20 Questions No One’s Asking 100 Years After the Tulsa Race Massacre
“How is it we have so much information but know so little?” — Noam Chomsky
Social media’s outrage explosion over The Tulsa Race Massacre not being taught in history class gave us a glimpse of how detrimentally ignorant Americans are when it comes to the “great” nation they call home. This is is particularly true about the numerous times violent mobs of White people terrorized and attacked Black people, killing them, looting their businesses, taking over their residences, and destroying their property in cities all across the US.
Hint: it wasn’t just Tulsa
The people’s lack of knowledge is mostly sincere and due to scholastic omission, compliments of the American public education system. The classroom educators, I think, can get a break. They are most likely teaching something they were lied to about, by someone who was lied to, by someone who was lied to first. Some people have opted for a sort of blissful ignorance because if you don’t know the bad things your ancestors did, maybe they did nothing bad? Then there are those who have decided they know better than the working-class folks. In their minds, they always have, and always will be the keepers and distributors of the information we receive. Perhaps the very foundation of America is made up of these inconvenient, violent events, and to know them all would tarnish the useful perception of America.
Information is the very thing that controls our every move, and also where those moves take us. Maybe the truths just don’t take us where the gatekeepers of our age want us to go.
If there's one thing to learn from the way information was controlled surrounding the Tulsa Race Massacre, it is that information is controlled. We can assume this doesn’t pertain solely to history, but to most of the information entering mass consciousness. With that in mind, if we want to know where America is today, building a society of race “equity,” and the “abolishment of white supremacy,” as per the campaign promises of President Joe Biden & the numerous messages from his administration, we’ll have to go beyond the main stream of controlled information, beneath perception, and past discomfort, to arrive at any kind of lasting truth.
Tulsa is a good place to start.
“A populace deprived of the ability to separate lies from truth, is no longer capable of sustaining a free society.” — Chris Hedges
- Before committing to equitable solutions, what is the main difference in equitable remedy & equal remedy?
- Why are we receiving this information right now, in 2021?
- Who’s giving us the information?
- What perception are we supposed to have?
- Who benefits from the attention?
- Joe Biden made a Proclamation “calling on the American people to commit together to eradicate systemic racism and help to rebuild communities and lives that have been destroyed by it.” What does that do?
- Does his Proclamation have a different outcome than his official Recognition of the Armenian Genocide or his Condemnation of Anti-Asian Hate Crimes?
- Was his appearance in Tulsa symbolic or was something signed to trigger a corresponding action for the survivors?
- Why did it take 100 years for a president to visit the Tulsa Oklahoma site?
- Why did it take 100 years for the city of Tulsa to apologize for failing to protect its Citizens?
- The Sherrif, the Police chief & the National Guard were all under oath & employed by the United States Government. The 500 deputized white citizens were temporarily employed by the United States Government. Why didn’t Biden find it appropriate to make a formal apology on behalf of the United States government?
- The Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 came back in 2001 with an official report unanimously agreeing such an act morally & economically required survivors & dependents to be compensated, recommending 5 different reparation solutions. Why wasn’t their recommendation honored in part or whole?
- Why then did Congress deny reparations to the survivors & their descendants with “no comments”? They have lived in poverty their whole lives since the massacre.
- The UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent visited the United States where they put together a comprehensive report on African Americans, & concluded that: “past injustices and crimes against African Americans need to be addressed with reparatory justice.” Why is the H.R.40 bill another bill to study African Americans?
- Why did citizens often make postcards of these racially violent deaths?
- With so much pictorial evidence, why were no charges brought about?
- We commemorate the survivors, but never hear any details on the instigators, is their legacy being protected?
- Does Biden really believe the actions of the protestors on Jan 6th or Charlottesville are comparable to the Tulsa Race Riot?
- Knowing the last remaining victims have been fighting decades for reparations, why did Biden find it appropriate to liken the experience the alleged recent “hate” crimes against Asians & Jewish people? Besides the many differences in each situation, one that could be looked at as an insult is that he recently gave “Asian American victims of domestic violence” 50 million dollars from the Covid Relief act in response to the alleged hate crimes that were reported. He condemned the hate, and issued a Resolution and he signed an anti-hate bill into law. That last action reminded many that an anti-lynching law has not passed despite being introduced every year since 1928 to 2018. Furthermore, Obama, before him, gave 12 million dollars to “Holocaust survivors living in poverty,” which some would say is a German responsibility. Biden’s visit comes on the heels of him giving a historic 32 billion dollars to native tribes, after already giving the same group 8 billion dollars in Covid relief. Ironically, the so-called “five civilized tribes,” the natives, and their deep commitment to slavery, is what brought Black people to Tulsa on the Trail of Tears, as slaves. Yet, nothing in repair, symbolic or otherwise, has been offered to the survivors of this tragedy, or American descendants of slavery.
- America is funny like that. Why?
