Whitewashing Quotes

“In the United States we are at such a disadvantage because we do not know how to talk about the genocide inflicted on indigenous people. We do not know how to talk about slavery. Otherwise it would not have been assumed that simply because of the election of one Black man to the presidency we would leap forward into a postracial era. We do not acknowledge that we all live on colonized land. And in the meantime, Native Americans live in impoverished conditions on reservations. They have an extremely high incarceration rate—as a matter of fact, per capita the highest incarceration rate—and they suffer disproportionately from such diseases as alcoholism and diabetes. In the meantime, sports teams still mock indigenous people with racially derogatory names, like the Washington Redskins. We do not know how to talk about slavery, except, perhaps, within a framework of victim and victimizer, one that continues to polarize and implicate.”
― Angela Y. Davis, Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine and the Foundations of a Movement

“Through a complex combination of whitewashing, guilt, and an intentional recasting of history that absolves them of their hatred, our historical translators have painted a sanitized, impressionist portrait of a struggle for Black liberation that was eventually fulfilled by American’s unwavering commitment to justice and equality. Out of whole cloth, they managed to fabricate a fantastic ahistorical myth that somehow became truth. They remember a socially conservative, respectable campaign of racial reconciliation, not a movement of anti-establishment revolutionaries. And for their sake, the doctrine of nonviolent resistance was eventually reduced to simple ‘nonviolence.’ They never speak of the ‘resisting.”
― Michael Harriot, Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America

“The world doesn't have history, what we have is a white-washed history.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“Melanin Maniacs (The Sonnet)

White guy writes a couple of sonnets and plays,
And he is idolized as an olympian deity.
Colored guy smashes the paradigm to ashes,
And it warrants absolute unacceptability.
Apparently, greatness is only greatness,
If it can be credited to a caucasian.
Otherwise they only end up pondering,
What's the deal with this non-white person!
It's a sad, sad world we live in,
All the advancement is on the outside.
Inside we are dumber than Donald Duck,
Which has ruined all hope for real insight.
Enough of this obsession with white aphrodisiacs!
It's time to act as humans, and not melanin maniacs.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Corazon Calamidad: Obedient to None, Oppressive to None

“The history of the world is a whitewashed history.”
― Abhijit Naskar, When Veins Ignite: Either Integration or Degradation

“Sanitizing Textbooks (Sonnet 2317)

Abolish all white teachers from schools
and universities across the world,
and replace them with noncaucasians,
and the human race will be decolonized
and properly civilized within a hundred years -

but then again, that would be just as inhuman,
ethnic cleansing doesn't cure ethnic cleansing,
so we have to go for the only humane alternative,
and sanitize every last textbook of all whitewashing.

Give up the filthy habit of associating philosophy
with the greeks, and poetry with the english -
education that doesn't reflect plural humanity,
raises only goodlooking jungle rubbish.

We need special instruments to see
the full spectrum of electromagnetic waves,
but to feel the full spectrum of humanity
a heart freed from supremacy is sufficient.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“Abolish all white teachers from schools
and universities across the world,
and replace them with noncaucasians,
and the human race will be decolonized
and properly civilized within a hundred years -

but then again, that would be just as inhuman,
ethnic cleansing doesn't cure ethnic cleansing,
so we have to go for the only humane alternative,
and sanitize every last textbook of all whitewashing.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat