The United States Education System has a deeply rooted history of painting over and sugar-coating the racist history inflicted on Indigenous people and Black people. This white-washing of history disregards the historical horror that these Black and Indigenous communities faced in America and misinforms children, causing them to think that racism is an issue of the past fixed by the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s. It does not acknowledge the structures leftover and newly formed structures that exist today, and the role we have in dismantling them.
I am not suggesting that we need to completely terrorize primary school students with disturbing images and stories of America’s horrific historical events, but there is a need for accountability. Proper and accurate groundwork needs to be laid in order for students to be active agents in current and future societal change and understand how slavery shaped Americans’ beliefs about race and whiteness. The Southern Poverty Law Center has created a project known as Teaching Tolerance, which introduces a framework to teach slavery to primary school students. This project’s mission is “to help teachers and schools educate children and youth to be active participants in a diverse democracy” and is a free resource to educators. https://www.tolerance.org/frameworks/teaching-hard-history/american-slavery
This education gap often leaves many non-black students to graduate high school, ignorant of the shifting structured barriers that their Black counterparts face in the world. And while many Universities offer courses that address issues such as white supremacy, implicit bias and health disparities in Black and Indigenous communities in America, many students don’t choose to take these courses because they do not think they align with their major. They also may not have the time in their schedule.
