Accurate African American history critical
What a good idea, the College Board and many others thought. The maker of Advanced Placement courses for high school students would expand its offerings to include a course on African American Studies.
The proposal seemed especially welltimed following the murder of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police officers, a knee fixed on his neck. The 2020 killing of Floyd sparked widespread protests and, most important, an opening for shared understanding, the country in need of a racial reckoning.
Writing this month in Time, Isabel Wilkerson, the author of “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” reflected the hope in calling for “a massive re-education of our citizenry to lay bare the full history of this country … in which the state has systematically favored some groups and excluded others. … ”
The College Board seeks to do its educational part. An AP course won’t suddenly transform the jagged landscape of race. It does promise to help, and last year the board began testing the concept, seeking feedback from educators.
Enter the politicos, notably, Ron Desantis, the Florida governor and presidential wannabe. He rose to play the cultural warrior, expressing fury at the “woke indoctrination” he sees at work in schools. The governor bullied, and the board altered its course, appearing to bow to his posturing.
As it is, the course still carries much value. Some changes are logical, for instance, adding Shelby Steele and other conservative thinkers. Overall, the course steps back. It demotes down secondary sources such as the illuminating essays of Ta-nehisi Coates, playing down contemporary writers and scholars speaking in the moment, or what the course asks students to do.
Mostly, the furor stirred by Desantis signals that somehow African American Studies is a second-class subject. That hardly is true. No subject deserves more attention if the county aims to fulfill its promise. As Wilkerson explains in “Caste,” our culture long has been defined by a social hierarchy, shaped by race, in which some lives are valued higher than others. Slavery ranks as the obvious example, with its immense brutality, both physical and psychological. The end of slavery brought a respite, and high hopes, as Reconstruction proceeded. Yet that project soon ended, and the toxic hierarchy returned, Jim Crow dehumanizing in its own crushing way.
This is what the civil rights movement sought to overcome. Its majesty took form in a question: Would America prove true to its founding principles?
No doubt progress has been made, and yet the indicators are many pointing to how the hierarchy persists 150 years after the Civil War and the amendments quashing slavery and ensuring equal protection under the law. Our caste system endures even decades after the New Deal, Fair Deal and the Great Society.
Consider the disparities in prison sentences. Or the yawning achievement gap between Black and white students. Or the vast difference in household wealth, Black Americans for decades denied access to better paying jobs.
The Brookings Institution recently compared the unemployment rates for whites and Blacks from 1972 to 2021. It found that Blacks consistently experience joblessness at double the rate of whites. A report in the New York Times this month highlighted the stark differences in infant mortality. A study looking at California found that for white mothers at the highest income rungs,
the infant mortality rate was 173 deaths per 100,000 live births. For the poorest white mothers, the rate was 350.
In contrast, the wealthiest Black mothers saw 437 deaths, and the poorest, 653. Income isn’t decisive. Rather, larger forces are in play, for instance, evidence showing Black mothers receive different medical treatment.
All of this stems from the historical pattern of exclusion, Blacks largely denied advances such as the minimum wage, labor union coverage, unemployment assistance and Social Security. Southern members of Congress made sure Blacks were left behind. The G.I Bill, an engine of the middle class, barred Blacks from whites-only colleges, job training programs and housing loans.
The landmark civil-rights legislation of the 1960s marked a leap forward. Yet wide disparities remain. Ohio still hasn’t determined the resources required to educate a disadvantaged child, let alone made the proper investment.
Lyndon Johnson framed the challenge in his June 1965 address at Howard University. He reasoned: “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”
Colorblindness isn’t fair enough. The injured party, in this instance, deserves better, starting with the history. Which is why it is disheartening to see AP African American Studies caught in the tiresome cultural wars.
Douglas was the Beacon Journal editorial page editor from 1999 to 2019. He can be reached at mddouglas mm@gmail.com.