Invisibility of Racism: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

I found this pretty interesting book named, "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong" As its title says, this book is about how learning history mainly depends on books and how the government and other institutions, such as the church, ask to delete some information. This chapter named, "Invisibility of Racism" is about how politics and society have treated minorities, especially African-American, badly.

First, it talks about how some American Presidents such as Washington and Jefferson owned slaves, and Wall Street was the marketplace where rich people could buy slaves. Ironic, isn't? It also says that slavery was one of the main factors that led to Texas War: Crockett and the other people fought for freedom...The freedom to own slaves.

While in politics, white people were so racist that one of the Democratic candidates won, because the Republican candidates attempted to guarantee civil rights to African Americans. By 1921, African American people were considered as second-class citizens and people used any chance they had to make fun of them, one example is that newspapers published cartoons degrading black ability, such as how black people were happier on the plantations than in city since they were not "competent".

History books show Ku Klux Klan history and that once, they dropped dynamite from an airplane onto a black ghetto, killing people and destroying homes. But, the truth is that it was not a “black ghetto” but one of the most sophisticated black areas at that time known as “Black Wall Street”. Here, people were wealthy, and well-educated. There were a lot of businesses: stores, cinemas, pharmacies, libraries, among others.

Arthur Ashe

Today, I had an English assignment that was about listening, and I was listening to a radio program about Arthur Ashe.

Arthur Ashe (1943-1993) was an African-American tennis player who was very tenacious, brave and honest. He was, besides a tennis player, a social activist who fought racism, encouraged people, even his opponents, to do their best, helped poor childed and taught people about the two diseases that ended with his life: hear disease and AIDS.

He was born in Virginia, at the time when we was born, American government separated people according to their race (Black people attended different schools and churchs, for instances). He was poor, and his father work all daylong, and his mother died when he was six.

At the age of seven, his father became in charge of the public play space, so they moved there. There, he started to practice tennis and he became very avid, and won a local championship. Later, UCLA offered him a scholarship if he joined the tennis team. He did and he led the team to the victory.

Later, he won the United States, Australia and France Open and a championship in England. Then, he was invited to the South Africa Open. In those years, South Africa was known for being a very racist country, and the government wanted to clean their image to play in the Olympics. Ashe decided to help South Africa, but he played in racially-mixed groups, said and did whatever he pleased. Actually, he became a close friend of Nelson Mandela, who is very known for fighting racism in Africa and going to jail unfairly.

He created foundations to help poor children and taught them to play tennis and golf.

When he discovered he had heart disease, he had to stop playing. But he never stopped; he taught people about this disease, how to prevent it, how to cope with it.

He needed a heart transplant, and he received a new heart, but the blood he received was infected by AIDS and he got infected.

But this encouraged him the most and did not become a burden for him. He also thought the community about AIDS and how to prevent it.

He died in 1993, in the week of his last speech.