It would be a lie to say that my pre-college education did not expose me to the history of slavery, segregation, and racism in the United States. It would also be a lie to say that I was told the whole truth about it.
I was fortunate enough to go to a school system that, I believe, prepared me for college about as well as I could hope. I can read, for one thing, and I know that the mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. Teaching critical race theory (or counternarratives in general, for that matter), was not banned by law in my state and I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, and “Letter from Birmingham Jail” for class. Some of my social studies teachers even tried to time the Civil Rights unit to coincide with Black History Month (with varying degrees of success). I thought that was it—I thought that historically, Blackness in America boiled down to the chattel slavery that pursued Jim, the segregation confronting Cassie Logan, and the more general, pervasive racism that five-year-olds counted on Martin Luther King Jr. to fight on their behalf (after all, how could parents allow teachers to expose their children to messy topics like death or racism when talking about MLK and Civil Rights?).
Leaving aside that such an education talks more about Black History than the education of huge swaths of the country, my own was still woefully incomplete. Black Americans are inseparably part of this nation’s identity, championing the ideals that the United States ought to live up to. Attempting to relegate a group and identity that is fundamental to the development and progress of this country to a single unit in some classes in some schools is a disservice to its students as well as the generations of Black Americans who struggled to push this country to be that much more.
The question, therefore, is what comes next? How can we best give voice to the Black experiences and Black people who carved a nation from dirt and ideals?
I definitely agree that the education system, itself, fails students by not providing them with nearly enough information about racism and the battle for Civil Rights. However, I do not think that we must rely on a spontaneous change in the education system. If parents make an effort to intentionally converse with their children about Black History Month and its significance, future generations would have the opportunity to know and ask questions about slavery and how racism prevails in society today.