Dear Anti-Racist Parent:
Over the past seven or eight years, I’ve been on a journey to relearn history – you know, leaving behind the history I was taught and trying to grasp the real truth of the events that have shaped our nation’s history. At the same time, I have three elementary-age children. They attend a very diverse school (white children are in the minority, although staff and teachers are primarily white) and I want to encourage their teachers to be sensitive to history’s real events: speaking of those that were resistors (Cesar Chavez, MLK, Rosa Parks, etc.) is great, but I don’t think they are getting a clear idea of what those resistors were really resisting. They are still coming home with projects that require them to create Native American costumes with brown paper bags (all to re-create the first Thanksgiving), but not with the understanding that the Native Americans might just have a different view of the events of that time.
I am currently organizing to get these teachers to an anti-racism workshop that spends a lot of time talking about history, but I’m afraid that if there are no tools that I can show them that exist to help them teach differently, that it’s going to be an uphill battle.
Here’s my question: Are there anti-racist history curriculum options out there? For any school grades? I know there are a books on the subject, but I don’t even know where to start looking for written curriculum.
Kris V.
From the editor:
Brava, Kris! Good for you! I think I have said here before that I think many of our nation’s problems–racial and otherwise–can be traced to our pitiful grasp of our true history. I am frightened sometimes by how little people know, particularly about where people of color fit in our nation’s history.
Case in point: Yesterday I was on a Web site reading about the dust-up over “the N word” on “The View.” During her debate with Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Whoopi Goldberg mentioned that her mother was not allowed to vote. A few online commenters were confused by Goldberg’s assertion. One wrote that since the 14th amendment was ratified in 1868 and women got the right to vote in 1920, there should have been no barrier to the comedian’s mother voting. “Am I missing something?” She asked. “Yeah,” I thought, “Reconstruction. Jim Crow. Sheesh.” I wanted to scream, particularly for my paternal grandparents, who also could not vote for most of their lives (and I am far younger than Whoopi).
But I digress…
I don’t know of an anti-racist history curriculum, but I’ll bet some of ARP’s savvy readers can help. There is a growing list of good anti-racist resources. Check out the Share Your Anti-Racist Resources thread for some tools for fighting this important battle.
Readers, what help can you offer Kris?
P.S. What will it take to convince educators that “dressing up like Indians” for Thanksgiving is as offensive and ignorant as black face? Different Native American tribes wear specific regalia with cultural meaning–the clothes are not costumes–for varying purposes. Just once, I’d like to hear about a school inviting a representative from a local Indian tribe to speak to a class about the impact of Manifest Destiny on indigenous peoples. Sorry–the part about the paper bag costumes got to me.
Tami
I don’t know of actual curriculum, but my goal is to supplement, supplement, supplement. The age of children makes all the difference. Books like “Lies My Teacher Told Me” and its sequel about National Monuments/Parks (I’m still reading both of these), and “A People’s History of the U.S.” are good sources for teenagers, ambitious middle schoolers, and parents/teachers. I would love to see excerpts handed out in classrooms, or used as a way to jump-start discussions.
I’m also a fan of first-person accounts – essays, stories, photographs that show the reality on the ground behind many dry-to-the-average-student history “facts.”
I hear you both on the Thanksgiving myth (and that’s what they are, myths). I am going to go off the first time my kid gets a “headdress” assignment, I know. For younger kids this is where the Net can come into play. There are links to lists of Thanksgiving myths out there, and Wampsutta’s speech (that he didn’t get to actually give) to Mayflower descendants in 1970 should really be required reading for middle-school students. [http://www.blackcommentator.com/207/207_day_of_mourning_wampsutta.html]
Fiction books, when done right, were great supplements to my white-washed history. Mildred Taylor’s awesome series of novels and short stories (I just found out about there! WOOT!) set in the Jim Crow south was helpful to me in understanding the Great Depression, Black Codes and Jim Crow, education disparities, interracial relationships pre-Loving V. Virginia, Northern racism, rural farming and land ownership issues, voting rights and judicial system biases, sharecropping and migrant worker conditions, and so on. What was truly helpful is that my US history classes always rushed through the Depression and the decades before in an effort to get to WWII. This helped fill in the gaps.
Wow. I didn’t realize how much I got out of those stories until just now. And I haven’t read the 2 first books in years.
Check out these websites for multiracial, multicultural, and antiracist curriculum ideas:
http://www.rethinkingschools.org
Quarterly magazine and other publications committed to equity and to the vision that public education is central to the creation of a humane, caring, multiracial democracy
http://www.teachingforchange.org
Provides teachers and parents with the tools to transform schools into centers of justice where students learn to read, write and change the world
http://www.edchange.org
Articles, workshops, and consulting dedicated to equity and justice in schools and society.
http://www.tolerance.org
Founded by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Teaching Tolerance provides educators with free educational materials that promote respect for differences and appreciation of diversity in the classroom and beyond. NOTE: I strongly dislike the word ‘tolerance’ when used to describe an exemplary relationship between differing groups of people. However, Teaching Tolerance offers educational resources with the ‘softest’ approach of the links listed here—which may be where your child’s school is able to start.
I have two recommendations, one I’ve read myself (and reviewed once upon a time for Sojourner) and one I have read a review about in an African American studies journal.
*Everyday Acts Against Racism: Raising Children in a Multiracial World — Maureen Reddy, editor.
–From what I remember of the book, it is a really great collection of essay by parents (some of whom are also teachers) who talk about raising their children very consciously in an anti-racist manner. Some of the essays gave very practical (and useful) ideas for how to have conversations about race and racism, ones that I’m sure could be adapted into lesson plans for a classroom.
*Beyond Heroes and Holidays: A Practical Guide to K 12 Anti Racist, Multicultural Education and Staff Development — Enid Lee, editor.
–From what I recall from the book review, this book provides lesson plans that go beyond the “It’s a small world” feel of multiculturalism and addresses a variety of subjects that also go beyond race and address issues of homophobia and sexism in addition to racism.
Finally, The Mixed Heritage Center (http://www.mixedheritagecenter.org/) may be a place where you can post/ask for lesson plans and advice for how to work with your school district and teachers for developing anti-racist curriculum.
I also found some good resources listed with an article I wrote last Thanksgiving about my fear about what my kids would learn in school. http://www.slcan.org/news/news_07_11a.html
A great article on Deconstructing Thanksgiving is available at
http://www.oyate.org/resources.html, put out by a group of Natives looking to ensure a more accurate portrayal of their peoples. Also includes books from Native perspective and books of primary sources from the colonial perspective.
This isn’t a curriculum, but a pretty good lesson for adults who need some information: Paul Kivel’s book ‘Uprooting Racism’ has a really compelling breakdown of American history regarding how it has affected different ‘races.’ I didn’t realize I’d be getting such a history lesson until I was reading it – I learned a lot!
It would be good info to share with older kids, and good reference background when teaching younger kids.
Some of the resources already mentioned are great. I’d also highly recommend the 10-volume series called A History of Us by Joy Hakim. It’s probably written at middle school reading level, and is a great resource the presents history in a way I think you would like.
i’ve begun reading “A People’s History of the United States”. This is history from the perspective of the people it affected. Not a curriculum, but could easily be made into one.
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