America Needs to Own Up to Slavery, Starting in the Classroom
Education plays a critical role in public understanding of slavery. Photo courtesy of Ian Koski.
On November 2nd 2020, President Donald Trump issued an executive order creating a special committee with the responsibility of building a patriotic educational curriculum. While school systems would be highly encouraged by the administration to adopt this curriculum, it would not be forcibly implemented. The “1776 Commission” responsible for constructing the curriculum, named in honor of the year the Declaration of Independence was signed, would enlist the guidance of select cabinet members such as the Secretaries of State, Defense, Education, and Housing and Urban Development.
While the contents of this curriculum are not thoroughly detailed, the executive order claims its main purpose is to teach a U.S. history that is “accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling” so that students can embody “the honest patriotism” needed for the American polity to thrive. According to President Trump, the need for such a curriculum comes from rising criticisms of the Founding Fathers for their role in perpetuating and participating in the institution of slavery. By implementing this educational initiative, Trump aimed to contradict any notion that the United States is a systemically racist country.
Under President Trump’s “patriotic” education, Americans would be encouraged to see racial injustice and oppression as things of the past, rather than issues we grapple with daily. Although President Joe Biden has already overturned this executive order, the near-existence of the “1776 Commission” raises the question: what are the implications of a historical education that underscores or completely removes the severity of past injustices from public memory? What dangers lie in a polity that overlooks its own wrongdoings and distances itself from any form of criticism?
To better answer these questions, we must examine the ways in which slavery is taught today across the nation, and the implications of that education in present society.
The Failure to Address the Severity of the Living Conditions Faced by Enslaved People
Present history curriculums fail to highlight the severity of the atrocities faced by enslaved people. According to a study conducted by the Southern Law Poverty Center in 2018, only 49% of high school seniors across America understand that enslaved people resisted slavery. Several states like New Jersey, Washington, and Virginia don’t even raise the topic of enslaved resistance in their textbooks. With over half of high school students believing that enslaved individuals were passive in the face of their oppression, these history curriculums dangerously endorse the belief that slaves were content with their enslavement. By believing in this contentment, one could assume that slavery was not life-threatening, completely erasing the violence, sexual abuse, and trauma caused by enslavement.
By overlooking the horrors of this institution, our nation fails to explicitly condemn slavery. This failure is particularly evident in Section 1 of Amendment 13 of our Constitution where it states that slavery is permitted as legal punishment for a crime. This clause sets the precedent that slavery is not completely immoral, allowing citizens to believe that slavery is justifiable. We saw these beliefs come to fruition most recently on November 3rd, 2020, when Nebraska voted on a statewide amendment that would remove slavery as a potential punishment for a crime. While the amendment thankfully passed, it should not be overlooked that 280,898 individuals voted to keep slavery. While we may not presently have data explaining why these people voted this way, possible reasons could either be that they undermined the trauma induced by slavery, or, that despite learning about its history in school, they did not find the concept of ownership over another human being as immoral. When our nation fails to discuss the torturous conditions of slavery and the immorality of the practice itself, we do not denounce injustice, but rather, create room for others to defend it. As such, we risk allowing these injustices to be repeated in the future. For example, according to her documentary “13th,” filmmaker Ava DuVernay argues that America is already practicing a new iteration of slavery through prison labor.
With an inadequate education on slavery, votes like the ones seen in Nebraska become a fundamental reflection of whether our society believes that each human being is warranted equal rights and freedoms.
The Minimization of Slavery’s Role in Securing U.S. Power and Stability
Another startling finding from the SLPC study was that only 46% of students recognized slavery as directly responsible for the growth of the U.S. economy during its early years. Without slavery, the United States would have never generated enough wealth to stabilize itself as a new nation, engage in international trade, and impose its power on other nations. Therefore, in disassociating slavery from the growth of the economy, current education omits the fact that slavery is the very reason the United States was capable of amounting to the global power it is today.
History curriculums further undermine the role of slavery in America’s foundation by minimizing its importance in our nation’s history. For example, only 8% of students correctly identified slavery as the central cause of the Civil War. In allowing nearly 48% of students to believe that tax protests were the central cause of the war, our education systems are not adequately teaching students the extent to which slavery was indoctrinated in American life. The fact that the decision on whether or not to abolish slavery caused a war within our country demonstrates that slavery (and thus, racism) has always been embedded in the history of America.
When America undermines slavery’s impact in shaping our nation and securing its financial and international power, America attempts to distance itself from slavery. The danger in this distance is that America perpetuates the narrative that slavery was merely a lapse in judgement and that in spite of its occurrence, the U.S. rose to power fairly and independently.
However, the truth is, America is not innocent. In fact, it owes its entire success to the oppression and labor of enslaved people. In not teaching this point, educational systems are designed to prevent their students from realizing that this nation was never meant to serve every race equally. As such, white students in particular can potentially continue to live in this country completely ignorant of who this country benefits and harms. Without providing students the knowledge to critically examine our nation, America allows itself to continue perpetuating injustice without any accountability.
The Omission of the Lasting Impacts of Slavery (Including Those We See Today)
Lastly, the SLPC study found that only 39% of students understand slavery as foundational for shaping present beliefs regarding race and white supremacy. In other words, the majority of students at the end of their high school career do not believe that slavery has influenced the way racism exists in society today. In considering slavery and current race relations as mutually exclusive, students are encouraged to assume that slavery holds no weight in our daily life because it happened in the past. Instead of addressing the ongoing legacy of slavery, such as racist policies limiting access to financial loans or quality education for Black Americans, present history curriculums are only connecting racism to the single event of slavery.
By drawing this conclusion, students fail to recognize that racism is not only acts of discrimination on an interpersonal level, but rather, an entire system devised to prevent persons of color from succeeding to the same extent as their white counterparts. The consequence of this belief is that many students graduate from high school believing that the absence of slavery means that racism no longer exists. For example, during January and February 2019, the Pew Research Center surveyed Americans’ perceptions of racial injustice in the United States. According to the study, 41% of Americans do not believe that white people hold privilege or specific advantages in society. In other words, almost half of Americans do not believe that Black Americans experience greater obstacles or hurdles in society than their white counterparts. Even with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement highlighting the ways Black men and women are disproportionately targeted and/or murdered by police officers, almost half of the country still believes that racial inequalities do not exist. This division in our nation’s understanding of race relations allows members of our society to occupy two very different realities: one where everyone is treated equally, and one where vast inequalities occur. There are consequences to this divide—namely, that the inability to agree on the existence of injustice makes it impossible to effectively address it.
By failing to draw the connection between slavery and continued legislative actions taken to prevent Black communities from receiving equal opportunity and treatment, present education encourages students to believe that racism is no longer an issue. As such, students are taught to not feel a responsibility to address racism. The danger in this belief is that it prevents students from both perceiving and being critical of present injustices. The truth is that slavery was only symptom of a larger injustice: white supremacy. In the same way that killing a bug is not the same as ridding yourself of the infestation that allowed the bug to be there in the first place, the elimination of slavery does not mean that racism (i.e. its source of power) no longer exists. Therefore, in order to adequately tackle the disease of racism, our education systems have a duty to openly acknowledge its continued existence.
Conclusion
As seen through President Trump’s refusal to denounce white supremacy, or newly-appointed Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s past ruling underscoring the negative impacts that employing the n-word against Black employees can have in the workplace, America needs to do a better job at denouncing racism. If we don’t take proper responsibility for our past actions and collectively confront our past wrongdoings in the classroom, why would any individual feel inclined to do the same?
Education is often understood as our means for learning how the world we live in came to be. However, what is perhaps less emphasized, is its role in teaching us what the world could and should become. Currently, states have jurisdiction over their own regional school curriculums. As such, there are major discrepancies in education on slavery across the nation.
To better remedy this misinformation, our nation should develop a standardized curriculum in regards to slavery. Rather than omit history like President Trump’s 1776 Commission, the “1619 Commission” (recognizing the year the first ship of enslaved Africans arrived at the English colonies in North America) would highlight all the aspects of slavery that are currently under-taught. To create this curriculum, the 1619 Commission could enlist the expertise of Black historians and call upon multimedia resources such as primary documents, podcasts, documentaries, museum visits, and more to give students a greater breadth of knowledge. Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones has already begun developing this work through her Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project. Published by the New York Times in August 2019, this project uses articles, photo essays, and podcasts to provide detailed explanations of both the history and legacy of American slavery. This project has even developed a history curriculum of its own for educators to refer to free of charge. With a curriculum like this federally institutionalized in schools across the nation, all students could learn about slave resistance and the individual stories of enslaved people. In this way, students could tackle their ignorance, better understand the severity of the institution, and finally realize how its previous existence still impacts our present.
A polity is only as strong as the people it is made up of. As such, it is our duty to learn and acknowledge the pain and suffering our nation has imposed on communities of color. This doesn’t mean only focusing on slavery, but also extending education to include the narratives of other marginalized groups. Only then will we be capable of bringing justice and peace to our nation.
The 1776 Commission claims that acknowledging the legacies of racism and slavery in this nation is unpatriotic. However, the truth is, patriotism is not about loving our nation unconditionally to the point that we see both it and its history as exempt from criticism. Rather, it is about taking accountability and being willing to correct past injustices. Doing so demonstrates that we care enough about this nation to make it better for every individual who is a part of it. By practicing accountability in the classroom, students will be able to enter the world feeling more capable of keeping both themselves and those around them accountable for tackling injustice.
Nathalia Tavares is a staff writer at CPR and sophomore at Columbia College. When asked about her major, Nathalia scoffs at the need to choose one by instead pursuing an open curriculum intersecting race, gender, theatre, and film studies.