PEOPLE REALLY DON’T KNOW HISTORY AND WHITE REPUBLICANS WANT TO KEEP IT THAT WAY

By Ruth A. Sheets

Americans in general really don’t know US history.  History is hardly taught in elementary school in lieu of extensive emphasis on math and reading (you know the subjects that are covered on standardized tests).  History is too often seen as that throw-away class in middle and high school that many students groan over as they enter the classroom, despite talented enthusiastic teachers. 

I never understood that negativity about history.  It was my favorite subject from 4^th grade on (yes, we did have history in elementary school 60 years ago).  I loved all the interesting people and places we learned about.  When I was away at camp after 4^th grade, my parents sent me a history activity book to work on when I had down time.  I was thrilled!  I even got some of my friends interested in it.  Each two pages covered one bit of American history, English-American history.  The only activity I remember was about 1619.  There were three small pictures on the page:  several Black people, some white women, and white men sitting in a room together.  The story was that in 1619 three important things happened that changed life in the Virginia colony:  a ship load of women arrived as servants and potential wives for the mostly male Jamestown settlement, the first Black people were sold to planters as indentured servants, and a formal government was established called the House of Burgesses. 

I do not know why this is the lesson I remember except that I somehow felt for the women and Black “servants.”  Even as a 10-year-old, I knew that Black people would only be servants for a short time.  After that, any Black people brought to Virginia and America in general would be enslaved.  I also knew a bit about what it might be like for those women.  They would be married to a man, maybe by choice or sold to him as a servant if they didn’t have money to pay their passage.  I knew the men were in charge, but they didn’t interest me.  The activity was to write about what I thought it would be like to be a member of one of those groups.  I chose to write about a white woman indentured servant.  There was only room for a couple of sentences and I don’t know what I wrote, but I didn’t forget that concept.  As a high school junior, our History teacher gave us a similar assignment, a slave or indentured servant in or around Jamestown.  I again chose the servant because I don’t think at the time I could imagine what it would be like to be Black or a slave.  Those activities helped me to see that history was not just events as it had been for me and most students in 7^th through 9^th grade.  It was people living their lives, quite different from mine, but also somewhat similar.    

Right now, history is in the news.  It’s not a discussion of ways to better involve American citizens, especially students in learning history.  It is because some white people, mostly men want to rewrite American history to delete people, policies,  and events that don’t fit with the way they want history told.  They claim it is to protect their (fragile) white children from the discomfort they might feel when learning what actually happened in our past.  They claim it is not wise to look back on difficult times. 

One of the biggest movers in this rewrite is Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.  He, a non-educator descendant of Italian immigrants, and the sycophants he has gathered think they know what a US history curriculum should include, even in Black history.  He even found a couple of Black people to go along with this whitewashing.  One wonders what he had to pay them, and naturally, out of taxpayer money.

What do they think should be included in this “new” US History curriculum?  Well, as much as I have read and studied history over the years, I learned some “new” things.  The DeSantis rewriters decided to tell us all that enslaved persons got to learn skills they were able to use when they were free.  They neglected to identify actual people for whom this was true, nor did they mention what would have happened to any of those “apprentices” who didn’t learn the skill to their master’s satisfaction.  Then the new curriculum claims Black citizens were as much the cause of the “riots” as the white people in what have hitherto been correctly referred to as “massacres” of Black citizens.  I understand the team included in the curriculum a few well-known Black leaders but rework how they are presented and their positions on the issues of the day like abolition and equal rights.  Frederick Douglass almost seems white in their telling.  The curriculum resources are from a right-wing company that has already whitened their materials so much as to be unrecognizable as actual history, fantasy is more like it.  Those materials are expensive, but districts will be forced to buy them with their limited funds.

Some very important pieces are conveniently left out of their curriculum for high schoolers. 

• - Enslaved children and other family members were sold away, often without warning.

- Horrors were committed on the ships that brought enslaved persons here from their homes in Africa, an utterly inhumane process.

• - Slave catchers roamed the roads all over the north and south to snare any Black person whether free or not.
• - Our Supreme Court ruled that Black persons could not be citizens so could not sue for their freedom.
• - Many thousands of Black soldiers fought in all our wars including the Civil War where it was clear to them they were fighting for freedom for themselves and their people.  They were rarely respected or thanked for their service.
• - After the Civil War, white gangs and mobs like the KKK were able to terrorize Black individuals and communities with impunity.  In Wilmington, NC in 1898, such a mob killed or drove out the whole city government because it was mixed black and white.
• - Massacres took place in many communities:  Tulsa, East St. Louis, Rosewood, to name a few, just because whites were mad some Black people had more than they had.
• - Over 3,400 known lynchings took place in this country between 1883 and 1968.  Nearly all of them “at the hands of persons unknown.”  In fact white folks were rarely held accountable for anything they did to people of color (or women).  The government rarely intervened until after 1955 when the modern Civil Rights Movement forced the government to pay attention, a little.  The attacks and bad behavior of white southerners could then be seen on television.

Then, there’s the police.  Police forces learned a lot of their tactics from slave-catching bands.  The entire police culture in this country is bathed in hatred of people of color and bullying.  Putting those factors together has left us with police departments that frequently abuse Black citizens, even killing them when they think they can get away with it.  Their favorite line, “I feared for my life.”  That reality will not appear even in college courses in Florida and other red states.

And, of course, the courses won’t discuss the small and large incivilities against Black Americans and other people of color every single day that were and are never expected to be corrected.  White folks have watched the slights and insults from infancy and have learned just how it is done and practice frequently.  Those white curriculum designers and their approvers don’t want to be called racist, but alas, there is no other term quite as fitting.

So why is this curriculum twist happening now.  There are several reasons, the most obvious, DeSantis is running for President of the US  and wants to make a mark with the Republican base that is incapable it seems of thinking for themselves.  They are mostly white or white wannabees and want to be reminded daily just how special their whiteness is, and how superior it is and has always been compared to everyone else’s skin color and culture.

The problem those ultra-right-wing Republicans have now is that this nation is diverse and becoming more so.  Black women in particular and people of color in general are finding positions of significance in our society and some white people, just as in Jim Crow days,  are angry and scared that someone they don't like and feel is inferior to them has something they don't have.  Red state legislatures are giving those scared white people voting superiority as they try to suppress everyone else’s votes.  They permit police to murder Black citizens with impunity or near impunity (qualified immunity).  They refuse to pass sensible gun regulations and are OK with people carrying guns around, “for protection,” they say, but I could find no reference to anyone who has recently done any protecting with a gun they are openly carrying.  Besides, it is really only open carry for white men, whatever the law says. 

The rogue Supreme Court has even further weaponized white folks by overturning Roe v. Wade so the white male state legislators could wreak havoc on women, particularly women of color in the Confederacy and confederate wannabee states.  Affirmative action can no longer be used by colleges and universities in their admission process, I am guessing it is, despite claiming otherwise, because too many people of color are taking the slots those scared privileged white people think belong only to their children, their kind.  Maybe fewer people of color in college courses on history, will mean fewer challenges to their white-centered curricula, a win-win for them. 

So, white Republicans are deciding what will be included in US history classes concerning the role of Black Americans in our history.  White people will be deciding that AP Black history classes are only OK if they include what they want included and ditch what they don’t like (the Black Lives Matter Movement is out, for example).  White legislators get to decide  what will make their little white kids uncomfortable so they can purge it from the education of all children at the same time they are banning books that would tell a different, more accurate story.  As far as I can see right now, they are doing it with impunity since our government again is doing little or nothing to stop them.  Unless we halt this encroachment on our right to teach and learn the truth in our public schools, anger and resentment among privileged white children will continue unabated and Black people and other people of color will again, be marginalized in this nation’s story.  That should be unacceptable to every American.