ALRubinger/gist:caab266836686791df4425b6f02d9e08

## gistfile1.txt
I grew up in suburban Boston during the 1980s.  The first born of Jewish parents, I’d spent Sunday mornings in temple learning of the atrocities executed throughout the Holocaust.  Inappropriate as the lessons may have been for a schoolage child, they’d instilled an early defiance towards intolerance in my developing ethical code.  Very clearly, there was right and wrong in how we should treat one another, and it was easy to see in the extremist actions of genocide and torture that for some time the world had gone crazy with cruelty and indifference.  Our readings came from survivors and victims, designed to elicit our empathy and shock at how unfairly those of the Jewish faith were treated.  The story had identifiable protagonists and villains, and as the dismissal bell rang each week we left feeling superior about our position on the just side of history.

As we’d aged, another tale emerged from public schooling; there was this thing called slavery, and it was kind of like a black Holocaust, except it was perpetrated not by eradicated evildoers, but United States citizens.  It also turned out that the glamorized narrative about shared dinners with Native Americans over Thanksgiving were more accurately described as unbridled rape and murder.  The East India Trading company was less interested in discovering spices than it was with invading a sovereign land, and the tooth fairy was just my parents.

The reverie of a pure America living up to its stated ideals of freedom and liberty was quite easy to shatter with a little bit of research, but the curriculum missed a critically important takeaway.  These historical anecdotes, all of them, were not isolated moments in time.  They were the result of a continued crack in our ethos which allows quiet fissures to erupt at regular intervals.  Dominated by a white, European, and male power structure which colonized our nation five hundred years ago, we have failed to shake the imbalanced provisioning of opportunity to Americans based on their race.  While we commonly view racism as a series of overt, explicit acts, its effects are felt deepest through its more insidious and silent influence over our culture.
	I grew up in suburban Boston during the 1980s. The first born of Jewish parents, I’d spent Sunday mornings in temple learning of the atrocities executed throughout the Holocaust. Inappropriate as the lessons may have been for a schoolage child, they’d instilled an early defiance towards intolerance in my developing ethical code. Very clearly, there was right and wrong in how we should treat one another, and it was easy to see in the extremist actions of genocide and torture that for some time the world had gone crazy with cruelty and indifference. Our readings came from survivors and victims, designed to elicit our empathy and shock at how unfairly those of the Jewish faith were treated. The story had identifiable protagonists and villains, and as the dismissal bell rang each week we left feeling superior about our position on the just side of history.

	As we’d aged, another tale emerged from public schooling; there was this thing called slavery, and it was kind of like a black Holocaust, except it was perpetrated not by eradicated evildoers, but United States citizens. It also turned out that the glamorized narrative about shared dinners with Native Americans over Thanksgiving were more accurately described as unbridled rape and murder. The East India Trading company was less interested in discovering spices than it was with invading a sovereign land, and the tooth fairy was just my parents.

	The reverie of a pure America living up to its stated ideals of freedom and liberty was quite easy to shatter with a little bit of research, but the curriculum missed a critically important takeaway. These historical anecdotes, all of them, were not isolated moments in time. They were the result of a continued crack in our ethos which allows quiet fissures to erupt at regular intervals. Dominated by a white, European, and male power structure which colonized our nation five hundred years ago, we have failed to shake the imbalanced provisioning of opportunity to Americans based on their race. While we commonly view racism as a series of overt, explicit acts, its effects are felt deepest through its more insidious and silent influence over our culture.