I was chatting with a Black friend of Jamaican heritage. She was appalled that a Nigerian she'd met knew next to nothing about slavery.
It's Black history! she said.
It's *your* history, I explained.
For Africans that sad story ended when the ships left the shore. Our schools teach us about the impact of that devastation, not what happened on the other coast.
Black history is not one thing. It's not MLK.
It's also Songhai and Benin. Which they don't teach here
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David Njoku
in reply to David Njoku • • •I'm not saying that the story of slavery is not important. Personally I've done my best to learn about it; mostly because I now live in a country shaped by it.
But there is so much human history. I have sympathy for people who have learned one bit of it, but not the other.
(Was thinking about this because I saw an exchange where someone was being upbraided for not knowing about American racism - even though they weren't American or Black.)