The Humanity Archive Quotes

“No, I’m not an American. I’m one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So, I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver—no, not I. I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.”
― Jermaine Fowler, The Humanity Archive: Recovering the Soul of Black History from a Whitewashed American Myth

“When Black history is whitewashed, American history becomes soulless, unable to see itself, its moral depths, and its true identity. Black brilliance has been the unseen ingredient in the history of the United States.”
― Jermaine Fowler, The Humanity Archive: Recovering the Soul of Black History from a Whitewashed American Myth

“Uncovering history can be like walking up to a log in the woods that looks usable on the surface until you kick it over and find the underside rotten. We can trace much of today’s ideological decay to a seemingly benign US history that was in fact used to deny reparative justice and justify the segregation of Black people.”
― Jermaine Fowler, The Humanity Archive: Recovering the Soul of Black History from a Whitewashed American Myth

“These concerns operate from an assumption that racial tensions come from discussion, rather than the conditions these discussions arise in response to. Instead of telling the truth about the foundations of racial power and how it exists in the present, young minds are taught a comforting narrative of national innocence.”
― Jermaine Fowler, The Humanity Archive: Recovering the Soul of Black History from a Whitewashed American Myth

“It is no more harm for you to kill a man, who is trying to kill you, than it is for you to take a drink of water when thirsty.” And he lays stake to a claim in America paid for by blood, sweat, and tears. “Will any of us leave our homes and go to Africa? I hope not…. Let no man of us budge one step and let slaveholders come to beat us from our country. America is more our country, than it is the whites—we have enriched it with our blood and tears. The greatest riches in all America have arisen from our blood and tears:—and will they drive us from our property and homes, which we have earned with our blood? They must look sharp or this very thing will bring swift destruction upon them. The Americans have got so fat on our blood and groans, that they have almost forgotten the God of armies. But let them go on.”
― Jermaine Fowler, The Humanity Archive: Recovering the Soul of Black History from a Whitewashed American Myth

“Black Power has been summed up in the words of James Brown, who said, “I used to shine shoes in front of a radio station. Now I own radio stations. You know what that is? That’s Black Power.” Like so many, he conflated Black capitalism with Black Power.”
― Jermaine Fowler, The Humanity Archive: Recovering the Soul of Black History from a Whitewashed American Myth

“skeletons were found scattered around the site of the Catoctin Furnace, an iron forge in Frederick County, Maryland. Little is told of the enslaved labor on the iron plantations central to colonial economic development, smelting, smithing, and mining ore.”
― Jermaine Fowler, The Humanity Archive: Recovering the Soul of Black History from a Whitewashed American Myth