Whitewashed and erased': There's a reason Juneteenth isn't taught in schools, educators say

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

A Connecticut fourth grade social studies textbook falsely claimed that slaves were treated just like “family.” A Texas geography textbook referred to enslaved Africans as “workers.” In Alabama, up until the 1970s, fourth graders learned in a textbook called "Know Alabama" that slave life on a plantation was "one of the happiest ways of life."

In contrast, historians and educators point out, many children in the U.S. education system are not taught about major Black historical events, such as the Tulsa Race Massacre or Juneteenth, the June 19 commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States.

As the country grapples with a racial reckoning following the killing of George Floyd in police custody, educators said that what has and what has not been taught in school have been part of erasing the history of systemic racism in America and the contributions of Black people and other minority groups.

“There’s a long legacy of institutional racism that is barely covered in the mainstream corporate curriculum,” said Jesse Hagopian, an ethnic studies teacher in Seattle and co-editor of the book “Teaching for Black Lives.”

https://news.yahoo.com/did-learn-juneteenth-school-many-210400496.html

[Docreed2003]

1. The propaganda surrounding the myth of the "happy slave" isn't a new one

It takes its roots in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War during Reconstruction. That outrageous mythology is so prevalent that I will wager you can't tour a plantation in the Deep South without hearing a tour guide say "Well at this plantation the slaves were treated like family". The whitewashing of our history is appalling and absurd and it must be addressed. However, until the Texas Board of Education loses some of its power over what is published in school texts used across the country, I doubt little will change.

[thucythucy]

4. The "happy slave" mythology is even older than that.

In response to the huge popularity of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (which, however flawed, was an anti-slavery broadside) a number of southern slavery apologists penned novel with happy slaves as a contrast to all the miserable working poor of the North.

And you're right, the Texas Board of Education is a blight on our entire nation.

[jb5150]

8. I've read that Gone With The Wind was one of those novels,

I don't know if by Margaret Mitchell ever actually admitted to that though.

[wryter2000]

16. It's gawd awful

I can’t believe that some folks here were lamenting HBO dropping it.

[thucythucy]

29. "Gone With the Wind" (the novel) is 1920s or 30s.

The books I'm talking about were written in the 1850s to counteract the popularity of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" which was an anti-slavery novel and a runaway best seller (even though it was banned in most slave states).

[Retrograde]

30. At least one of the characters in GWTW

claims that his family's slaves were well-treated and happy. It is mentioned, though, that they (and the O'Hara family's slaves) left their plantations as soon as the Yankee troops arrived and let them know about the Emancipation Proclamation.

[uponit7771]

7. +1,

[Lonestarblue]

12. It isn't just the Texas Board of Education.

Florida is equally as bad. Part of the Republican plan to remake the US into a backwards, rights-denying country was to get elected to state and local school boards. They were successful. The US has a system of two forms of textbook adoption: open territory and state adoption. Open territory states tend to be more progressive, like Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, etc., and their schools make independent purchasing decisions based on their state’s curriculum standards.

State adoption states are mostly in the South and East, plus California up to 8th grade. Those states are the most educationally conservative, and they tend to have the most activists working to change social studies, science, and literature to teach what religious conservatives want taught—so no mention of climate change and teaching the religious intelligent design as equal to evolution as a theory. In social studies texts, history has been whitewashed to present only the white version. To maintain an appearance of balance, famous minorities are discussed in special features rather than being interwoven into the historical narrative. White people are presented as having built the country and essentially having never done anything wrong. Students never learn the context of major events or the attitudes of anyone but white people during the period studied.

Even literature does not escape since there is pressure to include white authors rather than minority authors, what is not so fondly called the canon of dead white guys.

The other way that conservatives control the content of textbooks is through writing state curriculum standards for each course. Teachers who write these standards, which are often reviewed by parents and other educators, can be just as biased as the general population, and their biases guide the content that publishers create. State standards in red states tend to be highly biased against minorities. We truly need a basic national curriculum that every state must teach so as to remove as much bias as possible, though many states would rebel against such a thing (which is one reason the Common Core failed). And we need textbooks that teach the truth, not just the one-sided version of reality that we have today. Electing more Democrats to boards of education would help, along with ensuring that teachers are required to take courses that help them identify their own biases.

[AllaN01Bear]

22. when the school textbook board of kansas chooses textbooks , so goes the rest of

the country , and we know what is on the kansas school textbook board.
each state should be able to choose how they buy their own textbooks and i dont understand how the kansas school textbook board can dictate what other states books and curriculum

[Lonestarblue]

25. Let's use just one course as an example for publishers.

US History is traditionally taught in 8th grade and again in 10th grade (and to my mind far too much overlap of content). Curriculum standards do have a lot of commonality, especially for older history up to the Civil War, so publishers can hire writers to create a common content that is economically viable to publish and sell to schools. For large states like California, Texas, and Florida, publishers modify their common content to meet those specific states’ standards because the volume of sales justifies the expense.

Now imagine if every state, and very large districts in some states, could demand a unique textbook for their standards that are different from those in other states. Now it’s no longer economically viable to publish textbooks at a price that schools—and taxpayers who fund schools—are willing to pay. So it isn’t actually a small state like Kansas that determines content so much as it is the more populous states like Texas and Florida that determine the content that other states get. The Texas State Board of Education has been notorious for making demands that favor the whitewashing of history.

[appalachiablue]

34. +1 For a while at historic sites and plantations

mainly in the 90s I think, some interpreters were referring to slaves as 'servants.'

The use of a slightly more positive label didn't last long for obvious reasons at least at places I knew, although other sites may still try to use this and 'family members' to try to minimize brutal and legal realities of the American slavery system.

[Frances]

2. You could say some of the slaves were literally family

Some plantation owners raped some of the female slaves. Sometimes they sold some of these children.

[wryter2000]

19. Sally Hemings

Was Jefferson’s wife’s half-sister

[obamanut2012]

26. Yup, and by all accounts they looked very much alike

With very similar mannerisms.

[ace3csusm]

3. Growing up i never heard of Juneteenth in school k-12th grade even in college

I only knew about thru the show "Black-ish"
[link:

|

[wryter2000]

18. I only learned of it as an adult

And I went to open minded schools

[Alacritous Crier]

5. I was never taught it in class...

but it was something that was talked about in Black History Club after school. Also, I was aware of it from my family's history. There's no surprise that white people have never heard of it That was by design.

[Brother Buzz]

6. Was a time, most all textbooks came from Texas

And they DID distort history to fit their narrative.

How Texas Inflicts Bad Textbooks on Us

Gail Collins JUNE 21, 2012 ISSUE

“What happens in Texas doesn’t stay in Texas when it comes to textbooks”

No matter where you live, if your children go to public schools, the textbooks they use were very possibly written under Texas influence. If they graduated with a reflexive suspicion of the concept of separation of church and state and an unexpected interest in the contributions of the National Rifle Association to American history, you know who to blame.

When it comes to meddling with school textbooks, Texas is both similar to other states and totally different. It’s hardly the only one that likes to fiddle around with the material its kids study in class. The difference is due to size—4.8 million textbook-reading schoolchildren as of 2011—and the peculiarities of its system of government, in which the State Board of Education is selected in elections that are practically devoid of voters, and wealthy donors can chip in unlimited amounts of money to help their favorites win.

Those favorites are not shrinking violets. In 2009, the nation watched in awe as the state board worked on approving a new science curriculum under the leadership of a chair who believed that “evolution is hooey.” In 2010, the subject was social studies and the teachers tasked with drawing up course guidelines were supposed to work in consultation with “experts” added on by the board, one of whom believed that the income tax was contrary to the word of God in the scriptures.

Ever since the 1960s, the selection of schoolbooks in Texas has been a target for the religious right, which worried that schoolchildren were being indoctrinated in godless secularism, and political conservatives who felt that their kids were being given way too much propaganda about the positive aspects of the federal government. Mel Gabler, an oil company clerk, and his wife, Norma, who began their textbook crusade at their kitchen table, were the leaders of the first wave. They brought their supporters to State Board of Education meetings, unrolling their “scroll of shame,” which listed objections they had to the content of the current reading material. At times, the scroll was fifty-four feet long. Products of the Texas school system have the Gablers to thank for the fact that at one point the New Deal was axed from the timeline of significant events in American history.

<more>

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/06/21/how-texas-inflicts-bad-textbooks-on-us/

[caraher]

9. I learned about it because the community celebration was in the park across the street

My first home was in a neighborhood that was historically African American, so it was as an adult about 30 years ago that I learned about Juneteenth.

Not a chance I would have learned about it in school...

[lillypaddle]

10. I had no idea what Juneteenth meant

until the last year or so. And I'm 72! How does that happen?

[bucolic_frolic]

11. It's a highly important subject and teaching should be more accurate and reality based

Let is also be said that history has a way of deep-sixing fracture lines, such as after wars. For reasons perhaps related to peace and everyone wanting to put the conflict behind them, it just goes below the radar. I could cite an incident or two, but let it be said the aftermath of WWII in Germany is still unknown to most Americans, and the role of elites, corporations, banks, armaments manufacturers in the conflict have been trickling out of archives over the last 20 years. Some of it may have only surfaced from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of their archives. Surviving Germans were in a terrible state of chaos and near anarchy.

[murielm99]

13. I learned about it in 1971 or 1972.

The only reason I knew about it at all was because I worked as a cataloger for a large library system. A book came through, titled, "Juneteenth." I had to examine the book and catalog it.

I never did read the book. So many books, so little time.

Librarians learn a lot this way. We may not read every book, but most of us wish we could.

[JeaneRaye]

14. Our textbooks and education kept other secrets, too.

My education was lacking in true black history. I had never heard of Juneteenth until about a year ago. Never heard about the Tulsa Massacre until recently. Never heard about Rosewood until recently. It was sadly lacking in many other things that this country has done that weren't so pretty. I had also never heard about Japanese internment camps until I read a book in the '90's, called "Snow Falling on Cedars". I graduated from high school in 1971 and had no idea how ugly much of American history has been.

[ace3csusm]

21. Tulsa was told to me by a cowork it seem surreal had to do own research

was shocked that this all happen in the 19th century and had never heard of it, Knew about Rosewood due to the movie release in 1997...[link:

|

[Ilsa]

15. "Roots" needs to be on tv again, IMO, for starters.

It countered the "Tara Plantation happy negro" bullshit taught in textbooks.

[ashredux]

17. Good idea

[ace3csusm]

20. I remember watching it on TV when i was a kid

Could not believe people could treat others so badly and then go to church the next day...

[jaxexpat]

23. I always thought it was Aeshululian comedy that........

JFK should have been murdered by shots from the Texas School Book Depository. Yuh cain't make this up, folks.

Shakespeare shrugs...…" I didn'st kneow".

I'm tellin' ya. Thin air here.

[bluescribbler]

24. Many years ago my wife spent a weekend in Charleston, SC.

While there we visited Magnolia, an antebellum plantation whose major crop was rice. One item on the tour was a visit to, "an antebellum plantation workers' quarters". A slave shack, in other words. I was offended by this whitewashing of history. I still am.

[MH1]

27. All kids should read The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass

That would put the "happy slave" bullshit to rest.

I have no idea what influenced me to pick it up, but I got it at a bookmobile sale at my school (elementary I think), read it, and never had any thought whatsoever that slaves were "happy".

I don't exclude the possibility that there may have been unusual white people who protected and cared for their slaves, due to their personal values. But I am sure to the extent it happened at all, it was a rare exception. And the slaves would still know they were slaves.

[malaise]

28. July 4th Exercise - let's see if anyone at M$Greedia reads this in full

What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?
“What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” is a speech by abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Douglass, who himself escaped enslavement years before, gave the speech on July 5, 1852 at an Independence Day celebration in Rochester, New York.


...Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! …

But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine.

You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!...

Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave's point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July!

Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery—the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;" I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.

But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man, (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write.

When you can point to any such laws, in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian's God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively, and positively, negatively, and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is past.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour…

Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery… Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness.

But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are, distinctly heard on the other…


Source
This text is in the public domain.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

31. The more things change ...

This seems very familiar:

"But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed."

Condensed to the core obstacle:

"America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future."

[Raastan]

33. K + R

[JonLP24]

32. This is proof that Social Studies in this country often whitewashes history