History

Small Bites Friday Five 10-09-20:

20-30m – Do some academic reading with this UCLA-Haas Institute article. Learn vocabulary like racial anxiety and stereotype threat. Reflect on how those phrases can play out in the lives of folks like me.

15-20m – Take this quiz, answer these questions from Bias Busters, then ask yourself how much of this was in the history books you were taught from.

10-15m – Learn about the legacy of Andrew Jackson—the man on our $20 bill—in particular the Indian Removal Act, from the perspective of those he removed. Then look at the life expectancy and economic standards of the descendants of those whose land was taken.  

5-10m – Catch up on older episodes of #SmallBites, go to the sidebar and actually use the links. I see your external clicks, and y’all are not doing the work.

0-5m – Read about how inoculation was introduced to the US by Onesimus, an African who told of the traditional practice in use for centuries. Then use the same article to learn something new about the omitted contributions of melanated Americans.

As I began to reflect on what I would say for this week’s people’s choice topic, I thought about all the things I have learned while researching for my books and for #SmallBites. I thought of how little I learned in 18 years of formal education. This piece was the result of that reflection.

A Spoken Word Piece on Bias in Curriculum

Fourscore and 7 years ago our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation…

They told me all about it but they didn’t tell me that…

There were already 600 nations already here. 60 million people here for centuries, people that were forcibly removed: Choctaw, Sioux, Caddo, Powhatan; taken, forced from their lands to make way for this great new nation that would be a whole lot greater, if we would reckon with the blood on our hands because

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty even as my people were bound in chains, picking cotton on the land taken from the first Americans who died as they were marched west away from the land they knew; and then further west as Gold was discovered.

They told me of a great president Andrew Jackson, enshrined on our twenties.

But they didn’t tell me that he was responsible the Indian Removal Act that took the land so that White immigrants could profit from cotton and gold and pass that wealth on to generations, while the great nations and descendants of chiefs live on in poverty and die earlier than Americans of non-indigenous descent.

They told me to learn those words, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, but they didn’t tell me that equality did not extend to human beings forced to work for, cook for, nurse for and even bear children for the very people who bought and sold them.

They didn’t tell me about rape culture in the colonial days and they didn’t tell me that the Atlantic Slave Trade was no more than a whitewashed phrase for kidnapping and child rape. They didn’t tell me that that it was a Holocaust that killed an estimate of 40 free Africans out of every 100 that was kidnapped; every man, woman and child. They didn’t tell me that it was a holocaust that has caused intergenerational scars and trauma that Black communities are still recovering from.

They told me of the Emancipation Proclamation but they did not teach me that my Indigenous brothers and sisters were separated from their families and taught in “Christian” boarding schools that stripped them of their culture to rid our country of the “Indian problem”. They told me a thing or two about the Civil Rights Era, but they did not tell me that 10 years after Martin was murdered, Indian children were still humiliated and chastised for their lack of ‘assimilation’.

They told me to learn those words, Four score and seven years ago our forefathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. But they did not teach me that the accomplishments of my out-of-slavery forefathers were important.

Yes, they told me about Martin and Rosa and Harriet and I am glad. They told me about them every year. But they did not teach me about

O. W. Gurley

Garrett Morgan

Susan La Flaesche Picotte

Thomas David Petite

José Mojica

Carlos Graef Fernández

Thomas Jennings

Fannie Lou Hamer

Luis Negrón

Madame C. J. Walker

Sister Rosetta Thorpe

#Saytheirname.

Say them in your STEM classes and in your history classes. Say them in February, but also in March, April and throughout the year. Teach your children Lincoln’s famous words; Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal and then show them by what you teach them that they are not invisible, no matter what the textbook says–or doesn’t say. Show them that bias in curriculum does not exist in YOUR classroom. Teach them they have a long heritage; not only of Slavery, reservations and immigration camps.

The lion is always the villain until he has his own historian. –African Proverb

Be the change and help your students “red and yellow, black and white” know the rich tapestry of history in your class. Because if there is still bias in your curriculum, you just aren’t trying hard enough.