1619 Project in schools?
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Anonymous
I don't have a disagreement with teaching any history responsibly. The problem that I have is that the teachers always seem to have an "us vs them" approach to teaching it when people such as Hispanics and Asians were not involved. We've had black and white teachers teach pre-colonial history, plantation history, and civil war history and the take was always that kids like mine were somehow made to feel guilty as part of the enslavers by both slightly angry AA or white apologists. Somehow there always seems to be extra room in the guilt trip party for contemporaneously non-existing groups to be implicitly blamed. And this has happened several times in different years. |
Anonymous
If you are learning about slavery and feeling guilty, you need to unpack that. |
Anonymous
What does that even mean? It's the teachers blaming "all" the non-black students for slavery. They should make it a point of emphasis that some groups didn't participate because they weren't even there. And that they'd probably be on the slave/servant side if they had been there, anyway. |
Anonymous
If your kids are coming home feeling “blamed,” and you as a parent are (apparently) reinforcing that, there’s some intellectual rigor missing from this scenario. |
Anonymous
What part of reading comprehension are you lacking? How am I reinforcing that except to tell my kids to keep their mouths shut and don't argue with the teacher because teachers tend to be thin-skinned and vindictive when called out on their misguided propaganda? The apologist white ones especially when they try to spread out their guilt to others so they don't feel so bad. My kids have learned real history. |
Anonymous
Lol, yes, it’s clear you’re not reinforcing anything. So much “real history,” it’s very impressive! |
Anonymous
How are the teachers “blaming” students exactly? |
Anonymous
Let's assume this is true . . . it sounds like your proposed solution is a curriculum that ignores crucial information because teachers "always seem" use it to make white "kids like [yours] . . . feel guilty." Otherwise why would you wonder why schools are "still teaching this stuff?" Sometimes teaching history "responsibly" means that someone might feel uncomfortable, sad, frightened, or even "guilty," if by that you mean aware of atrocities in the past committed by people who look like them. So what? |
Anonymous
We're not white. That's the point. All non-AA are lumped together when they use an us vs them argument by both white and AA teachers. The teacher should make it a point to distinguish this fact unambiguously. Non-whites don't need to share the blame or made to feel guilty. |
Anonymous
| I think the PP feels like a critique of whiteness is a critique of them personally. And I mean, it is a call to reflection, right? I would argue that people living in any identify group are called to interrogate the dimensions of that, both positive and negative, because that’s an unavoidable part of living in a culture/society. It’s often not fun work, for anyone. I think for someone like the PP, they label the feeling the discomfort of thinking about whiteness as “guilt” and they run away. It’s insecurity, and fear. A good facilitator can nurse them into engaging with the discomfort for a bit, and then they will often feel relieved that it’s not as bad as they thought it would be. |
Anonymous
Cognitive dissonance is hard. This notion that you should spare them this discomfort is nonsense. Feeling guilty is just internalizing things when the subject really isn’t about them. They’ll push through, I promise you. Sometimes education is uncomfortable. That’s OK. That’s how we learn. Resist the urge to shield your children from uncomfortable topics. At the root of white fragility on these topics is often the people who take most offense fancy themselves good people. And they oftentimes are, in fact, good people. Trust those good impulses to be there when the cognitive dissonance is resolved and you learn to see the world as others see it, instead of rigidly clinging to your own paradigm as the one and only truth. |
Anonymous
I’m fine with teaching kids about slavery but would prefer that it is done with the appropriate global and anthropological context. Slavery has been practiced by the vast majority of cultures that have ever existed. Today there are more enslaved people around the world than ever before in human history. It is widely practiced in many forms in multiple places around the world, specifically the Middle East but other places as well. Slavery became prohibited because the white Christian men who were in power banned it. |
Anonymous
That you equate teaching history with "blame" and "guilt" is on you. Try changing that mindset into indignation over the unjustness of it all; channel that energy into making sure such atrocities never happen again and addressing the inequities that remain in our society due to terrible things that happened in the past. When your child tells you she feels guilty you are not helpless to redirect her. |
Anonymous
When we are teaching about our own history in the US, it cannot be accurately portrayed or analyzed without acknowledging and understanding exactly how it worked here and what its repercussions were (and are.) |
Anonymous
Which is why it should be kept a black vs white thing, and not include others in the frame. Slavery was bad. White people were evil. Blacks were dehumanized then disenfranchised. Other groups of people didn't exist in this space so don't include them in the guilt-blame game. Very simple. |