BLACK OUTLAWS, EXAMPLE #2
In school, I learned about black people as an oppressed people and that's it. Black people as slaves, maybe one line about The Reconstruction Period (in which black folks made impressive strides socially, economically and intellectually, but they don't really want us to know anything about that...) maybe the briefest mention of sharecropping and then fast forward to Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights era, The End. Alright, so they also mentioned Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. Still, this ridiculously abbreviated, oversimplified version of U.S. black history is damaging to black people. There is a way in which we all subconsciously absorb messages about our potential as a people through what we are taught about ourselves through stereotypes that are made pervasive through mass media and through the inaccurate retelling of history.
In my adult life, it excited me and inspired me to learn about the black folks who were never slaves, the black folks who ran away and rebelled, the black folks who wandered free, the black folks who refused to be caged. To me, that's kind of what black cowboys represent even though I know that cow herding was industry like any other, and that black cowboys faced racism just like any other black person at the time. Still, the "Wild West" was a freer place for black folks than the rest of the country. Did you know one in three cowboys was either black or Mexican? The first black cowboy I ever learned about was Nat Love, but there were so many more and you can read about them here:
http://blackcowboys.com/
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