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Outrage: It’s All in the Labeling
This photo has been making the rounds on Facebook. I had 17 years of formal education and never once had a class in “white history.” I did, however, have classes in the history of the United States, which included people of all colors. If white people often appear in that history, it may have something to do with the fact that the United States sprang from British colonies founded largely by British settlers.
People of other races did figure heavily in the history I was taught, though, and perhaps in the history that you received as well. For example, I learned that settlers moving west displaced the Native Americans who lived there. I learned that slavery was a terrible part of our history, and that hundreds of thousands of lives were lost in the civil war that ended it. I was also taught that Chinese laborers built big chunks of the nation’s first transcontinental railroad and that Japanese Americans were interned during WWII. Perhaps you also learned some of these same things in school as well.
I assume that the gentleman showing the slide is American. If so, then the history of the United States is as much “his” history as it is “mine.” Admittedly, labeling it “our” history doesn’t pack the same emotional punch. The “white privilege” indictment presents American history in a tendentious manner designed to elicit anger and guilt. But why should anyone feel either outrage or guilt if people are taught their country’s history and that of the people who founded it?
I suspect that students in Japan are taught more Japanese history than that of other countries and I would not be at all enraged were I to learn that Japanese history is largely dominated by Japanese people. Nor would I be angry to learn that Nigerian students are taught the history of Nigeria and that that history focuses on the people who make up most of its population.
Published in General
A child in kindergarten being labeled as inadequately intersectional ought to be a wake up call for the parents.
Thanks, @ontheleftcoast. That right there warms the cockles of my heart.
As nice as that sounds, that tale has been told since back in the late 60s when I first heard it as I started out in my first assignment in Bedford Styvesant in 1967. Although a combat vet, I lacked the size of the mythical former Marine. None-the-less, I was able to establish myself as someone that shouldn’t be messed with simply by standing up to bullies and others who would normally intimidate other staff members. Two years later, after I had moved out to the Pacific Northwest, the principal of the building would get on the PA system and tell intruders that they had two minutes to leave the building, after which ” Mr. Kriegsmann, take care of them in your own inimitable fashion!” was his threat. That worked, as I understand it, for another year until the principal retired and the old building was torn down.
That’s an awesome legacy.
So they broke the mold and demolished all traces.
In 1967 the New York City school board created a decentralized school district in Ocean Hill Brownsville adjacent to where my school was situated. The new district started out their career by firing all of the teachers which violated the United Federation of Teachers contract with the city. What followed was a 10 week strike that disrupted the entire city. Ocean Hill Brownville and Bedford Stuyvesant were adjacent areas. Students from the decentralized district would periodically riot and run the streets invading my school, PS 28K. The principal would go on the PA system, ask me to break up my class and assume my usual position. That was at the front door of the school which was the only door left unlocked.
At the time I had the ridiculous sense of invulnerabilty that most outgrow after dodging bullets and other deathly threats for a couple of years. I stood at the door and was rarely challenged beyond some threatening words. I suppose I might have had a death wish at the time. Within my classroom I had been very successful at bringing very disruptive kids under control (their previous teacher had been taken out in a stretcher by EMTs). My technique in the classroom was simply the notion that every wolf pack can have only one alpha male. I decided on day one that I was that alpha and would never surrender my position. I never showed anger or loss of control. I remained absolutely rigid in my assertion of control. I only resorted to actual physical force once in those years, and that was with a local thug who had let the air out of the tires in my car. Other than that, I once confronted an adolescent intruder into my building outside of my classroom. He pulled out a knife when I told him to leave the building. I reached into my classroom and pulled out a chair to use as a defensive weapon. I then said, Let’s do it. The kid folded the knife, put it in his pocket, said, You’re cool, and left the building. I had nightmares about the consequences of having beaten this kid if it had come to that. I could see the headlines. White Teacher Hit Black Teenager with Chair! That fortunately never happened. However, it was one of the things that built my reputation in the neighborhood.