After reading “The Idea of America.Intro to 1619 project” by Hannah Jones along with two articles called “Fact-Checking the 1619 Project and its Critics” by Magness and “After All, Didn’t America Invent Slavery” by Lindsay I found some new facts about slavery. These facts were new to me on how slavery happened during the Mesopotamia era where enemies captured people from conquering countries to be kept as slaves which according to Lindsay’s article stated it took place 6800 B.C way before 1619 the year where African Americans came to america to be slaves that worked in the field. This shows that slavery has been throughout history and that there were more cases of slavery that happened that were different from U.S history of African slavery. The topic from these articles showcase how throughout history how slavery was a part of us to show the importance of learning history itself even though we focus on U.S history. I do believe there is a discourse course community that does talk about this kind of subject of slavery would be and how there are activists back in the day when African Americans were free but were discriminated even so to this day there are activist out there fighting for a equal cause. There are movements that are fighting for equality that African american want to have to be equal in this country.
To me, I believe that the U.S really has no racism in its DNA because of how immigrants are building this country. Even though that the history makes us believe that slavery was a bad part of history that played part against basic human rights but they did however contribute to making the country become better which brings us Jones’ project 1619 on how African slaves contributed a lot for this country on building the richest nations we know of todayÂ
and without Africans slavery the United states as we know won’t exist. My role here is to be a citizen that goes to school to get a degree in physical therapy then hopefully find a job so I can make money while helping people which I can contribute to the great society I live in like how the slaves contribute and help build it up. Even though the U.S has no racist in its DNA there are racist people out there that degrade people based on their skin color or other stereotypes that they say in order to degrade us as human beings but I’m not racist so in a way I try to avoid those types of people the best I can.
Do I think of myself as an american? Though I was born here in the United States but i do consider myself as an american because to me being an american is how you contribute yourself to society same how the slaves from Jones “Idea of america” contributed to building the nation where we live today the idea of how people that work everyday to provide both there family as well as the nation they live the mere labor we work for and the people that also fought for this country is this nation is building itself over and over again. But though she did disagree with is how when the declaration of independence was signed making this statement “all men are created equal” though African men are forced into slavery making them ranking the lowest of the low. To me being american is how we contribute to the nation we live despite being different.
