Regarding the article, “What Anti-racism Really Means for Educators”, I found the creepiest part of the article, to me personally, was “It is important that we have a shared understanding of what anti-racism in schools looks like.” Really? And what if some of the people who don’t share the author’s understanding turn out to actually have some really good ideas?
However, I personally agree with this part.
Anti-racist educators recognize that schools are doing exactly what they were built to do in this country: Exclude. Silence. Erase. Promote white supremacy.
Consider these suggested questions and answers from “The Geographical Reader for Dixie Children”, a textbook published in 1863,
Q. Which race is the most civilized?
A. The Caucasian.
Q. Is the African savage in this country?
A. No; they are docile and religious here.
Q. How are they in Africa where they first come from?
A. They are very ignorant, cruel and wretched.
You can find that quoted in “W‘e are committing educational malpractice’: Why s****ry is mistaught — and worse — in American schools” by Nikita Stewart, in the New York Times magazine.
Anyway, that 1863 textbook was clearly blatantly promoting white supremacy.
Also consider the textbook “Know Alabama”, used in Alabama from the mid-1950s through the 1970s.
The way “Know Alabama” described forced labor was incredibly inaccurate.
From “Textbook ‘Know Alabama’ Justified S****ry, Praised Confederacy to Schoolchildren” by Scott Morris
This is “Know Alabama’s” introduction to s****ry.
The authors do not explore what life was like with no freedom, with the ever-present threat of losing a loved one to the s**** trade or of being whipped. They do not mention being worked from sunup to sundown in the Alabama heat to enrich a white planter.
“Now suppose you were a little boy or girl and lived in one of the plantation homes many years ago,” the book states as it takes its young audience on a romantic trip through antebellum times.
“The Negro cook whom you call “Mammy” comes in bringing a great tray of food. You have known her all your life and love her very much. She was your nurse when you were a baby.”
As with most other happily submissive s****s in this state-sanctioned version of history, Mammy smiles when she serves her masters.
The white boy in this historical fiction rides off on a horse alongside his father to observe s****s in the fields.
“Most of them were treated kindly. There were a few masters who did not treat their s****s kindly. The first thing any good master thought about was the care of his s****s. … Many nights you have gone with your mother to the “quarters” where she cared for some sick person. She is the best friend the Negroes have, and they know it. …”
“As you ride up beside the Negroes in the field, they stop working long enough to look up, tip their hats and say, “Good morning, Master John.” You like the friendly way they speak and smile; they show bright rows of white teeth.”
““How’s it coming, Sam?” your father asks one of the old Negroes.”
““Fine, Marse Tom, jes fine. We got ‘most more cotton than we can pick.” Then Sam chuckles to himself and goes back to picking as fast as he can.”
After you return home for dinner and awake from your afternoon nap, it’s time to play “Indian” with a Black boy named “Jig.”
The authors of “Know Alabama” named the boy the shortened version of “jigaboo,” which Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines as an “insulting and contemptuous term for a black person.”
The textbook explains “he got that name because he dances so well when the Negroes play their banjos.”
“Jig comes up and says, “Let me play.””
“And you say, “All right, but you be the captive Indian.””
““That will be fun,” Jig says, and he goes off gladly to be the Indian, to hide and to get himself captured.”
For fare more accurate descriptions of racial forced labor in Alabama, see “Former Alabama s****s tell their tales in university archives” by Andrew J. Yawn on the Montgomery Advisor.
For example, from the account of Bill Russell, who was held in captivity in Alabama,
I was born in Alabama in 1846 and had a hard time all through s****ry as my mother was sold away from me. I was so lonesome without her that I would often go about my work and cry and look for her return … but she never came back.
My master was so cruel to his s****s that they were almost crazy at times. He would buckle us across a log and whip us until we were unable to walk for three days. On Sunday we would pray to God to fix some way for us to be freed from our mean masters.”
From “The Destruction of Black Civilization”, pages 26-27, by Chancellor Williams
The second great tragedy is in the nature of what is called “education.” It is mainly rote learning, the ability to memorize phrases, concepts and other required data. *Thinking* is neither required nor expected. Critical analysis and evaluation of subject matter are not required. But the ability to absorb and recall is required. The brilliant scholar, then, is one who can readily quote authorities and remember well is bibliographical sources. So we have a generation of Black scholars who continue to amaze students by mouthing the doctrines and viewpoints of their white teachers–like so many robots without minds of their own.
Yet study under white teachers and professors should be most rewarding, and it can be if you do not enter white institutions with a head like an empty pitcher going to a fountain to be filled. I was was and richly rewarded during my studies in white universities only because I happened not to be so naive that I expected the viewpoints of the conquerors to be the same as those of the conquered on matters relating to our place in the world.
Elsewhere I have emphasized, by repetition, that some of the most fruitful sources for study came quite unintentionally from white scholars. A case in point was at Oxford. The course was “The History of Colonialism in Africa.” The presence of two or three Blacks in the class, while obviously uncomfortable to some, was generally ignored. For African studies were of long standing as an integral part of the imperial system. They were not planned for Africans at all, but for future administrators of the Empire in Africa. So Professor Madden was pointing out in his lecture how difficult–and even impossible– it was to rule Africans in view of their “wild and most primitive system of democracy.” For just as fast as African kings or chiefs undertook to carry out British laws with displeased the people, “the people would remove them from office,” therefore, this “primitive African democracy had to be destroyed” before the British system of Indirect Rule could be effective.
The point here is that these sneering remarks by an eminent British history revealed to me an entirely new field of research. That lecture led me into the study of one of the most significant developments in the entire history of the Black race: an ancient system of democracy (existing before Greece), evolved from a continent-wide constitution that governed the whole African people as a single race. This all-important finding was arrived at by comparative studies of African customary laws in every region of the continent. The Europeans were confronted with a real social democracy that existed long before the terms “socialism” and “democracy” were invented in the West. For Dr. Madden it was “savage” because the people were the real rulers in fact, and not merely in theory.
Amazing, a professor, advocating British imperialism, admitted that the Africans had a democratic system by which they could remove from office kings and chiefs who made laws that displeased them.
Regarding the article, “What Anti-racism Really Means for Educators”, I found the creepiest part of the article, to me personally, was “It is important that we have a shared understanding of what anti-racism in schools looks like.” Really? And what if some of the people who don’t share the author’s understanding turn out to actually have some really good ideas?
However, I personally agree with this part.
Consider these suggested questions and answers from “The Geographical Reader for Dixie Children”, a textbook published in 1863,
You can find that quoted in “W‘e are committing educational malpractice’: Why s****ry is mistaught — and worse — in American schools” by Nikita Stewart, in the New York Times magazine.
Anyway, that 1863 textbook was clearly blatantly promoting white supremacy.
Also consider the textbook “Know Alabama”, used in Alabama from the mid-1950s through the 1970s.
The way “Know Alabama” described forced labor was incredibly inaccurate.
From “Textbook ‘Know Alabama’ Justified S****ry, Praised Confederacy to Schoolchildren” by Scott Morris
Found on birminghamwatch dot org
For fare more accurate descriptions of racial forced labor in Alabama, see “Former Alabama s****s tell their tales in university archives” by Andrew J. Yawn on the Montgomery Advisor.
For example, from the account of Bill Russell, who was held in captivity in Alabama,
From “The Destruction of Black Civilization”, pages 26-27, by Chancellor Williams
Amazing, a professor, advocating British imperialism, admitted that the Africans had a democratic system by which they could remove from office kings and chiefs who made laws that displeased them.