, religious discrimination, and the oppression by wealth had to become if civilization was going to triumph and broaden in the world."
Du Bois’s reflections underscore the interconnectedness of racial oppression and state violence across different contexts and times. Smith, after his time in Germany, also gained clarity on how these dark periods in history are remembered—or forgotten—and the implications of that memory for present and future generations.
Smith reminds us that many of Germany’s most powerful memorials did not begin as state-sanctioned projects but emerged from ordinary people who pushed their country to confront its past honestly. Similarly, Americans must not wait for the government to find its conscience. Ordinary people are, and must be, the conscience of the nation.
In closing, Smith calls on us to remember that public memory is not merely about the past; it is about shaping the future. By confronting the truth of our history, we build the moral strength necessary to ensure that such atrocities never happen again. The responsibility lies with each of us to bear witness, remember, and act.
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