Historical periods are interpreted in terms of the present, sometimes it is made happy and sometimes it is called dark.
As America is a newly independent country and its early settlers belonged to England, therefore, the fabric of their culture includes English elements.
Later people from other nations also came here. American society in particular changed further when slaves were brought here from Africa. It divided society on the basis of color and white people were given priority over black people. America’s founding fathers emphasized that people of Anglo-Saxon descent were superior to other nations. He based this theory on the history of the European Middle Ages.
Thomas Jefferson (d. 1826) promoted this view and repeatedly declared that America should be the foundation of Anglo-Saxon civilization and culture. To achieve this goal, he opened the Department of Ancient English at the University of Virginia.
As more universities were established in the southern region, they all began to teach medieval history and Old English. As a result of this study, it was said that the Anglo-Saxon race has its own history and has a glorious past, while the people of African-American descent have neither history nor past, so it is African people came to America as slaves, cut off from their history and past. Therefore, they are at the lowest level of humanity.
After the American Civil War, when slavery ended, the Americans who settled in the South did not accept it mentally and instead, they started looking for the solution to their problems by drowning in the history and past of the Middle Ages.
For example, the Ku Klux Klan, which was a white terrorist organization against freed African slaves. He was considered by them to be the medieval knights who were bound by high moral values and their profession was to fight. On this basis, they preferred white people over African-Americans.
This argument was answered by African, American, intellectuals. He said that in the Middle Ages the social status of the Anglo-Saxons was lower than that of the Normans. Because in 1012, William of France defeated the King of England and captured the country, so the Anglo-Saxons were defeated and subordinated to him. The Norman government forced these people into labor and kept them under its rule. Therefore, they have no high place in medieval history and past. They are using history in their favor by misinterpreting it.
This section contains related reference points (Related Nodes field).
African intellectuals also argued that white racism did not originate in the Middle Ages and that the term originated in the colonial era and was used in America to denigrate slaves brought from Africa.
African-American intellectuals also argued that they had their own history and past in order to achieve equal social status. The crime of depriving them of this was committed by the white nation, who not only separated them from their families, but also from their country and tribes, but now they trace their history and past not only to Africa, but They are also connected to the US mainland.
Bo Boa (died 1963) through his writings and political movements broke the stereotypes of white race ideology and also criticized that the Anglo-Saxon nation in America had no right to assert its superiority.
Although the Anglo-Saxons took medieval history as their model, they adopted the parts of history that served their interests. There is also their religious extremism and no sense of justice. Racial and religious prejudice runs particularly deep in the American South.
Although nations try to bring back the past, the past never returns to the present, and even if it does, it is distorted.
The superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race has also made other European and Asian populations in the Americas inferior by separating them from their history and culture. It is a tragedy of the American people that they still look for their cultural ties in England.