Erasing Black History
As I Black woman in America, I’ve experienced racism in all its ugly (silly) ideations—from friendly greeters at a famous chain of supercenters whose smiles fade when Black customers enter to white co-workers who regularly interact with Black co-workers on the job but who avoid eye contact when crossing paths with them outside of work.
Facing microaggressions daily is wearisome, yet more alarming are escalating and organized efforts to eliminate Black (actually, American) history from K-12 curricula.
Across the nation, parents, school boards, legislators and governors oppose the teaching of what they deem “critical race theory” or CRT, a college-level analysis of how laws, political and social movements, and media shape, and are shaped, by social perceptions of race and ethnicity.
By this definition, CRT certainly is not appropriate for K-12. However, by mischaracterizing its purpose and content, anti-CRT advocates are succeeding in erasing all aspects of Black history from their schools’ curricula.
Education Week, which covers K-12 news and information, reports, “…. Arkansas, North Dakota, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia, are among 18 states that have passed “anti-CRT” laws, which impose restrictions on lessons about race and racism that make students feel “guilt or anguish” for past actions of their race.”
New York, Texas, and Florida have banned “prohibited material” from the New York Times’1619 Project, launched in 2019 to “(offer) a revealing new origin story for the United States” about the “persistence of anti-Black racism and inequality in American life today.”
Numerous books by Black writers are banned in several states, including The Bluest Eye and Beloved by Nobel and Pulitzer winner Toni Morrison; How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi; All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely; and The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas.
I believe that Americans—white or Black—might benefit from the inclusion of classes or courses on the Black experience--from colonial times to the present--to debunk misconceptions often shaped, even perpetrated, by simplistic or negative depictions in popular media, books, and film.
Some of the most enduring beliefs:
· Enslaved people couldn’t or didn’t resist slavery.
· Blacks only began fighting for civil rights during the 1950s.
· Blacks have made few contributions to the sciences.
· Drug dealers outnumber working men and women in Black neighborhoods.
· Black people are more likely to have criminal dispositions.
· Black people are less intelligent than whites.
· Affirmative action—not personal accomplishment--accounts for Black success in business, politics, or education.
Several years ago, I assigned Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” to a class of adult learners. To my surprise, during follow-up discussions, they expressed astonishment that, by law, Blacks in southern states had been excluded from patronizing restaurants, stores, and public facilities.
This should not have surprised me because I cannot recall learning anything about Black life or culture during 12 years in Catholic elementary and high schools. My introduction to the African diaspora, the slave trade, and systemic racism began when I was an adult student at the City University of New York.
Denying the harmful legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws won’t erase their negative social, political, and economic consequences for generations of Black Americans.
On the other hand, acknowledging local and state laws that legalized racial segregation and led to disparities in healthcare, housing, education, and income between Blacks and whites, could be a significant step toward healing the racial divide.
The Preamble states the purpose of the Constitution: "to form a more perfect union … establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
The question remains. Which Americans do we consider “ourselves” and whose “Posterity” do we care about?
There isn’t a nation on the planet that can boast of an idyllic past free of oppression, persecution, or domination.
American is no exception.
In an interview for the Brennan Center for Justice, Theodore R. Johnson, author of, When the Stars Begin to Fall: Overcoming Racism and Renewing the Promise of America, says “…. racism is not about the way individual people feel in their hearts but about the way our society is structured …. As such, I call racism a crime of the state.
“…. (And) all the gains since the civil rights era that Black Americans have seen — and indeed, that America has seen — are not just a result of Black work; they have helped push the country closer to what it professes to be.”
© 2023 Wista Johnson (Reprint by permission only.)
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