Blog Post April 5th

I can only assume that Dr. Bezio wants us to be thinking about voter suppression today, as the podcast spoke on the importance of understanding history and Dr. Hayter’s reading was about Richmond’s history of voting rights and voter suppression. In the podcast Dr. Bezio warns us to keep track of who is writing our history, she reminds us that in large part we have Eurocentric/western history which is a whitewashed form. She reminds us that when we read our history books, we are most likely reading the words of White Christian men with lots of money, as they could afford the time and resources it took to record anything. They also, as she points out in her podcast, felt as though what they were recording was important while the lower-class people most likely were just living their normal lives and doing things like making bread which doesn’t feel important enough to record. She continues on to say if we believed history word for word, rather than read between the lines and behind the stories told to us we would think that women, people of color, and people without lots of money didn’t do anything. I think it is interesting that in Dr. Hayter’s reading we know what was going on in Richmond regarding voter suppression in the late 1960s because the mayor at the time Phil Bagley said in a private setting, “I did what I did about the compromise because the n*** are not qualified to run the city of Richmond.” I think it kind of ironic that while we often only hear the “rich white men’s” sides sometimes their words are so blatantly horrific that one does not have to look further into something to see what they are doing wrong. Meaning yes, oftentimes we do not get to see all sides of events but if what is recorded is saying something that we can see is wrong it makes our understanding a little better.

2 thoughts on “Blog Post April 5th

  1. Samuel Shapiro

    I think it was a happy, or I guess in this case an unhappy coincidence, that Dr. Hayter’s article on voting restriction in Richmond happened to be assigned very near when a wave of voting restriction laws have been passed across the nation. It emphasizes that the fight against disenfranchisement is not nearly done.

  2. Alejandra De Leon

    Something that would be super cool (I am sure this exists in some form) but having a side by side account of a situation from “both sides.” So based off of the podcast if we do the Civil Rights Movement like when Rosa would not stand up, I would like to see the difference in description of the event occurring.

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