Introduction and Rationale: The False Narrative
Malcolm X said, “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today”.1 This quote is very relevant in the year 2020. We are living in a time of consequences; four hundred years of systematic racism, oppression, and white supremacy have shaped this country into what it is today. The false narration and miseducation of history have contributed heavily to this outcome. Racism in the United States is hundreds of years of trauma, forced tolerance and racial oppression still prevailing. According to information in the historical works of Benjamin Campbell, in Richmond’s Unhealed History, African Americans, Native Americans and other people of color in this country have been disenfranchised and been the victims of racial violence and terrorism since European Americans came to North America in 1607.2 Similarly, in Dr. Jaqueline Battalora’s book The Birth of the White Race, she outlines the concept of “white” was manufactured and written into legislation following Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 as a form of legalized privilege.3 It was “...legislation that set “British and other whites” apart from those of native tribes, mulattos, and those of African descent”.4
This historical truth, however unsettling, is the cornerstone on which the United States was built: the concept of “white” vs. other. This concept of “white” in and of itself is a construct, and a “legalized status of privilege”.5 White is a color, not an ethnicity. Lack of education of these facts as well as a miseducation and false narrative of History has led to color blind and “euro-centric” curricula in the United States. Within the constructs of state curriculum, students are rarely taught about the African continent in terms of heritage or the true length and depth of the freedom struggle. History should be taught with equity, integrity and truth. History of the United States is often approached through fictional narratives, disjointed and decontextualized events, and isolated instances of change regarding African American people. For further information on combatting this, look no further than the work of Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries who wrote Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement. In his book, Dr. Jeffries outlines the concept of this skewed and mythical form of history coming from the “myth of racial progress”.6 Dr. Jeffries even goes on to discuss the literal lack of racial progress and its causes.
“What’s more the lack of racial progress was a direct result of efforts by those who wanted to preserve the racial status quo...and maintain social systems and economic structures that reinforced and perpetuated inequality”.7-Jeffries
This approach to history has more consequences than just a lesson gone awry. By not teaching our students the truth of United States history is not only causing trauma and harm, but also allows inequality to continue.
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