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Ibram X. Kendi

@DrIbram

May 22

To explore his conception of history, Gillian Brockell reviewed DeSantis's first book (which is out of press): "Dreams from Our Founding Fathers," a troll of Obama's first book, "Dreams from My Father." 1/

washingtonpost.com/history/2023/0…

DeSantis dismisses slavery as a "personal flaw" of the Founding Fathers, while also excusing those flaws by saying slavery existed "throughout human history." DeSantis imagines that "slavery was doomed to fail in a nation whose Constitution embodied" freedom. 2/

No matter that the Constitution also embodied and protected slavery. No matter that certain Founding Fathers fought for the freedom *to* enslave. No matter that there were Indigenous, Black, and White abolitionists before the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution.” 3/

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Ibram X. Kendi

@DrIbram

May 16

On this day in 1943, German Nazis suppressed the four-week-long Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It was the largest and longest Jewish uprising during the Holocaust. Remembering this rebellion today as Jewish people, as we all, face a resurgence of neo-Nazi violence across the world. 1/

The term “ghetto” first described an area of Venice, Italy where authorities segregated Jews in 1516. Nazis created the Warsaw ghetto in Poland in 1940, enclosing it with a 10-foot brick wall. Nazis created at least 1,143 “ghettos” in occupied eastern territories like Poland. 2/

Around 500,000 Jewish people were forced to live in the 1.3 square-mile Warsaw ghetto, many houseless, conditions deplorable. In the so-called "Great Action" in 1942, Nazis brought 265,000 people to the Treblinka extermination camp, while killing 35,000 more within the ghetto. 3/

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Ibram X. Kendi

@DrIbram

May 8

@ndncollective

On this day, 50 years ago, the Occupation of Wounded Knee ended after 71 days in 1973. The Oglala Lakota and the American Indian Movement (AIM) reclaimed the land of a horrific massacre. @ndncollective called it "the first Indigenous protest to be nationally reported on." 1/

Wounded Knee is a small town located on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. On December 29, 1890, U.S. troops murdered between 250 and 300 Lakota people at Wounded Knee. About half of the victims were women and children. 2/

Nearly 80 years later, in 1968, AIM was established to fight for Indigenous rights and sovereignty. AIM was created by Ojibwe activists, including Mary Jane Wilson, Dennis Banks, Pat Bellanger, and Clyde Bellecourt. Russell Means, an Oglala Lakota, joined after its birth. 3/

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Ibram X. Kendi

@DrIbram

May 3

More than a century before Trump and his supporters vowed to "Keep America Great," White segregationists were striving to keep California White. They passed the state's flagrantly anti-Asian "Alien Land Law" on this day 110 years ago in 1913. An #AAPIHeritageMonth 🧵 1/

The growing presence of Japanese people alarmed racist White Californians. They formed the Asiatic Exclusion League in 1905. By 1908, the League had about 100,000 members. By the way, in 1910, about 40,000 Japanese people lived in California out of a population of 2.4 million. 2/

In the 1900s, 1910s and 1920s, the racist actions of the Asiatic Exclusion League were numerous. They boycotted Japanese-owned restaurants and tried to segregate the 93 Japanese students in San Francisco's public schools from the rest of the student body in 1906. 3/

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Ibram X. Kendi

@DrIbram

May 1

#OTD in 1863, the Confederate Congress passed the Retaliatory Act. It said ALL captured Black Union soldiers won't be treated as prisoners of war, but as enslaved men in rebellion–that is, returned to slavery or executed. It didn't matter if Black soldiers had been born free. 1/4

Confederate law to treat all Black soldiers as enslaved men in rebellion prompted a response from Lincoln. He declared: every Black US soldier enslaved, a Confederate POW would be sentenced to hard labor; every Black US soldier executed, a Confederate soldier would be too. 2/4

"To ... enslave any captured person, on account of his color, and for no offense against the laws of war, is ... a crime against the civilization of the age," President Lincoln wrote in an executive order on July 30, 1863.

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Ibram X. Kendi

@DrIbram

Apr 19

#OTD in 1783, it was proposed at the Congress of the Confederation that enslaved Black people should count as 60% of a White person. Called the Three-fifths Compromise, the clause was added to the US Constitution four years later. Today its legacy endures through prisons. A 🧵 1/

At the Confederation Congress, one suggestion for determining state tax rates was based on the state’s population. The more people a state had, the more tax it would owe. This raised the question: Are enslaved people, who are legally considered property, inhabitants? 2/

Many delegates, especially those from southern states with larger enslaved populations, did not want enslaved people to count as inhabitants. During the debates, Maryland's Samuel Chase said, “Negroes in fact should not be considered members of the state more than cattle.” 3/

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