QOTD -- A Juneteenth Lesson

 

"... In the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, there is a special exhibit of an artifact that is so rare that there are only a handful now in existence. It is what historians call a 'Slave Bible.' It is a copy of a Bible that was used by British missionaries to convert enslaved African Americans. Published in 1807, the Bible deletes any passages that may inspire liberation – about 90% of the Old Testament is missing along with half of the New Testament.

“They literally blacked out, portions of the Bible that had anything to do with freedom, anything to do with equality, anything to do with God delivering folk,” says Leon Harris, a theology professor at Biola University in California..." -- John Blake, CNN, on myths about slavery, including about the original Juneteenth.  The quote makes an interesting point about how British missionaries and American enslavers used a method Blake likens to what Christofascist bigots like Gov. "Bootsie" DeSantis are trying to pull off with their so- called "anti-woke" laws that "ban the teaching of Black history in schools that could make White students or others feel 'discomfort.'” That's the insidious, white supremacist thread woven into our history right up to the present day.  Just as that rewriting of the Bible was rejected by the enslaved then, so will the rewriting of history be rejected by us now.