sharing "slavery success stories" doesn’t make slavery less evil.
Diminishing the horrors of slavery down to learning skills proves why Black history needs a place in American schools
Every Wednesday and Saturday, the newspaper falls on my desk at work for me to read. In recent weeks, while searching for any mention of my organization and compelling human interest stories, I’m bombarded with several anecdotes of Black individuals who have “defied the odds” of slavery. Since Florida’s harmful decision to teach a more palatable version of slavery in its schools, I open the paper to comments from anonymous individuals who bring up Frederick Douglass learning how to read or an obscure figure in history learning a skill that helped them thrive. Each comment ends with this particular sentiment: Of course we shouldn’t deny how terrible slavery was, but there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel.
As a Black woman, I find these comments completely dismissive, hurtful, and disrespectful to Black people who have been murdered, brutalized, and lost their families to chattel slavery.
First off, these comments are the main reason why we must teach the complete and uncensored history of Black Americans in this country. It must be taught that 1619 was a year of terror, when the first Africans, chained and afraid, were separated from their families to arrive in a foreign land to work in inhumane ways. And that only counts those who survived the journey.
During slavery, Black people were brutalized beyond what our imaginations can conceive today. By saying that one person persevered throughout hundreds of years sugarcoats and white-washes this history to make it seem more acceptable to strip someone of their humanity while forcing them to “learn” a trade to benefit their abusers, not themselves.
I use quotation marks around learn because who said Black people didn’t already possess those skills? These comments also perpetuate the colonial notion that Black people needed a white savior to thrive. It used to be a widely held belief that Black people were unintelligent and lazy, even though Black bodies built infrastructure like the most popular American higher education institutions and countless inventions. Black people even created an entire cuisine based on the worst cuts of meat they were given. Black people have always possessed the skills to thrive, and we never needed a white person to validate or help us.
Learned trades and skills were not beneficial for our success. We have always been able to succeed making something out of nothing. These trades and skills were acts of survival.
After reading the paper in the morning, I spend the remainder of the day thinking about all my school system left out and all my college education failed to touch on. This is the portion of Black history no one desires to remember, but it’s necessary in order not to replicate brutality. And to those who believe that it’s too scary or harmful to teach in schools, I’d like you to remember a six-year-old child in 1960 named Ruby Bridges. Ruby, now 68 (only 8 years older than my mother), was spat on, screamed at, and endured a mob, including a woman who held up a miniature coffin with a Black doll inside. If this poor child can endure such pain and trauma at six years old, a fourth grader can learn how not to be racist.
Black history is integral to who we are. It’s who I am, and I don’t have the luxury of white-washing my history, nor do I have the desire to diminish who I am so people can be more comfortable. What’s more uncomfortable is how people can dismiss 400 years of struggle and thousands who have died within this country due to their skin color.
As a creative, I’ll always use my voice and talents to uplift my community. I’ve witnessed too many racial incidents to allow this to become the normalized way of viewing the horrors of slavery.