Andre Henry

Sweeping it under the rug

Much of the world is implicated in the crime and the coverup. Britain couldn’t have become “Great” without their work camps in Jamaica, but British schools don’t spend a lot of time teaching about the violence the British Empire wrought in its colonies. In 2005, the French government tried to pass legislation that urged schools …

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I was surprised

I grew up in the American South, in the world of white evangelicalism. I attended their churches and youth camps, trained for ministry at their schools, preached at their churches. For a long time, I felt like a beloved part of that world. At one point, I even imagined myself making a career in it; …

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A pattern of outrage management

There’s a reason the white world has tried to censor Black anger: anger is a revolutionary emotion. When the oppressed are fed up with their mistreatment, they become more likely to organize their outrage into sustained resistance against their oppressors. That’s why powerful institutions and people invest immense resources to manage public outrage.  Social scientist …

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Black rage is suppressed

Virginia legislator James H. Gholson said in an 1831 speech “Our slave population is not a happy one, but it is a contented, peaceful and harmless one.” And because ideas don’t die easily, some white Americans have been repeating some version of that lie ever since. Around the time of the Civil War, Southern slaveholders …

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