Sankofa

When I was in school, I learned about the principle of Sankofa - a bird with an egg in its beak - reaching back to bring the egg into the future.   This is the iconography of going back to the past to retrieve something; a proverb similar to the saying of George Santayana, those who don't remember the past are doomed to repeat it.

I don't have to be reminded of America's past; I live it everyday.  I am the descendant of American slaves, with chocolate brown skin and hair that curls in water or the sun.  I walk in racism and bigotry, as ever prescient as that in the antebellum period, both covert and overt, daily.  I live with the soft bigotry of low expectations and the soft bigotry of no expectations on a daily basis.  I am learned, educated, world traveled yet ostracized, doubted, and ignored on a daily basis.  America's past slaps me in the face every morning when I wake up and lulls me to sleep every night.

I don't teach slavery incorrectly as I am the descendant of slaves.  I can't.  The only time I have to gloss over the details is when I have to contend with white fragility or white guilt; I can't teach how really bad things were because I will be perceived as racist.  I have been told not to teach Eyes on the Prize II because it was too radical; not to teach about Malcolm X because he was violent; not to teach about the Black Panthers because they were communists.  The only common denominator - my administrators were white.  You could ask my students, even from twenty years ago, what was the cause of the Civil War and they would say slavery.  Hell, I didn't even know there was any other cause OTHER than slavery!  States' Rights, you say?  Well..... true, but what were the states trying  to preserve?  .......  I'm sorry, I didn't hear you.  Can you say that louder?  Slavery and white supremacy?  Oh!  So, you see, it all comes back to slavery.  And let's not kid ourselves.  Abraham Lincoln would have kept slavery entrenched if he could have saved the Union any other way.  So, while emancipation for the slaves EVENTUALLY became the moral reason for the war, it was never the total cause of the war; just an afterthought in the foreground.  For example, the Emancipation Proclamation DID free the slaves, but only in the areas that were in rebellion - and Lincoln did not have presidential authority over those areas.  Slaves in the border states were still enslaved and they did not gain their freedom until the 13th Amendment.  So, huh?  It's kind of like Homer Simpson and Beer.  Slavery: the cause of and solution to all of the United States many problems

I'm not saying this to put anyone down or to rag on anyone's teaching.  I am saying that oftentimes our cultural and social backgrounds prepare us for the type of teaching and knowledge that we impart to our students.  Black Americans, are accused of bringing up the past too much.  We are using it for victimization; we should get over it; we should be "grateful" that we are Americans at all and because we have to work and get along with people from all stripes, we grin and bear it.

So what is the purpose of sanitizing history?   The purposes are not for the victims.  The purpose of sanitizing and revisionist history is for the victors.  In America, we erected Confederate statues not because the South won the war; the statues were put in place to perpetuate white supremacy during the heart of the Civil Rights movement.  To remind blacks that a war was fought not for their freedom, but to keep them enslaved.  Just this minute, I read a story on the New York Times on the suspension of several white fraternity members who disrespected the historical marker commemorating the death of Emmet Till, by posing in front of the sign with firearms.   The murder of Emmet Till is a perfect example of the failure to properly educate students on the history of this country.  Although it was called "one of the darkest and most heinous periods in our history," most high school students don't know the story, have never seen the picture that was published in Jet Magazine in 1955, and do not know how the murder of that one young boy jumpstarted the Civil Rights movement.  How callus do you have to be to pose in front of that marker with guns?

To get a bit philosophical, and again, this is my understanding of these items, I would like to briefly talk about Saussure, Foucault and the use of semiotics and discourse.  We use language and symbols as ways to create meaning and how we speak on those symbols is our discourse, which is usually shaped by those in power.  We have built up certain symbols in America and given them these superficial meanings - and by that I mean, the Flag means Freedom - and have built up national mythologies surrounding them.  We do this regionally - the Confederate Flag means Southern Freedom and we have done this culturally.  However, our most salient symbols have all been constructed without the input of all the people - usually by those in some seat of power.  The power structure in America has consisted of the descendants of Europeans who have amassed great power and wealth in this country on the backs of the poor and Colored (of all "other" nationalities), and it has long been in their interest to not only sow division but to perpetuate their own greatness.

 It is why all nations depend on historical revisionism as major parts of their educational systems.  You may call it propaganda, sure, and it is.  Most historical revisionism seeks to take the worst atrocities of its people, whitewash it and find some purpose in it, whether to make themselves look good or to fulfill some political agenda.  I do not practice historical revisionism, whether its Afrocentric, Eurocentric, or American-centric.  Back to do earlier comment about the young Ole Miss students.  I do not fault them.  I fault their history teacher for not being forceful enough about the atrocities faced by African-Americans in the African-American nadir period of United States history, if she even knew the story at all, to convey the story of that period to these young men.  That story is not essential to her; personally or maybe even professionally.  For me, I love the story of Emmet Till. Not only does it drive home the impetus for the Civil Rights movement, but it also hits home with the students as well.  Anyone - as long as they were black - could have been embroiled in the Civil Rights movement.  Even them.  This evil had no face, as long as you were black.

The reason why my white administrators did not want me to teach about the radical phase of the African-American experience (which was not radical at all, look at what is even named!) was to specifically NOT teach the students about their history.  It was to create docile African Americans who would not feel antagonistic towards whites.  I get it.  But one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.  Paul Robeson, Bayard Rustin and James Baldwin, all radical in ideas and knowledge, were not overtly radical men, but yet, none are taught in high schools as Civil Rights activists, unless you have a teacher that chooses to teach about these men, like me.  I don't teach them as "radicals" either.  They were men who cared about their people.  

No other subject in American schools can be as easily manipulated as the social studies.  It is open to revisionism, propaganda, abuse, and malignant interpretation.  It is the breeding ground of bias.  It is the subject where the TYPE of patriotism you will nurture throughout your life is developed.  It is so VERY important for the future of the nation that what is taught in Social Studies classes is accurate, fair, and representative of all the people's of the nation.  .

Yet, the story of historical revisionism - for that is what it is - changing the narrative surrounding certain events or purposely leaving out the history and contributions of one group into the national story, is also a story of cultural relativism.  I do it too.  I don't care about the Civil War Battles, for instance.  My students know a war was fought -  so, why do we need to fight the battles, who cares?  Who won?  The North?  Good.  Let's move on.  Yet, my history teacher in high school LOVED the Civil War.  My mother (who is also a teacher) would ask me where we were in the book?  "At Jackson!" she'd say,  "I'm only on Washington.  But it doesn't matter, I'll catch up by the time Pohlonski gets to the Civil War."  Sure enough, we'd be on the Battle of Antietam and she'd be on the Progressives.  Why did my history teacher crawl to a stop on Civil War Battles?  He had a relative who fought for the North during the Civil War.

So, I think that as history teachers, we must fight this impulse of what I am going to call "historical relativism."  We teach what we are interested in, based on our own personal, cultural interests.  As teachers, though we believe we are doing the right thing, we may not be.  We may be teaching individuals therefore who are not capable of understanding the world around it, because they only see it through the eyes of the teacher's biases.  We must try to see what our students need; how they will be and make the world better when they leave our classrooms.  I must do it as well.  I tend to be dismissive of things that are not necessary to the experiences of the minorities in the Americas.  Maybe I should teach a Civil War battle, or teach about Vasco de Gama, or teach about Operation Overlord.  I'm not an Ameri-centric teacher, even when I am teaching US History (my WWI unit uses the World History book, not the US book - I teach it from the European perspective since it made no never mind to America).  I am an American experience teacher; what has the American experience meant to the people that lived here - not necessarily the history to America.  I'm a historical relativisionist too.  I need to do better.