The Cliché of "Black History Is American History"

 

I am glad that people are talking about Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma and that they are surprised about the origin of Memorial Day. I follow chats about canonical texts and am glad that Black authors are cited in lists that meet the requirement for inclusion in canonical instruction, though many of my freshman students don’t remember the work of Black authors in high school. It goes to show that as much as people like to profess that Black history is American history, they don’t put it into practice where it counts. When I examine textbooks and look at standards, the Black experience is additive. I would rather not have a Black History Month because I honestly believe that Black history is American history, but when the resources and standards treat it as additive, having a month of focused celebration is better than nothing at all.

 

What people don’t understand is that the “African American” experience is not like the Italian American, Irish American, or German American experience. The Italians, Irish, and Germans brought their heritage with them and preserved what they could in the manner they saw fit as they became "American". The African in African American was forcibly stripped away. Yes, some of the concrete, behavioral, or symbolic components of African culture before enslavement survived, but that was not for lack of trying to snuff it out in order to subjugate.

 

The African American experience that we know today is uniquely American, but it is possible for students to graduate from a U.S. high school career and college ready and have no understanding of African American history. It is not required. In high school, my daughters were on a competitive college track where AP or honors classes were preferred. It was interesting to me that they read less diverse instructional texts than friends on more career-oriented tracks. All students can get away with a section in a textbook about slavery and its economic focus. Abraham Lincoln is the center of emancipation and the Civil Rights movement is more about dreams and coming together. African Americans spent a century building and living in a “separate but equal” society with an amazing AMERICAN story that goes untold. It is as if we were less than or invisible in the curriculum if we weren’t actively struggling to be integrated into white society, but we also struggled and achieved in a parallel society that is also American despite Jim Crow etiquette and second-class treatment. A parallel society that highlights the so-called American ideals of hard work and perseverance. It included schools, businesses, banks, and professional organizations that operated with dignity and pride while unfortunately respecting the psychologically damaging social rules of American race.  

 

I am team Frederick Douglass so I will never say that the American idea was rotten to its core. He used it to argue the abolition of slavery. But I will say that Americans spent centuries building a country that didn’t live up to the ideals embodied in that idea, this experiment. I love learning about Africa and the ancestry that was stripped away, but I recognize that my story is uniquely American unlike other immigrants. And no American student should be considered educated without knowing its unique nature.