Study Hall! How we learned about slavery.
Welcome to our weekly Study Hall. Each week I answer questions and share insights from each of you in our community. This week I dove deeper on some pressing topics from our community.
I focused on sharing our collective experiences learning about slavery in school. I think it's a good reminder of how necessary our commitment to anti-racism work is, and how so many people are coming to this place with an insufficient foundation. I hope it's both encouraging and motivating to keep going.
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Nicole
TAKE ACTION
1. Reflect on the questions prompted by our community.
2. Discuss with a friend: how did you learn about slavery growing up? How does that inform your perception on the civil rights movement of today?
GET EDUCATED
In review: The newsletters we published this week.
9/25/2020 | Decriminalize sex work.
9/24/2020 | Demand justice for Breonna Taylor.
9/23/2020 | Reject the modern-day poll tax.
9/22/2020 | Learn about sundown towns.
9/21/2020 | Support the 1619 Project.
9/20/2020 | Make the justice system more diverse.
FROM THE COMMUNITY
How did you learn about slavery growing up?
From 9/21/2020 | Support the 1619 Project.
Monday's newsletter emphasizes the importance of teaching the truth of our history. In the original newsletter, I asked you to respond with your own stories on how you learned about slavery. I read through hundreds of responses and compared them to the seven key themes that the Teaching Tolerance study found in their research. Unsurprisingly, our collective experience matches – almost exactly. I've summarized their key themes and added anonymized examples from our experiences below.
1. We teach about slavery without context, preferring to present the good news before the bad.
"What I learned about slavery was a sanitized version. I learned nothing about how the South and others who did not agree with emancipation undermined the declaration and then in concert with Northern politicians permitted the birth of the Jim Crow era. I did not learn that the freed [enslaved people] were promised land upon their freedom and that promise was never fulfilled. I did not learn of that southern plantation owners grew rich on the back of [those enslaved]."
2. We tend to subscribe to a progressive view of American history that's "growing perfect".
"I am appalled by my own lack of knowledge or connection to the fact that my own grandparents lived in segregated times and that my parents were born before the Civil Rights era ended. I did not make this connection as a young child, when history seemed so far away. Why was none of this discussed in our history lessons? Why did we get the "America is the Greatest Country" story, glossing over the facts, and failing to connect history to the actual present we can experience and make an impact on now?"
3. We teach about the American enslavement of Africans as an exclusively southern institution.
"We didn’t learn that the northern states were still allowed to enslave people...We just knew that the southern states were bad and slavery was bad...Slavery was always presented as a southern problem as well, I grew up in Michigan so I am not sure if that has anything to do with it but I remember thinking it wasn't something anyone I knew or was related to could have been involved in."
4. We rarely connect slavery to the ideology that grew up to sustain and protect it: white supremacy.
"When I was in school, I learned as a general idea that slavery happened, and was over. There wasn't any detailed info about the horrors that followed such as segregation, Jim Crow laws, or the thousands of lynchings. I didn't know about Juneteenth, or the Black Wall St until I had children of my own."
5. We often rely on pedagogy poorly suited to the topic.
"I went to public school in California, and when I took AP US History in 2012-13, we read “A People’s History of the United States" by Howard Zinn. Reading that book was pretty much as in depth into the history of slavery in the United States that we went. We also watched the first episode of the TV show “Roots”, but that is all that I remember of any other representations/resources about slavery that we studied as a class.
I also just wanted to say that the year prior, when I was in a World History class, we went very in depth into the Holocaust and studied that for quite a few weeks. I also don’t remember studying anything about any history pertaining to the African continent in that class, either."
6. We rarely make connections to the present.
"So learning about slavery in school - our school did “teach” it, but that is was a very American problem. It was the Americans that owned [enslaved people] and shipped Africans over. There wasn’t any mention of our involvement. It was also plain facts so to be fair we did learn about some of the terrible conditions but we were never taught to empathize (“how would you feel”, “what do you think about this”..) or to form our own opinion. It was just something that happened. But also exactly that, happened, past tense, there was also no conversation or discussion on how it still impacts lives today
By no means did we ever learn that the colonies’ success, and eventually the U.S. economy, was almost entirely propped up by slavery, and if that system had been disrupted earlier this country would have never prospered. Nor did we go on to learn about what life for Black people was like during the nearly 100 year period between abolition and the modern civil rights movement."
7. We tend to center on the white experience when we teach about slavery.
"I took AP everything in high school and could count on one hand the kids of color that were in that track. At any rate, I recall in AP History skipping the Slavery chapter of the history book. I thought surely, we wouldn’t. It was AP after all – given the heightened reading requirements, I thought we would be able to squeeze it in. In fact, me and the only Black girl in the class discussed what we would do if we skipped the chapter. And sure enough, our white cis-male teacher did. So I raised my hand and asked him why we weren’t doing the slavery chapter. And he bumbled through a response about a lack of time and the content on the AP exam and then carried forward. He did look startled though. I would like to think he reflected on it later."
"I don't remember being given many facts and true histories of slavery, and now that I think back, most of those historical fiction narratives focused a great deal on hope and redemption: "Look at these people, freeing themselves and finding liberty up north" or "Look at this nice white lady letting this freed [enslaved person] work for her." The full picture of the horror wasn't adequately captured, and I only became aware of, say, the Tulsa race massacre because of watching Watchmen. Which was a huge red flag for me."
Q+A
What is SESTA/FOSTA?
9/25/2020 | Decriminalize sex work.
A few people asked for more information on SESTA/FOSTA referenced in the article, two laws passed in 2018 that aimed to curb sex trafficking in the U.S. FOSTA, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, and SESTA, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, aimed to hold personals sites accountable for their participation in sex trafficking — in particular, Backpage.com.
But research shows that providing sex workers with digital spaces to find and vet clients is much safer than the alternative – meeting people in person and finding new clients on the street. Much of the violence between sex workers and law enforcement referenced in our newsletter is because of that.
The acts also don't distinguish between consensual sex work and nonconsensual sex work, which are vastly different practices and require much different forms of government intervention. And unfortunately, these regulations make both communities less safe. (Read more on Vox). It's also unclear whether these acts have effectively curbed sex trafficking (Meaww).
On a side note, these rules also had broader implications, including many sites severely limiting any sex-related content on their site. Many users expressed that, beyond sex work, it also greatly limited sites' abilities to post educational content about sex or feature more diverse, inclusive porn (Wired).
Clarifications
9/20/2020 | Make the justice system more diverse.
In my intro for this newsletter, I mention the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and said "rest in peace," not knowing that this term references the Christian afterlife, which is not inclusive and inappropriate considering her Jewish background. I apologize for the error and have updated the language in the archives.
RELATED ISSUES
9/19/2020 | Study Hall! Equity v. equality and the burden on WOC.
9/12/2020 | Study Hall! Youth activism, Prop 22, and being multiracial.
9/5/2020 | Study Hall! Defund the police or add more training?
8/29/2020 | Study Hall! The trauma of police brutality videos, active bystander trainings.
8/15/2020 | Study Hall! Affirmative action, sliding scale pricing, and the right intentions.
8/8/2020 | Study Hall! Emoji blackface, the "family card," and starting conversations.
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