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Tom Hanks talks about learning about the tulsa massacre and why certain things gets ignored in school

Jedi2016

Jedi2016

Member
Oct 27, 2017
15,901
Heaven forbid our little white kids ever hear anything that makes white people look bad. And heaven forbid those little black kids ever find out what white people have done to them far more recently than people would care to admit.
 
DarthWoo

DarthWoo

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,677
I'd never heard of the 1871 LA Chinatown massacre until a random tweet on another topic mentioned it. There's an awful lot of stuff nobody ever seems to mention.
 
sprsk

sprsk

Resettlement Advisor
Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,476
I swear the only reason we learn about slavery at all is because we ended up doing the right thing eventually.
Can't be learning anything about how America and Americans sometime just does bad shit and that's that.
 
Grug

Grug

Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,647
Same thing happens in Australia.

Most people can recite white-centric facts about Captain Cook, the First Fleet, Ned Kelly, The Eureka Stockade and Gallipoli but mention Bennelong, Truganini, Albert Namatjira, Pemulwuy or the Myall Creek Massacre and they'll have no idea.

But let's be real. It's a feature, not a bug.
 
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Deleted member 26591

Member
Oct 30, 2017
3,295
You should be in the UK.

We barely learn about Empire beyond "hey cool navy" and a bit about the east india company and clipper races. Everything literally jumps from Elizabethan era shite up to WWI unless you study it higher than secondary education (so college).

Literally no Brit would have any idea what you were talking about if you mentioned the Amritsar massacre, and you'd be beaten over the head if you pointed out Churchill was a hateful racist bigoted little shit who happened to ace one part of his job.

Can't have the peons knowing their freedom and the general wealth of western nations is build using blood.
 
thisismadness

thisismadness

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,485
sprsk said:
I swear the only reason we learn about slavery at all is because we ended up doing the right thing eventually.
Can't be learning anything about how America and Americans sometime just does bad shit and that's that.
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Slavery? I think you mean the african migrant worker program of the 17th century.
 
Kyuuji

Kyuuji

The Favonius Fox
Member
Nov 8, 2017
32,591
thisismadness said:
Slavery? I think you mean the african migrant worker program of the 17th century.
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Saved them and gave them civilization. Genuinely what some people think, and I use that last word incredibly lightly because anyone with a couple of nuerons firing understands how utterly unconscionable the idea is.

In England the only notion of the Empire I had in school was that it was a source of national pride and our greatest achievement. That it was something of valour.
 
PlanetSmasher

PlanetSmasher

The Abominable Showman
Member
Oct 25, 2017
116,655
I remember when I learned about Black Wall Street and Tulsa a while back. Similarly that shit was NOT taught to me in schools. Shameful that stuff like that isn't covered.
 
SinkFla

SinkFla

Member
Oct 26, 2017
9,477
Pensacola, Fl
He's dead on. Also a white guy here and I didn't know about it either until I was an adult. Typical white supremacist revisionist history courtesy of the 'greatest nation on Earth!!!1". Absolutely vile.
 
Nothing Loud

Nothing Loud

Literally Cinderella
Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,018
Whatever drives awareness of the Tulsa Massacre is a good thing. Glad TH is trending so this can get more exposure
 
KtotheRoc

KtotheRoc

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
56,776
Speaking as a white guy he's absolutely right. It is absolutely shameful that these lessons are not taught. And that white people today continue to bury lessons about the Tulsa Massacre and other horrors so their children may never learn about this country's shameful history.

Nothing Loud said:
Whatever drives awareness of the Tulsa Massacre is a good thing. Glad TH is trending so this can get more exposure
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Reminds me that so many people learned about the Tulsa Massacre from HBO's Watchmen show a few years ago.
 
Nothing Loud

Nothing Loud

Literally Cinderella
Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,018
Classicrock78 said:
I think Tom hanks is the only actor that's never had any bad press or scandals,he truly is a treasure to us all.
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He and Betty White are proof you can become famous and not be a shitty person and not be plagued by skeletons in the closet being unearthed by "cancel culture" or scrutiny. Just be a good person damn it.
 
Everybody Lies

Everybody Lies

Member
Oct 28, 2017
6,299
Good of him to call out the editorial process that wiped that history from so many Americans that should have learned about it.

KtotheRoc said:
Speaking as a white guy he's absolutely right. It is absolutely shameful that these lessons are not taught. And that white people today continue to bury lessons about the Tulsa Massacre and other horrors so their children may never learn about this country's shameful history.



Reminds me that so many people learned about the Tulsa Massacre from HBO's Watchmen show a few years ago.
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Hanks did say two years ago, so the timing lines up for him too.
 
LProtagonist

LProtagonist

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
7,645
He's right. And as a teacher, it's so tough to make sure students know about all of these things. Granted, I teach English, but I try to get a diverse array of books into my classroom and to cover as many social topics as possible through them.

The scary part is that it's becoming harder and harder to do that with the massive attack on education that is targeting discussions about race, gender, and sexuality in the classroom. More people need to speak up about this, especially people with a voice like Tom Hanks.
 
trashbandit

trashbandit

Member
Dec 19, 2019
3,911
Finding out that people in this country, broadly, are not taught about a lot of post-Reconstruction violence floored me as it became more apparent over the last few years. It makes me even more appreciative of the curriculum I was taught by the NYC public school system, but also just terrified at the set of events most Americans are walking around with in their heads. It makes me wonder about the events most of us still don't know because they haven't been examined by pop culture.
 
j7vikes

j7vikes

Definitely not shooting blanks
Member
Jan 5, 2020
5,839
Throw me in the white guy didn't know about Tulsa Massacre until Trump/Watchmen camp. I would be curious to know how many Americans regardless of race knew that. Insane how we just cover up the bad parts of our history and pretend it's always been great. Whatever happened to the idea of learning from mistakes?

Only going to get worse as Republicans try to further destroy education.
 
UltimateHigh

UltimateHigh

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,500
it's something I came across on my own years ago because we sure as shit didn't hear about it in school.
 
Squarehard

Squarehard

Member
Oct 27, 2017
26,094
zero_suit said:
Keanu
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4f8.jpg
 

anamika

Member
May 18, 2018
2,622
NomadPete said:
You should be in the UK.

We barely learn about Empire beyond "hey cool navy" and a bit about the east india company and clipper races. Everything literally jumps from Elizabethan era shite up to WWI unless you study it higher than secondary education (so college).

Literally no Brit would have any idea what you were talking about if you mentioned the Amritsar massacre, and you'd be beaten over the head if you pointed out Churchill was a hateful racist bigoted little shit who happened to ace one part of his job.

Can't have the peons knowing their freedom and the general wealth of western nations is build using blood.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

There was a BBC panel about the lack of apology from the Belgian Royals for their history in the Congo a couple of weeks ago, and one of the white guys on it talking about why Colonialism was good and not one of the other three white people on the panel really pushed back on this.
 
Chirotera

Chirotera

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
4,296
I'm with Tom. I was in AP history through highschool. I minored in history in college. And I learned about Tulsa from the Watchman show. Made me sick to my stomach that it never even came up.
 

CamberGreber

Banned
Dec 27, 2019
1,606
To be fair. He is pretty old so of course they didnt teach him about Tulsa back in the 60s. The text books he was raised on where written by people born in the early 20th century.
 
CreepingFear

CreepingFear

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
16,766
I learned about it by watching Lovecraft Country on HBO. Hanks is right. It's disgusting how these assholes in red states are trying to further censor things by not calling slavery, slavery and more. We are heading backwards.
 
Dubbedinenglish

Dubbedinenglish

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
10,326
When the Watchmen series aired with opening being the bombing of Black Wallstreet there was a few good pages of surprise that this was an actual thing.
 
Kommodore

Kommodore

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,334
I learned about the Tulsa Massacre because of the Watchmen series on HBO and I'm still stunned by that. America still needs to take a hard look in the mirror, something we've never truly done, and until we do, we'll never move on and become better. Truly frustrating to see what they are trying to do with critical race theory, they keep people in this la la land of patriotism of America being this perfect place where we are always in the right, that we're the best country in the world. It's all bullshit, and I hope we can come to grips with it.
 
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