Given that racists and slavers used the “natural physical strength” of black people to justify putting them on hard labor and some medics still think that blacks has higher resistance to pain, I wonder if when black athletes started to join mixed race sport teams, some racist would have used the same “biological advantage” argument that now transphobes use against trans athletes to claim it was “unfair” for black to compete against whites to justify segregation.

  • @Quexotic
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    8 months ago

    This was taught to me in grade school. I feel pretty betrayed.

    Suffice it to say, I found it dubious even as a child and as an adult, learned better, but WTF.

    • @Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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      68 months ago

      Was it one teacher or multiple? I live in a fairly progressive US state, but I definitely had a one or two backwards teachers with axes to grind.

      • @uranibaba@lemmy.world
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        28 months ago

        This is a bit of a friend-of-a-friend story, so it is difficult to evaluate the veracity but here goes.

        I once met a woman from Germany (2011, so some time ago now). Her friend had been to the US via some school exchange program. If I recall correctly, the state she went to was Texas but I could be wrong. Anyway, the teacher of the class this friend went to still thought that Adolf Hitler was the ruler of Germany, so she had instructed all students to stand up, do a Nazi salute and say “Heil Hitler” when she first entered the class room. She immediately left the class room, crying.

        From what I remember, this supposedly happened a few years prior to me meeting this person and being told the story, so maybe 2008? I can only really vouch for the first part of this story, I was really told this. I cannot know if the rest is true, but I believed her back then at least.

        Long story short, there are some backwards people on this world indeed.

        • @Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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          38 months ago

          My civics and history teachers ware more subtle. Occasional mentions of a news article about some welfare queen, how great Disney was for Times Square, how great it is to be invaded by America(Japan was their only example), or how the Walton heirs were the richest people behind Bill Gates(they weren’t). I think one of the biggest Aged Like Milk comments was how real estate was such a great and sound investment. This was around 2003.

          Meanwhile, I only heard one mention of climate change from the science teachers in those four years. I think the biggest lesson I got from school was to never trust authority and always press for sources.

        • @jasory@programming.dev
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          15 months ago

          There are some gullible people in this world as well.

          How on earth is someone supposed to know details about the Hitler salute and not know that 1. The US was a war with him 2. That he was only the ruler 60 years past.

          Not only that but addressing someone as their head of state isn’t a thing. Nobody calls Indians Modi, or British people Sunak.

          Your story is either that of a cruel joke or completely fabricated.

          • @uranibaba@lemmy.world
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            15 months ago

            A had experience, A told B, B told me. If the story is a lie, A is the one who lied. But I will never know, because I do not talk with B anymore (lives in another country) and I have never met A.

            Another possibility is that it happened, just not the way I was told. Perhaps only one person stood and did the salute, perhaps the salute did not happen but the teacher instead though Adolf Hitler was head or state (or someone from his faction). Or I just remember it wrong, it was not A who had the experience and it is just an urban legend. It was 10+ years ago, after all.

            Either way, I hope that story is not real.

            • @jasory@programming.dev
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              5 months ago

              It’s a funny story, I just don’t know why you give it any credibility given how many highly improbable things have to be true. It’s far more likely that it was a story told solely for humourous reasons, or it was a minor fib that became more humourous over time.

              • @uranibaba@lemmy.world
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                15 months ago

                It was told as a serious story and I always believed it, hence I told it as a true story. But as I said, it was 10 years ago and I might be remembering it wrong, or anything else. You don’t have to believe it and that is OK.

      • @Quexotic
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        18 months ago

        Just the one.

        There was mention in a textbook of native Americans having slightly different shaped teeth, sorta scoop shaped on the inside to be good at scraping stuff. Can confirm tho, my teeth are a little scoopy, am a bit native American.

        • @Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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          28 months ago

          While it wouldn’t be weird for there to be slightly different bone shapes between ethnicities, it’s concerning that it would be part of a grade school curriculum and not an advance college course for dentists or forensics.

          • @Quexotic
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            18 months ago

            It wasn’t fully without context. We were learning how native Americans were able to tan hides without tanneries. One of the methods that they used is to scrape the skins clean and some other stuff that I don’t remember because it was like 5th grade or something, damn part of that involve them scraping the skins with their teeth, which were specifically adapted and well suited for the task.