A more inclusive history
Virginia’s schools need to revise their curricula for accuracy and understanding
The report issued in August by the Virginia Commission on African American History Education offers worthwhile suggestions for helping Virginia’s schools teach history in a more accurate and inclusive way.
Reforms are needed, because, despite recent progress, the history presented to today’s students leaves out much of what really happened and why.
The more we know — and understand — about our history, the better. It shapes the society we live in, who we are and what we believe.
Not all of it is pleasant. Some of it is hard to confront. But throughout, there are lessons worth learning.
Those gaps in knowledge and understanding have contributed to the systemic racial disparities in Virginia and across the United States that have been in the spotlight since the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May. Our collective understanding of history and its symbols is central to the controversy, demonstrations and sometimes violence we’ve seen this summer.
Gov. Ralph Northam ordered the report a year ago, however, months before Floyd’s death sparked greater awareness and calls for change.
Northam vowed to make racial reconciliation a priority after he landed in the middle of a controversy that reflected a profound misunderstanding of our shared experience. Photos surfaced from his page in the 1984 yearbook at Eastern Virginia Medical School showing someone in blackface and someone in a Ku Klux Klan costume.
Northam fumbled, first apologizing, then saying he wasn’t in the pictures. Clearly, though, the photos show a climate in which blackface and KKK outfits were considered acceptable, even funny.
They show what can happen when people, even educated people, lack a thorough understanding of our history, its context and its implications. They are a stark reminder of how pervasive racism can be even among people who pride themselves on not being racist.
And they underscore the importance of making history education more inclusive, so that it tells all our stories and helps us better understand one another.
Normally, the commonwealth’s history curriculum would be examined in 2022 as part of the regular review of textbooks and standards every seven years. After the yearbook incident prompted him to talk with many Virginians about racial inequity, Northam decided to start the process sooner.
There’s sure to be a lot of discussion about the report’s recommendations, in the General Assembly and as part of the scheduled review in 2022.
While some details might bear tweaking, the basic ideas have merit.
One would make studying African American history a graduation requirement, possibly involving a new course that’s now an elective. The course examines the experience of Black Americans from origins in Africa until the present, through slavery, the Civil War and its aftermath, the civil rights movement and beyond, including notable people who have often been omitted from history texts.
Someday, maybe this requirement will be unnecessary. But we have a long way to go before our American and Virginia history classes give African Americans and their experiences and accomplishments their proper due and context.
Other recommendations would require Virginia educators to be certified in African American history and to take a cultural competency professional development course.
The commission recommended revisions to what’s being taught now: history courses, for example, would make it clear that slavery was the root cause of the Civil War.
Recent events have made us, however belatedly, aware of how entrenched racial disparities and divisions are in our society, and how much harm they do.
Slavery and subsequent racial inequities have tarnished and undermined the ideals our nation cherishes. Virginia — where the first slaves landed, where the Confederacy had its capitol, where Lee surrendered, where we elected the nation’s first Black governor, where we’ve struggled with discrimination and still argue over statues — has a complicated and central role in that history.
The history we teach should reflect all that tumultuous experience. We will serve the commonwealth and our children better if we confront that history, the unsavory parts along with the good, honestly and fully.