Uncomfortable. Disquieted. Disturbed. Anxious. Upset. Angry. Sad.
Emotions some elected officials do not want our children to feel when they learn of our past. Somehow they believe that the teaching of our history – which directly affects our today – can be taught like a kumbaya moment that all is well.
But, ignorance has never been bliss and eventually, our children will learn – whether by traveling, reading, watching documentaries or meeting others -as we have learned through life.
A few years ago, I attended the funeral for the father of a close friend. The stories of his life were riveting, but more importantly, they bore witness to the persistent and ugly reality of racial discrimination. Opportunities that were deliberately denied him; actions that were meant to humiliate and keep him in his place. But, he never gave up; he prevailed as best he could.
As one of the few white persons in the audience, I was horrified. Uncomfortable. Disquieted. Disturbed. Anxious. Upset. Angry. Sad. My thoughts raced beyond his life to the centuries of what my race had done to his: cracking the whip on the backs of his ancestors; chaining them to ships and forcing them to pick cotton, hands bleeding, for hours in the scorching heat; raping their women and forcing them to raise children, half their own, as slaves; inflaming fear by burning crosses in their yards; lynching them; forcing them to use bathrooms that were inconvenient; humiliating them by not serving them in restaurants or allowing them to stay in hotels; redlining neighborhoods so they could not live in houses or apartments of their choice; arresting them at young ages, then funneling them into a school to prison pipeline; imposing harsher sentences for drug offenses; demanding taxes or answers to tests in order to vote.
So moved was I by my friend’s father’s history, that I apologized to my black friends who sat with me. And I continue to apologize because even though I may not have done these things, my race did. We created the situation whereby families over centuries were broken up; where home equity was not built up; where opportunities to advance in education or career were denied. We did that and must now reckon with the consequences. But, to do so, we must educate ourselves and our children.
We must teach about the internment of Japanese citizens in World War II; the ship filled with hundreds of Jewish refugees that was turned around, sending them to their slaughter during the Holocaust; the discrimination of countless waves of immigrants; the broken promises to Native Americans; the denial of rights to women; the cruel policies towards the LGBTQ community. All that, in addition to our teaching of slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, segregation, Jim Crow. We do not educate to shame some children, but to educate and enlighten ALL children. And in doing so, we may make some children and adults Uncomfortable. Disquieted. Disturbed. Anxious. Upset. Angry. Sad. But, in order to create a future where all can thrive, without discrimination or recrimination, we must confront our past. Understand it. Learn from it.
John F. Kennedy once said, “The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.” Let us all, then, strive for knowledge and truth.