07/03/2020
REAL AMERICAN HISTORY
I had a conversation with my wife and brother-in-law both of which are white. I asked the question, “why haven’t you or your peers ever asked why aren’t there any black people farming in rural Nebraska? In that conversation, they explained growing up in rural Nebraska, that never had they seen a black person until they went to college. They described a brief mention of black people in their history classes growing up. Slavery was mentioned a little, and not much more was said about black people. It led me to pause and wonder about how could that be, when the legacy of chattel slavery, Jim Crow, police brutality and institutionalized racism is so obvious to me. I was led to think hard and fast on the possibility of the origins of this lack of understanding, first, with disbelief, then with an eye upon investigation. How could a white person not understand their white privilege? After further inquiry, I asked myself how could someone that sees, for example, the police as “protectors and servers” and has truly experienced the police as that, their whole lives, actually conceive of the police as “killers and abusers.” Something I have experienced my whole life. I still pondered this strange omission. It made me think of my philosophy days in college. Rene Descartes believed that he could prove his own existence because he could conceive of himself, but he could not know if a “tree made a sound when it fell in the forest” if no one was there to hear it. I make this statement only because, if you never perceive an event, then how can you know the meaning of the event in question.
So I am led to close that loophole in our American lives. Take for example, a woman growing up in rural, Nebraska or Idaho. She goes to primary school with only 5 classmates, high school with 10 in her senior class, and none are black. Then, she goes to a small college of 2000 students with maybe 100 black students. This person graduates and runs for the US House of Representatives, and wins on farming issues from rural white voters.
Now you have a “educated person” on paper, with little or no education of anything else in the world. There has been no willingness to learn about other people and cultures, because there has never been a need to, and no interest in a multicultural education. Her college was silent on multiculturalism. America now has a Congresswoman with views ignorant, or at worst apathetic to the plight of black people. She will make laws that concern black people and all the other diverse people in the country with no knowledge of their interest or experiences.
This is a problem. It gives my white brothers and sisters, whether well meaning or “fire breathing racists” alike, plausible deniability to act like they do not know the evil acts of white supremacy, white privilege and institutionalized racism.
I believe it needs to be said that black people are in no way responsible for re-teaching or embracing racists. However, if we want to change the world where racist and people tolerate them exist, we must be involved.
THIS COULD HELP
I propose that a national education initiative be convened to create a REAL AMERICAN HISTORY. A REAL AMERICAN HISTORY that can be taught in all schools across the country attached to federal educational funding. If you want federal money for education in your state, you teach REAL AMERICAN HISTORY in the classroom. This would be a K to 12 project with national summative testing connected to it. College admission test on American history, or RAHAT [REAL AMERICAN HISTORY APTITUDE TEST].
National historians will create a national treatise on American History. One man and one women from each race with special emphasizes on black and native people will combine to write the REAL AMERICAN HISTORY an objective manner based on facts.
This school initiative will include implicit bias training formatted for elementary, middle, high school instruction including students, teachers and administrators with continuing education for renewing teachers credentials.
For colleges, I propose African Studies and Native-American Studies classes as a general studies requirement for graduation, with final project at the end.
In law schools, reparation investigations and discussions should be law review topics and cases for reparations should be debated.
We could do this in California now!
This is a start.
