#HistorySoWhite: 17 Reasons We Should #FightForOurHistory In Schools

As part of Black History Month at Glen Allen High School in Henrico County, Virginia, Professor Ravi K. Perry from Virginia Commonwealth University showed the African American Policy Forum's Unequal Opportunity Race video. The video was shown to facilitate a discussion on racial inequality. Despite its accurate illustrations of historical events and contemporary racial inequities, the Unequal Opportunity Race has been demeaned as a "white guilt video" by a vocal minority in Henrico County and national outlets such as Fox News. Though that interpretation of the video is both misguided and unfortunate, Micky Ogburn's reaction is far more disturbing. Denouncing the video as divisive, Ogburn, the School Board's Chair, proclaimed that "school leaders have been instructed not to use the video in our schools."

Since the outcry, the African American Policy Forum has been under attack through racist harassment. Some of the ugly comments are now public and have included statements such as: "I believe groups such as yourselves promote racism, not cure it. I don't buy into the claim by most people of color and weak single minded white liberals as to the 'systemic racism' existing in this country.

The Henrico County controversy has brought to the surface long under-addressed questions about the state of history education in the U.S. In the words of Law Professor Sumi Cho, who has commented on the ban: "Teaching this unspeakable past and its implicated present is no easy task. But it is an important one that is urgently needed and desperately desired by open-minded high school students of every color. The video is “controversial” because it points out some inconvenient racial truths."

"In 2013, it took just one letter from an angry parent to convince a North Carolina school district to remove Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man from school libraries in the county. A short board meeting prompted by a single letter — describing one of the most significant pieces of Black literature in American history as 'filthy' — was all that five members of the Randolph County Board of Education needed to feel justified in voting to ban the novel." So read a 2013 Color of Change Petition which called for lifting the ban a North Carolina School district placed on Invisible Man. Due to mounting pressure by the petition, as well as increased social media outrage, the ban on the book was ultimately lifted.

Still, there are other books by authors of color that continue to be challenged or outright banned, including:

* The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie

* The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison

* Beloved by Toni Morrison

* Bless Me Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya

* The Color Purple, by Alice Walker

* I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou

* Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston

* Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison

* Native Son, by Richard Wright

* Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin

For more click here.

As reported in the Huffington Post by Roque Planas, "in 2010, Arizona conservatives spearheaded the passage of a law targeting a controversial Mexican-American Studies program in Tucson public schools that they said bred resentment against whites."

State of Arizona House of Representatives Bill 2281 prohibits, "courses that taught the overthrow of the government or bred ethnic resentment, among other things." In total seven books were banned and "almost all of them U.S. Latino or Latin American authors.". The books included Critical Race Theory by law Professor Richard Delgado, Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire, and Chicano! The History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement by Arturo Rosales

Despite advocacy by supporters of Bill 2281, "independent researchers and a state-commissioned audit, by contrast, credited the programs with improving student achievement and fostering critical thinking skills."

In January of this year, English teacher Jeena Lee-Walker was fired from the High School for Arts, Imagination and Inquiry after administrators feared that her lesson on the Central Park Five case would “rile up” black students. Administrators warned Lee-Walker that her lessons could create little “riots."

In response to her firing, Lee-Walker commented for the Daily News that: “I was stunned...I was kind of like, the facts are the facts. This is what happened. These boys went to jail and lost 14, 18 years of their lives. How can you say that in a more balanced way?”

According to NBC Washington, three teachers from Howard Middle School were fired for teaching "black history lessons beyond what’s in the curriculum." In addition to being fired the teachers were escorted out the building in front of the Howard students.

Parents complained of the firing of the teachers noting that accurate and enriched history lessons build confidence in students. Lateefah Bilal, a grandmother who heads Parents in Action, Howard Middle’s parent group, commented that "if you know your culture, if you know from whence you came, it tends to build your self-esteem." Moreover, parents explained the ironic significance of stifling Black history at a middle school located on the campus of a historically black university.

According to the Daily Beast, Sireen Hashem was fired from Hunterdon Central Regional High School for showing her "classes a film clip about Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai."

Hashem has now filed suit against the school and has described her experiences, detailing that as "a self-described Muslim American of Palestinian descent...[Hashem] says she was prohibited from mentioning Islam or the Middle East in her history classes after parents and local religious leaders complained about her to school administrators."

When structural racism and the history of people of color are left off curriculums, schools become complicit in fostering an environment where racism thrives and where students of color are vulnerable to alienation and attack. In January of this year, six female senior students at Desert Vista High School spelled out the n-word with their lettered shirts.

Rachel Steigerwald, one of the girls featured in the photograph, has recently publicly apologized saying, "I have love for everyone in my heart. I am not a racist and I'm asking everyone for forgiveness.”

Steigerwald's apology is especially dangerous. While participatign in an overtly racist action, she denies her status as a "racist." This form of apologizing for action, but not personal accountability, is a popular cop out. As Senior Huffington Post Braden Goyette writes:

"The problem is that what's "in your heart" and the effect of one's public actions are entirely different things, especially given that thousands of individual words and actions combine to make a larger pattern...[w]hat's at stake...is how people who have every intention of being "good" can perpetuate racism...So even though nobody wants to admit to doing something racist -- especially not in public -- the best thing is not to hide behind these kinds of weak excuses, and just apologize without a bunch of caveats."

Schools should not only teach students about entrenched structural racism and the varied histories of people of color, but they should be tasked with ensuring that every student grows up to the best (non-offending, non-racist) American citizen. The risk is that the "I'm sorry, but I'm not racist" reasoning becomes entrenched in adulthood as pathetic and non-healing (pre-packaged) excuses for harmful and racialized behavior.

In 2013, Vanessa VanDyke, a 12-year-old student from Orange County, was being bullied in school over her natural hair. Instead of addressing the root of the problem (her classmate's insensitivity), school officials threatened to expel her if she did not cut or straighten her hair. Administrators at the pre-teen's school Faith Christian Academy commented that her hair was a "distraction."

In the same year, 7-year-old Tiana Parker from Tulsa, Oklahoma, was forced to switch school after "school officials told [her father] that her hairstyle did not look “presentable.” Tiana Parker was wearing dreadlocks.

When schools fail to teach a holistic history of all people, bullying and oppressive, white-informed normative values are adopted as neutral policies that marginalize and demonize the heritage of people of color.

In September 2015, "a Native American child was sent home from school for wearing a traditional Mohawk hairstyle because the school said it was against dress code."

Raw Story reports that "the Utah second grader is of Seneca and Paiute heritage and chose the hairstyle because it is commonly worn by Seneca Nation members. But this week his mother received a call from Arrowhead Elementary officials in St. George, Utah, saying she needed to come pick the boy up. He was only allowed to return after a Seneca tribal representative sent the school a letter confirming the haircut is traditional."

Moreover, in 2012, a seventh-grade student was expelled in Wisconsin for "for using her native language at school." It was reported that the student, "interpreted the words 'Hello' and 'I love you' and then added how to say 'thank you' when talking to two girls in class...She said [her teacher] overheard and 'slammed her hands down on the desk and stated, 'You are not to speak like that. How do I know you're not saying something bad? How would you like if I spoke in Polish and you didn't understand?'"

Criminalizing Native American heritage is not new in U.S. schools. Beginning in 1860, Native American children were forced into "Indian boarding schools [where they were] taught history with a definite white bias" and forced to assimilate to a burgeoning white culutre.

In a 2015 article entitled "I’m black, and I just went to a reunion at my Confederate flag-loving high school," Fusion writer and comedian Akilah Hughes recalled the experience of attending Boone County High School, whose "school mascot is a Confederate general." As one of only "80 Black kids...out of a total student population of around 2,000," Hughes details the " forgotten anxieties from growing up in an area bubbling with racial tension." For example Hughes, describes kids refusing to remove rebel flag imagergy (on account of "heritage"), students wearing "The South Will Rise Again" t-shirts, and poignantly "all of the pep rallies and football games [Hughes] attended, at which black students and athletes had to cheer for Mr. Rebel while wearing shirts that read “Rebel Pride.”

Boone County High School is not alone in utilizing racially offensive iconography at the heart of school spirit. In California, Coachella Valley High School's longstanding mascot, the Arab is a "big-nosed Arab sporting a kaffiay." As LA Weekly has reported, "at high school football games...students don...Arab mask[s] and appear with [belly dancers]."

There have also been several high schools with formerly racialized mascots, that have been changed in recent years. These include the Akron's East High School Orientals, Texas' Robstown High School Cotton Pickers, Dallas' Frisco Fighting Coons, and Illinois' Peking High School C****s

Last year, Emilie Olsen, a 13-year-old Asian American Fairfield Middle School student, committed suicided due to "continually [being] bullied, harassed, assaulted, battered and discriminated against in school, and further bullied and harassed online because of her race, national origin and gender."

Olsen's parents have, in response, "filed a federal lawsuit Monday that accuses nine Fairfield City Schools officials, the school district and the school board of knowing the 13-year-old was bullied at school and not acting to stop it before she committed suicide last year." The complaint by Olsen's parents list the gruesome details of Emilie's torture at school. One student followed young Emilie to the bathroom, gave her a razor, and told her to end her life. The lawsuit seeks to "reform...the Fairfield City Schools practices and policies for responding to bullying, harassment, assault, battery and discrimination."

This year at Boston Latin School (BLS), students have organized to fight back against "a hostile racial environment for Black students at the prestigious exam school." BLS students organized a hashtag campaign ( #BlackAtBLS) to reveal the racist bullying and harassment they have faced on a daily basis.

In Crawford, Kentucky, "Milena Clarke, age 14 and an adoptee of Asian Kazakh heritage, says she has been harassed because of her race for the better part of two years in the basketball program of the Russell Independent School District in far Eastern Kentucky." In response to Clarke's treatment, the "Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) filed two complaints, one with the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and another with the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education."

Kori Dobbs, an Albany High School student, faced increased racist bullying after being elected class president. Dobbs was attacked with the n-word and students posting tweets that "the senior prom would include malt liquor and have a ghetto theme."

And two Texas Black sisters had to change schools after relentless racist bullying, where students levied hateful comments such as "Die Fuckin “n***** sisters” ... Bitches!!!!" and "Whites will always rule this town and school!!!!"

A New York Daily News articled reports that "a new survey of Asian American students in city middle and high schools found that half have been bullied about their race or religion at school." Bronx teen Pawanpreet Singh, who was profiled in the article, "wears a turban in keeping with his Sikh faith — and has been tormented about it at school. At one point, kids called him names nearly every day. 'Thing on your head,' 'Osama' and 'terrorist' were the most common, he said."

In light of the report, advocates have recommended that "schools work to educate kids and staff before incidents happen." Khin Mai Aung of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund has argued that “part of the role of the school is to teach students, early on, that that’s not acceptable.”

Sporting events at high schools around the countries have been notorious sites of racism. For example, McAdory High School in Alabama came under scrutiny for a "sign...directed at their opponents in the second round of the state play-offs." The sign read: "Hey Indians, Get ready to leave in a trail of tears round 2." Though the school has since apologized, critics have called attention the racist event, citing that "an estimated 2,000-6,000 Cherokee died of exposure, starvation, and disease, during the ethnic cleansing event now known as the Trail of Tears." After the event, McAdory High School students defended the banner by "minimiz[ing] the apology released by administrators, and in turn, the genocide that happened to Native Americans. Some even have the gall to say 'they aren’t sorry.'"

Such events are not isolated. High school students at Sullivan, Missouri donned blackface at an intramural school football game. Students at Waverly Central High school also donned Blackface and reenacted Chris Brown beating Rihanna. Student wrestlers at Phillipsburg High School posed with black dummy hanging by its neck. And at Buffalo's Kenmore East High School, a girls basketball team was suspended for a racist team chant that went something like "One, two, three, [N-word]!" Critics of these occurences have noted that "a callous attitude toward matters of race seems to be all the rage these days."

In November of 2015, a Berkeley High School student posted a racist message threatening a public lynching at the school. The message referred to the Ku Klux Klan, using derogatory language related to African-Americans and threatened a "public lynching." And in the following weeks, "over winter break, a noose made from string was found hanging from a tree on the campus." In response, students opposing the blatant and violent racism staged a walk-out.

Also in California, Analy High School students were accused of threatening Evan Mack. The Press Democrat reported on the story and detailed some of the violent threats launched against Mack including the following:

"When Mack asked if the boy was a 'white supremacist f—,' the poster replied, 'Yea I’m tired of you f— people … Just because your (sic) a n— and think like that doesn’t mean I do but I will punch you in the f— mouth.' A different student then sent Mack a private message on Facebook two days later saying, 'Now I’m gonna rip the black off you myself now ... You wait and see.'"

Violent threats against students of color are also not uncommon. Most will remember in 2006 Black students at Jena High School in Central Louisiana were faced with increased racialized threats. One morning "three nooses were hanging from the tree" outside the school. The students who fought back against the racial threats became later known as the Jena 6. Importantly for this conversation, school officials failed to intervene in the racial tension of campus. The school's superintendent notoriously dismissed the nooses as a "prank."

In 2012, a Georgia elementary school sent "139 fourth grade students [home with a] math problem referencing slavery." The Huffington Post reports that the problem given to students read: "A plantation owner had 100 slaves. If three-fifths of them are counted for representation, how many slaves will be counted?” School officials said "the question was meant to educate students on both social studies and math, and that the teacher would not be punished."

The incident was "reminiscent of a similar controversy at another Georgia school... [where] students were sent home with math word problems using explicit examples of slavery." These problems included problems such as: "Each tree had 56 oranges," the first question starts. "If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?" and "If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week?"