As a white high school student, I am grateful to learn Black history
The United States was built on slavery. Yet, in many U.S. history courses, slavery is barely discussed.
Many Republican legislators — and the Moms for Liberty summit attendees who convened in Philadelphia this summer — are pushing and passing legislation that would prevent teaching about racism in schools across the country. From Tennessee to New Jersey, these bills aim to ban any form of teaching that could make a student “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex.”
But as a white student who recently completed an African American history course at Central High School, I am grateful to have this education that many students are being denied.
The School District of Philadelphia is the only major school district in the United States that requires a yearlong African American history course. Yet in Pennsylvania, Republicans hope to eventually take back control of the state government and pass House Bill 1532, which prevents any curriculum that suggests an individual “bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by members of the individual’s race or sex.” In other words, nothing that makes white students feel badly about being white.
Students — Black and white — cannot let this happen.
The United States was built on slavery. Yet, in many U.S. history courses, slavery is barely discussed. When I learned about the early United States in middle school, I don’t remember hearing about the 12 presidents and over 1,800 congressmen who owned slaves. Or the Founding Fathers who held the self-evident truth that “all men are created equal,” yet enslaved innocent men, seeing them as only three-fifths of a person.
African American history teaches us that the United States has never been perfect, and does not avoid discussing racism and racial inequality. This may explain why it is under attack.
Over the past year, I have had conversations and debates about police brutality, the Civil Rights Movement, redlining, Reconstruction, and who really abolished slavery. Was it Abraham Lincoln, as is written in most textbooks? Or was he just another politician, pressured by others to produce the Emancipation Proclamation? Did Lincoln fight the Civil War to end slavery, or to reunite the North and South to keep the economy profitable?
I’ve learned that the answers to these questions are not simple. And it’s important that we keep asking them.
I’ve been a prosecutor in a mock trial deciding who destroyed the promise of racial justice in the aftermath of the Civil War. I wrote poems, created infographics, edited videos, and presented slideshows. All to learn about and understand some of the most important events in U.S. history, most of which are ignored or considerably simplified in most textbooks and schools.
But a lot of politicians, with a lot of power, as well as their supporters, don’t want me learning about racism because it challenges their political agenda. They want to whitewash history, erasing what they think makes our country look bad. Many books in my house, even ones that merely mention race, are being banned in schools around the country. Teachers are getting fired for explaining white privilege and discussing inequality — considered “divisive topics.”
But African American history is not indoctrination. It is being taught so students can join the struggle to “form a more perfect Union,” as our Constitution promises. White people, and all people, should feel responsible for correcting this country’s racist past, and we need to learn accurate history to do so.
I have spread, and will continue to spread, my knowledge from this course as much as I can, talking to other teachers, friends, and my family. It is so important for the history of racism — and the effect it still has on our society today — to be discussed and debated, despite any discomfort it might cause.
So, to all the students across the country where these kinds of discussions are being banned: We need to fight for African American history. Read the banned books. Speak up about inequality. Demand this important knowledge, and the true and complete history of our country.
Sadie Batchis is a rising junior at Central High School (284th class).