White Parents, I am Holding You Accountable Once Again

 

"They tried to bury us, they didn't know we were seeds."

As I curated my son's homeschool curriculum for this school year, I made sure it reflected not only their interests but their heritage. They wanted to learn about space, we would read about the first Black man to go to space (an Afro-Cubano who space traveled via the Soviet Union). When I asked my 7 and 10 year old why the US hadn't sent the first Black man to space or even to the moon? They responded, because the US didn't want to acknowledge that we had Civil Rights. 

I realized everything our kids know about racism, social justice, living as a child of both Black and Latino descent means they don't learn about either culture in school. Our stories are glossed over if not completely omitted. Textbooks hail Martin Luther King Jr. without mentioning how he was viewed by the US government as a domestic terrorist while he was alive. The books don't even mention Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman's gun, or the Black Panthers. Cesar Chavez is a footnote. Marsha P. Johnson is nowhere to be found. Mendez v. Westminster is not even discussed while Brown v. Board is taught as an optimistic inspiration. The fact that a majority of Black teachers were fired and replaced with white educators is left out. Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales, and all he did to fight for equality, voting rights and the desegregation of schools is not included in those pages.

This is not the first time I've encountered the white washing of education. For the past five years, I've designed my college courses to reflect the students I teach. Those students are usually not affluent or white or male. So why would I have them read prominently white authors? Why would I have them purchase a textbook, which costs upwards of $100 for 16 weeks, to learn about someone who stole their land, or bought and sold their ancestors as property? Why should they be subjected to retraumatization? All so that the great lie can continue? History books include fables like, the US became post racial once Obama was elected and the Native Americans willingly moved over to let the colonists settle where they wanted. Why teach them a history where the only civil rights movement was African-American's and even that, was swift and painless? The fight for our rights is one we are continuing to have today. Black, Latino, Indigenous and other People of Color are still fighting but if you never learned the history than, the news right now probably seems out of left field and not a seeded social issue.

Image by: Ambar del Moral

This is why my kid's curriculum is filled with Black, Latino, Indigenous, and other People of Color's history. It isn't alt history but our history. They will learn about the hero's who fight for climate change and how that discussion has been raised by Indigenous communities for centuries but why are we only hearing of Leonardo DiCaprio and Greta Thunberg? They will learn that their parents were able to marry only because of the brave who fought anti-miscegenation laws. They will learn all the inventions that were brought to us by Black, Latino and Indigenous creators. They will see themselves in this curriculum and celebrate themselves--as they come from a lineage that was always fighting and will continue to fight for them.

This should not be the job of parents during or after a pandemic. This should be the curriculum in schools across the United States. The argument is always, children cannot handle such horrific facts, especially ones that only happened in the past. Let's not forget, Black, Indigenous, People of Color, experience racism. It is our everyday. We cannot escape it.  

What if there were a wolf, right outside your child's bedroom window-waiting.Waiting for the moment they stepped outside. Waiting, to attack. Wouldn't you be compelled, obligated to tell your child about the wolf? Wouldn't you want to prepare them for the horror just outside their window. At the very least warn them?       

The reality is, Black kids and other kids of color have to learn their history at home. Black, and other kids of color's, parents have to work overtime to make sure their children learn their history because, we see how much it's impact is ingrained in our present. 

The 32 Custom House Street mural features Lynsea Montanari, an educator at the Tomaquag Museum, holding an image of Princess Red Wing.

White parents once again, I call on you to do better. Because when your kids don't know the real history of the United States, they grow up to gaslight and discriminate. They commit microaggressions because they think it's new and cute. They use the n-word because they don't understand the harm it inflicts each time it is uttered. They make jokes about hanging black kids from trees and dress up as Pocahontas for Halloween. They pull their eyes taunt and call themselves Asian. They use the term Mexican as though it is dirty. They use racial and homophobic slurs that I will not write out here. This is not shocking to the parents of children of color because, we saw it with their parents and our parents saw it with their grandparents. 

Racism is not accidental. It is the longest con. It is well-played. It is successful. It begins in homes and classrooms where, from day one the great revolutionaries who fought for equality are rewritten as complicit and well-behaved or erased. 

Thus, I am preparing a curriculum filled with James Baldwin, Alice Wong, Sandra Cisneros, Nathan Phillips, Autumn Peltier, Annie Segura, Harvey Milk, Angela Davis, Cierra Feilds, and Assata Shakur (to name a few). It is important for them to know who fought for and who are still fighting for the world they deserve to live in. It is equally important that white parents expose themselves, and their children, to the same names otherwise--the cycle of racism will continue.