These videos should be required viewing for every white person in America. I'm ashamed to say that I hadn't heard of some of these events nor knew the sordid depths of some of the events I had already heard of. To reflect on one of the many examples - as a woman, I am so deeply sad and angry to think about the women who suffered so much for the advancement of gynecological understanding. Another example of the insidious nature of white privilege. It's everywhere.
It's clear that these rules and events impact our society today - and several of the videos give examples of the systems that are still in place to perpetuate the construct of white supremacy. When I watch these videos, I couldn't help but also think about intergenerational trauma and how dramatically these communities are affected not only systemically but also psychologically.
Hi Hilary, Intergenerational trauma is hugely important here, and I was having trouble articulating that concept until reading your post. Not only do generations of victims pass along stories of their trauma, but generations of perpetrators often seem to omit and forget these same stories.
Several of these videos drive this point home for me: as you say, I was not even aware of some of these stories, like the boarding schools for Native children. How else does this ignorance happen than by the perpetrators deciding to erase these events? Certainly there also exists a responsibility for us as inheritors of this legacy to seek it out and grapple with its ramifications.