Teach facts, and change will follow
When I was a fourth-grader in the segregated schools of Alabama, I was taught history from a textbook called “Know Alabama.” The book was written by a man named Frank Owsley, and it glorified slavery, deified Confederates and defended the Ku Klux Klan.
“Owsley was a dyedin-the-wool racist who described the slaves as ‘savages’ and ’cannibals,’ and who defended the South against what he saw as overly aggressive reconstructionists who wanted to give Black civil rights and destroy Southern culture,” Gordon Harvey, professor of history at Jacksonville State University, told Birminghamwatch, a nonprofit news outlet.
But not one of the white members of the Alabama Legislature was offended on my behalf. (Alabama had no Black state legislators back then.) Not one of them proposed a law that would protect Black schoolchildren from those odious — and blatantly inaccurate — portrayals of their ancestors. Not one white lawmaker worried that I might be inculcated with a profound sense of inferiority.
Yet there is a growing movement across the nation to protect white schoolchildren from any discomfort that might result from learning the facts of our nation’s history. With the support of GOP Gov. Ron Desantis, Florida lawmakers have gone so far as to propose a law that would prohibit public schools from making white children feel “discomfort” or “guilt.” As Shevrin Jones, a Black Florida state senator, told CNN, “This isn’t even a ban on critical race theory. This is a ban on Black history.”
On American history, actually. As Nikole Hannah-jones and others have made clear, American history is inextricably bound up with the sojourn of people of African descent on these shores. It is deeply ironic — and profoundly sad — that attempts to teach the facts of American history are under attack because those truths might make white kids uncomfortable. This is rich. Facts, it seems, are offensive.
Perhaps that’s because white Americans have been spoon-fed myths, distortions and outright lies about the nation’s history for generations. Textbooks, historical tracts and popular culture, including movies, have told stories that either glossed over or altogether dismissed the violence and exploitation that were part and parcel of the nation’s founding.
Does the United States also have glorious and redemptive stories to tell? Absolutely. For generations, the nation has stood as a beacon of representative democracy. The civil rights movement
helped that light to shine brighter. But our story is a complex one, and some of it isn’t so pretty. The ugliness isn’t just about the evil institution of slavery and the century of terrorism that followed it. European colonists killed off or captured millions of the Indigenous people, stealing their land. John Wayne’s movies don’t acknowledge that.
Happily, I was spared the misinformation spewed by “Know Alabama” and other such texts. Segregated schools offered a few advantages, including the refusal of many Black teachers to regurgitate racist nonsense. My college-educated parents repeated the oral history that had been passed down in my family for generations — tales of resilience in the face of vicious exploitation. They also gave me books that taught the truths of American history. My white peers, however, were swaddled in the comforting lies of Confederate apologia. They celebrated Confederate Memorial Day and honored the legacy of the traitors who waged war against their own nation for the right to own slaves. Generations of white Americans have been so warped by misinformation that they are completely unprepared for facts.
As 21st-century textbooks and curricula have begun, finally, to acknowledge U.S. history as it was, many white parents are rebelling against that. They don’t want their children taught the truth.
I am not convinced that white elementary or high school students would feel any actual guilt if they were taught real American history. However, they might be prompted to reckon with the nation’s continuing racism. They might come to a keener appreciation of the struggle for equal justice in every facet of American society, from the courts to executive suites.
That might lead to a fairer future — one in which whites don’t enjoy an advantage that flows from the color of their skin. Their parents understand that. That’s why they are fighting to keep classrooms awash in ahistorical ignorance.