Pride loves the spotlight. Shame hides in the shadows.

When people are proud of something – a child’s first drawing, a hard-earned diploma, the championship trophy that still smell like Gatorade – they put it on display. Pride wants the world to see.

When someone’s embarrassed, they hide the evidence. A failed semester gets “lost.” A teenage pregnancy in the 1970s meant your daughter quietly vanished to “visit relative” or attend a “special school,” and the baby went to someone else. Erasure became a family tradition.

And erasure doesn’t just happen in families. It happens in nations. Easily done when you own and control the PR team, you can advocate for a serial rapist to only be recognized as a creative florist.

The Erasing Hand of Power

In the justice system, one group’s “youthful mistakes” can be sealed to protect their “future opportunities.” Another group – usually the permanent-tan population – collects criminal records like Halloween candy.

One side gets the privilege of disappearing their wrongs; the other gets the permanent reminder branded to their name.

If you truly believed you are superior, you wouldn’t have to whiteout someone else’s history while polishing your own. You wouldn’t require two interpretations of the same law – one for the wealthy and pale-skinned, another for the rest.

And if you’re keeping score, that’s a lot of “mistakes” for a group that swears they invented everything but oxygen.

Erased Acts, Edited Archives

Entire chapters of history have been deleted like a bad tweet.

Tulsa, 1921 – Black Wall Street burned to the ground, hundreds dead, wealth destroyed (stolen), survivors silenced.

Rosewood, 1923 – a thriving Black town erased, the land stolen, the truth buried.

Wilmington, 1898 – a violent coup in broad daylight, with the winners writing the history books.

And yet, younger white folks online still love to ask:

“Why don’t you people just create your own town? We’d love to see it.”

Newsflash: we did. Multiple times. They were bombed, burned, and bulldozed – by the very people now pretending it never happened.

These weren’t accidents. They were edits.

School textbooks still romanticize “explorers” who conveniently forgot to mention the genocide parts. Media runs mugshots for Black suspects but digs out smiling yearbook photos for white mass shooters.

If your heritage is something to be proud of, why must it be constantly rewritten?

Owning the Whole Story

If your people were the best at conquering, stealing, enslaving, or lying – own it. Stand on it, ten toes down.

But instead, too many leaders of privilege – especially pale politicians – hide behind:

“We don’t want our kids to feel bad about who they are or their family.”

That’s not morality; that’s cowardice.

Here’s a radical idea: If you don’t want your kids or grandchildren to feel bad about the family name, stop doing bad things with the family name.

Billions Spent on Falsehoods

If white supremacy were actual strength, it wouldn’t need a multi-billion-dollar PR campaign to convince the world that Black and Brown people are dangerous.

And the hypocrisy? Olympic-level.

The same benefactors of the American flag made it illegal to “desecrate” it – especially by burning – while happily letting it be printed on disposable napkins, beer koozies, and yes, thong underwear.

Make it make sense. Apparently, “respect” for a symbol matters more than respect for the people it claims to represent.

Or consider this: it’s “un-American” to kneel quietly during the anthem, but perfectly fine to sell the anthem’s sheet music for profit. Patriotism apparently runs on a cash register.

The Reality They Can’t Admit

Most non-melanated people have never been harmed by a melanated person in their life. In fact, we’re often the safest people to come to for help – historically and today. But centuries of propaganda have painted us as the threat, even as the very same people benefiting from our labor, land, and ideas run to us in times of crisis.

And then there’s the annual comedy routine:

“Where’s White History Month?“

Newsflash – it’s the full 12 months of the calendar year and the reason for the selected/redacted horrible and undesirable short month of February for a sliver of Black Excellence. The fictional version of white history is told, sold, and streamed daily. That’s not a missing holiday – that’s a permanent broadcast.

Meanwhile, too many of us have benefited from programmed to doubt and distrust our own greatness – forgetting the builders, scientists, navigators, mathmaticians and artists who came before us – because those stories were either stolen or buried.

The Test

There is no white supremacy without Black and Brown exploitation. Period. (Ask many of today’s farmers)

So here’s the challenge: put the truth right next to the lies. In the same textbooks. In the same broadcasts. On the same monuments. Let your children see both and decide for themselves.

Then we’ll see who’s still proud of their legacy when the whole story is told.

I’m not oppose to your family’s statue – as long as it reads the truth.

Example: George Washington – brutal slave owner and architect of genocide. Now that’s history.

And if your only move is to hide the bad parts, seal the records, and hope nobody Googles your history – you’re not the hero of the story. You’re the editor.

Put that on your annual Christmas cards.

But here’s a white history bonus: In 1989, Kevin Richardson 14, Raymond Santana 14, Antrion McCray 15, Yusuf Salam 15, and Corey Watson 16 better known as the Central Park Five, were arrested, abused and accused of being gangbangers and rapist of a white lady they never even seen before. Regardless of the overwhelming proof of their innocence, these children trialed as adults, spent 6 1/2 years – 13 years in jail for another false accusation of a white woman. The current two-time elected United States President Donald Trump, with all his glaring christian values, publicly called for their executions after they were found to be innocent! Could it be because America has a history of seeing Black youth as rabid dogs? This news shouldn’t be difficult to acknowledge, being that America’s Black youth makes up 70% of the world’s youth being charged as adults prison population. Childhood’s officially stripped along with the pure innocence.

If a person burns their hand on the stove, do you force yourself to forget the lesson? Or do you learn from it not to repeat it again? You can’t get rid of cancer by deleting the previous test results. It needs to be treated head-on.

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