If there is anything that I’ve learned during my time as a student, it’s that diverse representation within the student body, teaching staff, and curriculum is very important. Since elementary school, I’ve never really seen myself represented in the curriculum unless my ancestors were represented as the helpless and oppressed.
From a young age, I realized that Black history was treated as though it were a completely separate concept from American and world history. In my high school, there is a Black studies course because of the lack of emphasis on Black history in mandatory history classes. I’ve noticed that even if we do learn about Black history, it’s told from a white perspective, setting the scene for the whitewashing of history. This includes downplaying the severity of traumatic events that happened in communities of color, leaving out other cultures from the curriculum, and ignoring how historical events continue to influence systems of oppression today.
When we are taught the whitewashed version of American history from a young age, we learn to minimize the modern-day effects of legislation, events, and oppression for nonwhite groups. My history lessons have often focused on white abolitionist activists and politicians while ignoring how members of the Black community pushed for ending slavery as well. This removes the burden of guilt from the white community when they only see all the white people who contributed to the abolition of slavery.
For example, we’ve been taught to praise Abraham Lincoln as “the Great Emancipator’’ for his supposed belief in equality, but he didn’t believe that Black people were equal to whites; he just thought that slavery was wrong and went against his Christian morals.