American Democracy and the Promise of Justice

Introduction: Identity Genocide

What is identity?  To some it is how we look, what we drive, what zip code we live in or what our ancestry looks like.  To others it is our families, careers and the people we choose to be around.  Some may give an even looser version that it is who we are.  The actual definition of identity is “The distinguishing character or personality of an individual; the relationship established by psychological association.”¹ Who we are matters. It its where we get our pride, where we stake our purpose and how we align ourselves with reality.  The unfortunate truth about working in inner-city schools, is that the epidemic of identity theft becomes impossible to deny and it can be seen in the faces of the students I teach.  Rene’ Descartes, the famous philosopher stated, “I think, therefore I am.”² This simple quote with a profound truth highlights the crux of this epidemic.  My students have little to no connection to their history or who they are, therefore they do not think they are much at all.  This is not to assume that they do not try to create identity for themselves, but to state that there is a true psychological disconnect that was not born but created.  The creation of this disconnect lies where the true epidemic ultimately began.

African Identity Genocide

It is public knowledge that between the 1500 and 1900s, an estimated 12 million slaves were taken from their homes on the resource and culture rich continent of Africa and brought to the United States to work land that the Europeans in fact originally stole from the Native American people.³ This was one of the greatest, and arguably the greatest identity genocide based on numbers and facts alone.  Of those 12 million slaves, only 10 million made it to the United States alive and by the 1800s only a stifling six percent of that original number had made it to North America and survived.⁴ Along with mistreatment, torment and brutality inflicted on slaves, many families were separated upon arrival.  Almost all the original Kingdoms and Tribes of Africa were stripped of their children and ancestral ties were lost forever along with the lives of all those who were taken as property. 

Injustice and Student Identity

Of the twenty-four thousand students in our district, seventy-five percent of that figure are African-American.⁵ Many of these students are taught from an adapted history workbook that paints the settling of America as just and righteous with their ancestral heritage beginning with the role of slavery in the United States.  The astounding truth of this matter is that the founding of the United States was largely unjust to the majority of those who occupied this nation.  The facts about race relations in the United States boil down to a truth: “Americans have rarely reformed racially oppressive practices simply because it was the right thing to do.”⁶ In addition to these known truths, it is accessible knowledge that the history of African-American people originates in the name.  The continent of Africa is rarely explored or explained in American Public Schools, let alone in a manner that is applicable to students or paralleled with ancestral studies with the belief that all the students in our public schools should be well versed in and proud of who they are in their history.  African American students should be taught their history prior to slavery.  This should begin with the origins of man, the original Kingdoms of Africa with Kings and Queens like Cleopatra, and the Resources that occupied these lands of their ancestors. 

Evidence for the Necessity of Identity

Teaching students who they are should come first as paralleled with Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs which refers to the theory that students should be connected to who they are and have a good sense of self.⁷ This is the educational background of the identity crisis issue.  We as educators know what students need to be successful.  One of the health components that students need in order to even have the basis for learning, is a sense of identity.  The psychologist David Straker sums up this point well:

“Beyond the basic need for sense of control, we are deeply driven by our sense of identity, of who we are; we are in the middle of our individual world, where we place a sense of central importance on our sense of self.”⁸

These are regarded as the necessities that are required to be able to teach students.  This hierarchy regarding student need is designed in a pyramid depicting the need for sense of self at the top three levels, while self-control occupies the bottom.⁹ Everyone not only needs but deserves an identity.  Our students deserve more than a textbook that begins with slavery and ends with a tolerance for others rather than willingly given freedom.  They deserve a textbook that is a true depiction of their ancestry from the beginnings of man to the present day.  The fact that there are no textbooks printed yet educating this major part of our population about their identity shows how little effort has in fact been put in to solving or acknowledging this problem of inequality and prejudice.  Helping build identity within my students is the single most effective way I have reached some to guide them towards success.  This alone reflects there is a great need for identity within our inner-city schools as well as others.  Without the basis of who they are, where they come from or what they believe in, how can we expect to teach our students, or expect them to learn or be engaged?