Educators, lawmakers, activists and faith leaders have launched efforts to teach Black history after a crackdown on more inclusive lesson plans.
Educators, lawmakers, activists and faith leaders have launched efforts to teach Black history after a crackdown on more inclusive lesson plans.
Most folks had no idea about the Tulsa race massacre until the first episode of Watchmen on HBO, and there was a surge of people googling to see if it had actually happened after it aired. I even read an article about how some people in Tulsa didn’t even know about it until then.
Same. I didn’t know what Juneteenth was until my company started observing it a few years ago.
And bare in mind that I am a kid of the 80s. I can’t imagine the curriculum that kids have today.
I didn’t know what it was because that’s a silly name for celebrating the end of slavery.
Weird how we never get taught about any of the bad things white people do unless they do it to other white people, isn’t it?
Unfortunately, propagating ignorance is useful as a tool to keep change from ever occurring.
I’m a white dude that lived in the South for 42 of my 51 years. I was fortunate that my parents were flower children that didn’t fit in with the hate scene of the time, and they taught me to respect everyone.
Their biggest hurdle was the limit of their knowledge. Like me, they weren’t taught the history of atrocities that we’re perpetrated against our citizens. The advantage that I had as a parent, over what my parents had, was the good fortune to live in an age of enlightenment through information.
I did my best to make sure that I passed on that part of my parents legacy to my, now adult, children while also making sure they understood what the actual history looked like in our country. I’m hopeful they’ll levy their advantages to continue to help break the cycle.
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Slavery in the US is widely taught in the US public school system. That fact alone completely devastates your idea the US does not ‘teach about any of the bad things white people do unless they do it to other white people’. It is also pretty common to teach about the Japanese internment camps in WWII, albeit less so.
My husband, who grew up in the south, was taught about The War of Northern Aggression (that is what his teacher called the Civil War).
I am having our kids read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and A People’s History of the United States.
ETA: My kids’ Elementary and Middle schools taught the book Stamped.
ETA2: Are students in Florida going to know what the Underground Railroad even was?