The miseducation about history and racism is stupefying
It makes the mind a blunt instrument
When I was a college student in the late 90s, my college roommate told me Black people are better at sports because we have an ‘extra muscle’ in our legs. I looked down at my legs. Then I gave him the side-eye.
My roommate apparently went to the same high school as Jimmy the Greek and they both learned the worst lessons. I corrected my roommate, but America miseducated him.
The consequences of this miseducation are in every aspect of society and it’s troubling.
America’s schools teach white people they discovered, settled, and tamed a continent. Many white people believe they created the modern world.
There are white supremacists like Congressman Steve King of Iowa who demand a standing ovation for white people for their inventions.
I fear this sentiment is common.
In a recent video, a student from Columbia University ranted about how white people created the modern world and white men “did everything.”
The racist student used his mind like a blunt instrument to inflict blunt force trauma.
He was miseducated.
As a Harvard scholar, Sven Beckert points out in his book The Cotton Empire, it was cotton that built the modern world.
Without cotton, there wouldn’t be an Industrial Revolution. The trade of cotton stitched the wealth of Europe and led to several inventions.
Thus, Black slaves made the modern world. Exploiters don’t get any credit without millions of caveats shaped like bodies to make that clear.
America’s shameful history shouldn’t shame white people, but it should make them humble and accurate.
The miseducation does the opposite:
America miseducates people about the Civil Rights Movement.
In 2014, the Southern Poverty Law Center gave a failing grade to more than half of America’s states on that subject.
Not surprisingly, the report found schools farther away from the South and with fewer Black students were even less likely to educate students on the Civil Rights Movement.
Educators need to know this — the Civil Rights Movement is American history, and it’s a multiracial history for everyone. Without it, no one can understand America.
Take note — one way to miseducate people is to omit.
America miseducates people about race and racism.
In 2018, a howling outrage erupted over a sociology class on white racism at Florida Gulf Coast University that required police presence. Instead of that class, people demanded their miseducation.
We can see why the viewpoints white people and people of color have on racism are the opposite in every poll.
If white people can’t have the lived experience, they at least need a proper learning experience.
Instead, America miseducates people about wealth gaps, generational trauma, the effects of racism, and how the United States divested Black communities of everything while investing in the slaughter of Black leaders.
Take note — one way to miseducate people is to provide information without implications.
America miseducates people about crime and law enforcement.
People who support law enforcement without recurring questions didn’t learn the history of slave patrols in school.
It’s not said enough how candidates and politicians use dog whistles with old phrases like “law and order.”
People who see the criminal justice system as fair have to overlook the disparities in sentencing, the correlation to wealth for certain crimes, the tentacled business of prisons, or how America constructs laws to criminalize people.
Take note — one way to miseducate people is to not share the original meanings and purposes of something.
America miseducates people about immigration.
The understanding of how the United States contributes to hurried migrations does not inform the negative stances that stand in the way of immigration.
Americans do not fully realize the history of immigration laws for white people and the Chinese Exclusion Act. The people with ancestors who caravanned to the United States — as economic refugees — now demonize those who want to do the same as they did.
History is repeating itself because people do not repeat the history.
Recently, the Trump administration even erased the phrase “a nation of immigrants” from the mission statement on the website of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Take note — one way to miseducate people is erasure.
America miseducates people on purpose, and it works for white people.
America’s specific miseducation of white people remakes and sustains every noun that follows the adjective “white.”
The byproducts of this miseducation include nouns like — supremacy, power, nationalism, racism, innocence, privilege, flight, fragility, and guilt.
Like most aspects of society, this miseducation best serves white people, and there are better ways for a better society.
Start over and unlearn what America has taught.
One source of polarization in America is the miseducation. America’s fate depends on how it educates.
These subjects aren’t the money-making subjects. They don’t help America compete with China. They aren’t STEM subjects. They are the subjects at the root of our social issues.
The more people learn in school from an early age the better, and the more people educate themselves the better, too.
Thinking back about my college roommate, I now wish I had told him what he needed to do — legwork.
That’s important work because minds that are dull can ruin us all. (Especially when they have nuclear codes!)
