Textbooks were ‘racist to the core’ (SC)

[struggle4progress]

SEPTEMBER 13, 2015
ISSAC BAILEY
Sun News

... Bailey: What effect do you think your grandmother’s work has had on the beliefs of average South Carolinians when it comes to things such as the Civil War, Confederate flag, the Civil Rights Movement, etc.?

Furman: The books I believe were for the third and seventh grades, and I assume most children just accepted what they were being taught. They certainly learned about the Civil War “heroes” from the Southern point-of-view through her books. We were right in the midst of the Civil Right Movement when I was in grammar school. I’m 63. I was horrified to see on television the brutality and unfairness of the white police and white antagonists toward blacks. Those images made a big impact on me. I think South Carolinians who went on to college after high school eventually rejected my grandmother’s racism; I hope so ...

One day, she and my mother were having a discussion about the use of the work “darky” in the book. My mother said she had to take it out, but she protested. Finally, I gave her my unsolicited opinion about the word — that she couldn’t use it in her book because it was not a nice word.

She looked at me in horror and said: “But, Felicia, that was their pet name. They loved to be called darkies” ...

http://www.thestate.com/opinion/op-ed/article34962456.html

[tblue37]

1. KnR. nt

[Warpy]

2. Good grief. At least north of the state line the books said "colored."

Other than that, they weren't much different.

[struggle4progress]

3. Mary C. Simms Oliphant's troubling history of South Carolina

May 09, 2012
WILL MOREDOCK

Many observers have written over the years that South Carolina seems to inhabit some parallel universe ... My favorite malefactor is Mary C. Simms Oliphant ... My parents used Oliphant's books in the 1930s; I used them in the 1960s ...

These are some of the things I learned from my 1958 edition of The History of South Carolina: "The Africans were used to a hot climate," Oliphant wrote. "They made fine workers under the Carolina sun." Oliphant defended slaveholders and their "peculiar institution" this way: "Africans were brought from a worse life to a better one. As slaves, they were trained in the ways of civilization. Above all, the landowners argued, the slaves were given the opportunity to become Christians in a Christian land, instead of remaining heathen in a savage country."

Oliphant felt that slavery was a necessary but benign institution and described it this way: "Most masters treated their slaves kindly ... the law required the master to feed his slaves, clothe them properly, and care for them when they were sick." Elsewhere, she writes, "Most slaves were treated well, if only because it was to the planter's interest to have them healthy and contented." That there were so few slave uprisings in South Carolina "speaks well for both whites and Negroes," she writes ...

Later editions of Oliphant's book were somewhat toned down, but this was by and large the official history of South Carolina — taught to black students as well as white — until 1984 ...

http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/charleston/mary-c-simms-oliphants-troubling-history-of-south-carolina/Content?oid=4070745

[raccoon]

6. Unfortunately, there are many right-wingers who still believe this crap about slavery.

"Africans were brought from a worse life to a better one. As slaves, they were trained in the ways of civilization. Above all, the landowners argued, the slaves were given the opportunity to become Christians in a Christian land, instead of remaining heathen in a savage country."

[Archae]

4. My Mom still uses "colored," because that's what she grew up with.

My Dad always used the n-bomb.
Nothing ever different.
(He died 5 years ago.)

I use "black," most here in WI do.

[Warpy]

5. Yeah, there are still some diehard old folks who never made the change

Took me about 5 minutes when a friend mentioned the preference.