February Digital Magazine

OPINION
22
In Order to Teach Black History, We
Need to Rethink History Itself
As a senior at Oakton, I’ve listened to Martin
Luther King’s speech on Washington
four times within my AP history courses,
but I never learned that his message was
truly one of economic revolution to redistribute
wealth. I’ve learned about the Black
Panthers as a “radical revolutionary group”,
but never that the C.I.A. enlisted thousands
of spies to covertly collapse the party aimed
at increasing the rights for Black Americans.
I learned about Jim Crow laws as a
relic of our country’s past, but never about
modern Jim Crow laws that uphold racism,
through War on Drugs-era legislation that
increased arrest rates of Black youth, modern
segregation in education, and redlining.
Black history in AP classes is often framed
through a generalized, subdued lense.
Within the AP European History textbook
Oakton uses, 22 out of nearly 400 pages are
devoted to discussing the impacts and contributions
of Black people to history. The
omission, whitewashing, and shortening
of Black history reflects a long-felt problem
with teaching social studies classes: that
history is inherently subjective in ways that
rigid curriculums can’t mitigate.
Textbook publishers, like the McGraw
brand that Oakton uses, have a vested interest
in abstracting and obscuring Black
history. As argued in Loewen’s Washington
Post article, publishers like McGraw often
“mystify” key events in Black history, like
the Civil War, to avoid offending school
districts in conservative counties, thereby
decreasing sales. Similarly, Virginia’s policy
of funding statewide textbooks means
that school districts are unable to respond
to demographic disparities, meaning that
predominantly-Black schools use the same
materials as predominantly-white ones.
A benchmark study by the NEA revealed
that the omission of ethnic studies programs
has negative impacts on both students
of color and white students, namely
through a lack of academic engagement,
political efficacy, and more. In particular, it
found that the 33-point achievement gap in
geography scores between black and white
students, as measured by the NAEP, can be
at least partially explained by a lack of ethnic
studies programs in high school.
In response, Black educators and policymakers
have increasingly called for ethnic
studies programs in high school, particularly
African American studies. Some educators
have proposed an AP African American
Studies course, which has been met with
pushback from College Board due to a lack
of interest among colleges. Others have proposed
amending the current AP U.S. History
curriculum to center Black narratives,
particularly as they relate to the Civil War
and development of American capitalism.
However, of all the proposed remedies, reimagining
history in high school courses is
easily the most popular option. Educators
like Michael Conway argue that students
should be taught history through the lense
of historiography, where they analyze primary-source
documents for bias, relevance,
and historical contributions, in comparison
to textbooks. “History is anything but agreeable,”
he wrote in an essay for The Atlantic,
explaining that dominating narratives in
history are the result of deliberation among
historians. Mirroring these deliberations
in high school, as is often done in college
courses, he argues will better prepare students
for the day-to-day impacts of history.
Particularly as this relates to ethnic studies,
he explains that this would help students
learn the “many ‘histories’ that compose
the American national story.”
College Board has attempted to respond
to these types of arguments through testing
formats like Document-Based Questions.
Within Oakton, teachers like Mr. Williams
have similarly followed suit by assigning
primary-source readings for quizzes and
tests. But, education policymakers agree
that despite its many proponents, this type
of learning style is unlikely to be adopted
into standardized curricula.
Oakton’s population is less than 5% Black,
but students of all racial backgrounds have
a responsibility to understand and respond
to racism in today’s world. Understanding
history, and in particular, the contributions
of Black people to American history, is necessary
to educate a generation of people
prepared to combat the impacts of racism
across all sectors. As explained by Loewen,
“White history may be appropriate for a
white nation. It is inappropriate for a great
nation. The United States is not a white nation.
It has never been a white nation.”