Strawman. Nobody said that.
Then your easy answer to “What parts of American History are tossed aside to make room in a busy schedule for Black History?” is…
I said, I’m inspired by the activism of the Black students and educators in the Civil Rights movement to establish the curriculum of Black studies.
And I got to thinking. What’s wrong with race in America, and what practical steps can be taken to correct it? This is what I thought of. If anybody has a better idea, I’d love to know about it.
So is the proposal to segregate Black History education and ensure it is equal in rigor to US History?
Your reply?
No history would be tossed aside by having a course focus on Black studies. On the contrary, it would remedy the deliberate omission of Black Americans’ reality, it’s to restore what was already tossed aside unjustly long ago.
There are only so many hours in a school day, so a separate course in Black history (as opposed to incorporating more Black History into our American History courses) would almost have replace some other course.
It’s very odd to me that you call a focus on Black America “segregation” or “separate but equal.” I maintain we need a specific focus for white Americans and others to listen, really listen to Black Americans’ stories to remedy the chronic lack of knowledge. This is the very opposite of “segregation” or “separate but equal” because under segregation, white students were allowed to remain ignorant of Black Americans, but they shouldn’t be able to continue in ignorance any longer. Why we need it right now is because racism is on the rise again and politicians in high places and multizillionaires are helping finance it. We need “Black studies matter” for exactly the same reason Black Lives Matter.
I am definitely in favor of more history education, especially history education that emphasizes institutions and social movements and competing interests over Great Man theories of history. When I teach kids, whether it’s third graders or fifth graders, I work hard to include information about fights for racial justice and suffragism and other fights for equality. My fourth graders read a novel about the Black Panthers, my fifth graders read about a second-generation Cuban American, my third graders are reading a book by a trans author from Texas and South Korea. I’ve helped kids research and make slideshow presentations about Frederick Douglass and Sojournor Truth and Mari Copenny.
But I don’t think a mandatory class focusing solely on Black Studies is the way to go.
If we can get past the political fantasies–if we can wave a magic wand and make DeSantis and his racist ilk suddenly stop being obstructionist white supremacist assholes–then I’d want to set up a standard course of study that incorporates intersectional teaching points about race, class, and gender in all grade levels starting in kindergarten. I’d want kids to learn that the United States history includes both strong institutions that treat people unfairly, AND strong social movements that agitate for freedom and justice and equality. I’d want kids to learn that this tension continues into the present day, and that kids can be part of the movement toward greater justice. I’d want them to learn that some of the suffragists were abolitionists and some were formerly enslaved and some were slaveowners themselves. I’d want them to learn that Martin Luther King also believed that poverty was a violent act against the poor, and that some Native American women have rejected feminism because it was so dominated by White voices and doesn’t always speak to the main injustices they face. I’d want them to learn that the environmental movement has sometimes gone hand-in-hand with white supremacy.
This stuff’s complicated, and I worry that the OP’s proposal, besides being politically fantastical, is too simplistic.
@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness , now that we have confirmation from the OP that it is indeed their hot take, what do you hear in the trenches? I’m curious as to what current Black educators and thinkers actually think is the best thing to do.
I won’t be daunted by “this will make the racists mad at us!” They’re already making war on us and we have to fight back hard or else lose ground.
Has anyone said that?
If you are taking Black History out of US History and into its own Black History class, is that not segregating the topic?
And I’m assuming you want it to be the same as US History in terms of rigor and credits, is that not equal?
Yeah, the stuff about DeSantis and his racist ilk. We can’t be scared of them. We have to take them on and make them cry uncle.
Yes. When I went to high school there were two American history courses, both of them white history. Make one of them Black. It’s only fair.
Now I have to wonder about your education in history and anthropology. While ‘racism’ and the concept of distinct races (which has no scientific validity beyond narrow genetic haplotype groupings that roughly correspond to ethnicity) is a historically recent innovation, prejudice and xenophobia of the ‘out-group’ is embedded in human culture from time immemorial and is used by those in power both to unify the ‘in-group’ and to provide motivation for warfare. It is no surprise that many ethnic slurs and stereotypes come out of caricaturation of opposing groups in conflict; whether is is “Polack jokes” (every culture has their own versions), cartoonishly slant-eyed representations of Japanese, or having a government approve list of ethnic slurs for Middle East Muslims, stoking prejudice is a way of gaining compliance and control over a majority group. The entire notion that there should be a legal doctrine of egalitarianism is pretty much a post-WWII notion that relatively few nations actually take seriously enough to enforce ‘equal rights and treatment’.
The United States certainly has serious problems with regard to racism but to suggest that it is “now approaching a major crisis point” versus slavery, peonage, mass lynchings and wholesale murder of the 19th and early 20th Centuries is hyperbolic to say the least. There is more visibility and discussion of this issue than there has ever been in my lifetime for sure, unlike the ‘Eighties when having one token black-helmed sitcom per network was considered a major victory for representation, or the ‘Nineties when we pretended that police violence as just a thing that occurred once in a blue moon and nobody should be punished for. This is, again, not to say that there aren’t vast gulfs of inequality that remain and representation in the education system (and not just history classes) is definitely one of those areas needing improvement but to suggest that it is worse now than it has ever been is not a factually supportable claim.
Stranger
Let me ask you all this: How do we account for all these well-meaning, educated, intelligent Americans unable to recognize racism when it’s right in front of them?
How can we even begin to struggle against racism without being able to recognize it? I just want to get all Americans to the starting line at least.
Or you can incorporate Black history into it and call it “American History”.
I didn’t say worse than ever been, please don’t put words in my mouth. I said approaching a crisis point right now, in this here bend of the river of time, because of the aggressive actions of racist politicians backed up by racist zillionaires going on right now. I mean 10 years ago there weren’t governments actively forbidding Black studies. Yes, this is a crisis.
Okay, this is straight up annoying. I didn’t say we had to be scared of them, and I’ll thank you not to misparaphrase me like that. I said your ideas are a political fantasy. You may as well propose that everyone stop being racist, and when I say people won’t do that, complain that I’m saying you should be scared of racists.
First thing I’m hearing is, can it with your White Hot Takes. Black educators and thinkers have plenty of ideas, they don’t actually need White people to drown out their voices and put their own ideas out there instead. The OP is an example of one of the things I hear not to do.
Second is, listen to the ideas of Black educators.
Here are some places you can start:
- Brit Hawthorne writes about creating an anti-racist classroom.
- Ibrim X. Kendi talks about emphasizing system changes. As one example, he advocates moving away from reliance on standardized tests that have proven racist outcomes.
- Zaretta Hammond advocates changing classroom structures to decenter White cultural practices and to incorporate deep cultural structures that are more welcoming to BIPOC students.