Due to the bigotry in our police departments and country, the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmad Arbery, and countless other lives have resulted in a notable wave of challenges. Numerous resources have been shared on social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Tiktok with the aim to educate individuals on how bigotry has affected our economy, political environment, and particularly our education. According to The Reporter, this demonstrates that a lot of United States history is whitewashed in classrooms.
Ever since the Civil Rights Movement from 1954-1968, grassroot pressure from teachers and community activists emerged, attempting to change the reading material utilized in U.S. schools. Gradual progress was made, blatant bigot references to Africa and favorable comments around slavery were disposed of, photographs were diversified, and stories of popular African Americans and ladies began appearing. In spite of the changes however, most mainstream social studies textbooks remain tethered to sanitized adaptations of history that bore students and deceive young minds.
The dispute over whitewashing history is that the injustices faced by Blacks, Indigenous, and people of color have experienced are concealed and hidden from students. Instead, everything is painted in a way where bigotry was a thing of the past and the Civil Rights Movement ended it. Dark and white photographs are frequently used in textbooks to depict time, giving the impression that the development happened a long time prior. This is a small example of whitewashing.
According to The Conversation, 70% of Whites believe that individual discrimination could be a greater issue than discrimination built into the nation’s laws and institutions. Only 48% of Blacks believe that's genuine. Numerous Blacks and Whites also fail to see eye to eye regarding the use of blackface, which overwhelmed the news cycle during the early portion of 2019 due to a series of scandals that include the highest chosen pioneers in Virginia. The wearing of blackface occurs throughout the nation, especially on college campuses. Later surveys show that 42% of White American adults either believe that blackface is acceptable or are uncertain as to whether it is.
A recent blackface scandal displays Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, whose yearbook page from medical school highlights someone in blackface standing nearby another individual dressed in a Ku Klux Klan robe. Northam has denied being either person. The more Northam has attempted to defend his past activities, the clearer it has become on how little he appears to know about the fundamental viewpoints of American histories such as slavery. For instance, Northam referred to Virginia’s earliest slaves as “indentured servants”. As a result of his ignorance, there is a prominent scrutiny of his success in a racially diverse state with such a profound history of bigotry and white supremacy.
Nikita Stewart of the New York Times Magazine highlights that “states are not required” to meet academic standards for social studies and U.S. history. This causes students in each state to memorize something different. According to research, a third out of 1,000 students that participated believed that the Emancipation Proclamation finished slavery. Out of 1,700 social studies teachers, 60% did not believe that their textbook’s coverage of slavery was adequate.
Within the New York Times magazine article, Maureen Costello of the SPLC tells Stewart that slavery is taught “because they got to teach the Civil War.” This resonated with a lot of people since in each history and social studies course, we only talked about slavery once the chapter on the Civil War started. What is also profoundly aggravating is how the war is depicted. In classes, the Union was depicted as the saviors who liberated the slaves, indeed in spite of the fact that slavery was legal within the North, and the South was depicted as the “bad people” who had to be shown the right way. What was not clarified was how the free slaves who made a difference in the North battle experienced extraordinary prejudice at the hands of Union officers. What was also not taught is that the South’s attitude on free labor continues to exist presently in our jail industrial system.
Whereas students may be taught around segregation and laws preventing blacks from voting, they are frequently uneducated around the extreme savagery Whites ordered upon Blacks throughout the Jim Crow Era. The Jim Crow Era took place from 1877 through the 1950s. Mob savagery and lynchings were frequent events. Racial terror was utilized as a means for Whites to maintain control and avoid Blacks from gaining equality. Strikingly, many Whites – not just White supremacist groups just like the Klu Klux Klan – engaged in this viciousness. In addition, the torture and murder of Blacks were not associated with any consequences.
During this same time, White society made negative generalizations around Blacks as a way to dehumanize them and legitimize the violence executed by Whites. These generalizations stated that Blacks were ignorant, apathetic, apprehensive, criminals and hypersexual. Blackface minstrelsy refers to Whites darkening their skin and dressing in tattered clothing to perform the negative generalizations as part of entertainment. This symbolism and amusement served to solidify negative stigma about Blacks in society. Numerous of these negative stereotypes hold on to today.
Americans live in a starkly imbalanced society where health and financial results are generally affected by race. As a society, we cannot begin to meaningfully address this disparity if we don't legitimately understand its roots. White supremacists are responsible for sanitizing our history lessons. Their aim was clearly to keep the nation insensible of its supremacist past in order to stymie racial balance. To change the tide, we must join a more precise portrayal of our country’s supremacist history in our K-12 curricula.
When students are not instructed on the reality of prejudice within the United States, they grow up extremely deceived. This could cause children to develop into individuals who contribute to the system, permitting the cycle to continue. We ought to rethink the American education framework and come up with measures for each state, guaranteeing that history isn't swept beneath the rug and children grow up learning facts—not fiction.
Sources
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/history-whitewashed-high-school-exams-190701132525633.html
Written by Althea Ocomen from Manila City, Philippines
Comments