{"id":983,"date":"2020-06-23T14:06:30","date_gmt":"2020-06-23T18:06:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/?p=983"},"modified":"2023-12-12T17:12:28","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T22:12:28","slug":"reckoning-the-past-a-historical-review-of-my-education-on-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/reckoning-the-past-a-historical-review-of-my-education-on-racism\/","title":{"rendered":"Reckoning the Past: A Historical Review of My Education on Racism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><button id=\"listenButton1\" class=\"responsivevoice-button\" type=\"button\" value=\"Play\" title=\"ResponsiveVoice Tap to Start\/Stop Speech\"><span>&#128266; Listen to this article<\/span><\/button>\n        <script>\n            listenButton1.onclick = function(){\n                if(responsiveVoice.isPlaying()){\n                    responsiveVoice.cancel();\n                }else{\n                    responsiveVoice.speak(\"\u201cI\\'m interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great deal more about contemporary life.\u201d\u2014Toni Morrison The recent violence against Black people and the protests have only highlighted the systemic racism that has existed in our country for centuries. As a White woman who majored in English and history in college, I have been reflecting on my own history of learning in this country. What did I read, what did I learn, what experiences did I have that evolved over time and shaped my understanding about racism? By understanding the past, I believe that we can impact the present and change the future. I\u2019m sharing my reflections and commentary because perhaps you are also facing similar reckonings and wondering how we move forward.\u00a0 Grade School I grew up in Colorado and was privileged to attend a Catholic grade school. We learned about slavery and the Civil War in social studies class. The Civil War was portrayed as a series of bloody battles. The North was good and victorious, and the South lost and was bad. Abraham Lincoln was a hero for freeing the slaves. In social studies, we also vaguely learned about Jim Crow as \u201cseparate but equal\u201d. We celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day\u2014he and Rosa Parks were considered \u201cgood\u201d for standing up for civil rights in a peaceful way.\u00a0 In seventh and eighth grades, I read To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn\u2014two common novels that were (and often still are) taught in almost every junior high school across the country. I have always believed in the power of novels to be able to create empathy and let us understand the trials and triumphs of those who we would otherwise struggle to understand or just simply ignore. However, upon reflection, the fact that these two books are taught to seventh and eighth graders is completely absurd to me.\u00a0 In To Kill a Mockingbird, the White man, Atticus Finch, is the hero and savior of the story. He\u2019s portrayed as \u201cgood\u201d for defending a Black man and fighting against injustice. The novel creates \u201ca comfortable moral position for white people: It lets them disdain white supremacy without feeling implicated in it. It\\'s a less comfortable position for nonwhite people.\u201d (source)\u00a0 [Decades after To Kill a Mockingbird was published, it was revealed that the novel had allegedly been taken from a manuscript that author Harper Lee had written called Go Set a Watchman. The same characters of Atticus Finch and Scout appear in this novel, which was published in 2015. The novel focuses on the adult Scout and her discovery that her father, the hero of To Kill a Mockingbird, is racist. Allegedly, in the 1950s after Harper Lee\u2019s publisher read the original manuscript of Go Set a Watchman, he told her to focus on the part of the story when Scout was young because it would sell better. Therefore, America ended up getting the White savior version of the story in To Kill a Mockingbird without having to confront the hero\u2019s\u2026or their own\u2026racism.]\u00a0 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has long been debated and many think it should be banned. Upon reflection now, it is very clear that Mark Twain wrote the novel as an ironic satire for adults. Indeed, the first page of the novel says: \u201cPersons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By order of the Author.\u201d Yes, the novel is told from the perspective of a child and thus appears accessible to young readers; however, \u201cmany teenagers\u2014and even adults\u2014may find it hard to grasp the irony in Twain\\'s telling, the deliberate saying of one thing when the reverse is intended.\u201d (source). This novel has been whittled down to be a coming of age story taught to 13-year-olds rather than a complex commentary on racism in America treated with deep critical thinking.\u00a0\u00a0 In grade school, the scope of my learning about civil rights was limited, and racism was portrayed as a relic where good prevailed over evil during the Civil War and where good people who peacefully protested brought an end to racism during the civil rights movement. More than this, racism was always taught in very geographical terms: It was limited to the southern and northern states, not where I lived in Colorado.\u00a0 And yet, while there were a handful of Latinx students attending my school, there were zero Black students or teachers.\u00a0 2. High School I was privileged to attend a Catholic high school. A handful of Black students attended my school; however, I only shared a few classes with Black students and none of these were AP or honors classes\u2014and our school did not have any Black teachers. Although I didn\u2019t think of it then, I now realize that this could be because there was bias in assigning advanced classes to Black students.\u00a0 Throughout freshman and sophomore year, my education on the Civil War and the civil rights movement continued similarly to grade school, though I do recall reading my first piece of literature by a Black author when we read Fences in my freshman year English class. It was not until junior year of high school that I finally began expanding my education thanks to my AP U.S. History teacher, Mr. Hamilton. Whereas Reconstruction after the Civil War had only been quickly glossed over in previous classes, we devoted weeks to studying Reconstruction and its ultimate failure. We also discussed lynchings, the KKK, and other scare tactics that white supremacists used in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Mr. Hamilton was always very clear in his directive that his students must be critical of history because history is always told by the victor. A surprising moment for me came when I saw a picture of KKK members dressed in their hoods while riding a Ferris wheel (see New York Times article). The sharp contrast of seeing the hooded figures who represented unbelievable cruelty and racism against the backdrop of an amusement park ride was jarring to say the least. But what was perhaps more jarring for me was that this photo was taken in Colorado. For years, I had been taught (and naively believed) that racism was not only in the past, but that it was in the South. Now, I was forced to reckon with the fact that racism was in my home state. [I found out after high school that Stapleton International Airport, which was the main Denver airport for over 65 years until 1995, was named after former Denver Mayor, Benjamin Stapleton, who was a known KKK member (source)].\u00a0 When we studied the civil rights movement, Mr. Hamilton had us read Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s \u201cLetter from a Birmingham Jail\u201d, which further opened my eyes to the complexity of racism. I remember my friends and I talked in awe about the letter\u2014commenting on how logical, how beautifully written, sometimes less than peaceful means were necessary to enact change [a fact that those who only see MLK as a non-violent peacemaker still fail to see]. However, I still felt that the problems MLK addressed were in the past. [Of course, racism in the country has not changed and his words from the letter ring very true today:\u00a0\u00a0 It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather \\\"nonviolently\\\" in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.] Entering AP English during my senior year of high school, I read Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. It captivated me, likely because a novel, as Ellison states in his 1981 prologue, \u201ccould be fashioned as a raft of hope, perception and entertainment that might help keep us afloat as we tried to negotiate the snags and whirlpools that mark our nation\u2019s vacillating course toward and away from the democratic ideal.\u201d When we began discussing the novel in class, I remember my AP English teacher, Mr. Hilbert, saying plainly to us: \u201cYou don\u2019t think racism exists today, in this school, in these halls?\u201d He was the first teacher who called out the fact that not only did racism exist today but that it existed at our school, a Catholic school that taught all people were made in the image and likeness of God and every human deserved to be treated with dignity\u2014but that in action promoted little to no racial diversity.\u00a0\u00a0 Later that year in AP English, we also read The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (a novel I would read two more times in college) and Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (which I would read again senior year of college and write about in my final paper). Taking a philosophy class and comparative religion class my senior year of high school also helped me see beyond my myopic views. 3. College I was privileged to attend Cornell University where I majored in English and history. The second semester of my Freshman year, I took a class called Civil War and Reconstruction. Here I understood why Reconstruction ultimately failed. There was no unity in the federal government, which was led by a weak president who was impeached by the House of Representatives but acquitted in the Senate [history unfortunately does repeat itself]. While there was certainly some progress, formal Reconstruction was all but abandoned in the 1870s. The rise of violence and intimidation of Black people was allowed to continue. Even in my final paper for the class, I acknowledged that the failure of Reconstruction allowed racial violence and inequalities to continue for decades, but I still did not overtly mention that racism existed today. I took a wide range of classes at Cornell, including 20th Century Women Writers of Color, and was exposed to many different viewpoints and beliefs from my classmates and professors. During my senior year, I took an intellectual history class on trauma where I revisited Faulkner\u2019s Absalom, Absalom! and was preoccupied (perhaps even a bit obsessed) with the South and how history can never fully be known. Indeed, the novel is rife with examples of telling and retelling of history, and even making up history where gaps exist. 4. Post-College I was privileged to move to Durham, North Carolina in August 2009. I had lived in the West, then the North. Now it was time to live in the South\u2014the place I associated with evil when I was in grade school. I thought that we had moved past racism. Barack Obama was president. The Civil War was long over, and the South wasn\u2019t going to rise again. Within the first week of being in North Carolina, my now husband and I went to Carrboro. We were walking outside of a coffee shop\u2014my husband was wearing a Cornell t-shirt, and we were talking in our non-Southern accents. A guy walked past us and said: \u201cDamn Yankees. Some job you did reconstructing us.\u201d At the time, I remember asking my boss at my first job if this was normal and something that was going to happen all of the time. She assured me it wasn\u2019t, and I dismissed it as a one-off experience. When I first arrived in North Carolina, I also remember seeing the Confederate monuments and flags. They have always made me uncomfortable, and I would try to avoid them when out-of-town guests would visit.\u00a0 Within the first year and a half of living in North Carolina, I decided I wanted to continue to study history and applied to PhD programs. I wanted to study the social history of the postcolonial American South with a specific focus on women\u2019s studies. I was not accepted. So I turned away from history as a profession and instead dedicated my career to marketing and operations. I got married and focused on my career and on expanding my personal and professional networks. I moved to Atlanta for a year and a half and then back to Raleigh, North Carolina. I\u2019ve continued to read diverse novels and history, but my original passion for history more or less fell to the background. I got wrapped up in my life. In the past decade, I never encountered anyone else who said \u201cDamn Yankee\u201d, and I let the Confederate monuments fade into the background. I was privileged and allowed myself to believe that we had made progress as a country in addressing inequality and dismantling racism.\u00a0 5. 2020\u00a0 The recent violence against Black people and ongoing protests woke me up to just how much work we as White people must do to address inequality and dismantle racism. I have begun reading more and have felt my passion for history return. Similar to when I was shocked by the photo I discovered back in high school of the KKK members on a Ferris wheel in Colorado, I was shocked to learn about the coup d\\'\u00e9tat and massacre in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898. I highly recommend watching the documentary Wilmington on Fire to learn more, but to summarize: In the late 1890s, Wilmington was a thriving port city where Black and White citizens both owned successful businesses and were part of the city government. However, on November 10, 1898, a group of white supremacists burned down the Black-owned newspaper, forced resignations and established themselves as government officials, violently murdered at least 60 Black citizens [some reports say it was hundreds], and exiled Black citizens. The new government was allowed to stay in power, and the violence was never punished.\u00a0 Alfred Waddell, who was the coup leader and took over as Wilmington mayor, published a newspaper article a few days after the massacre and coup. The article explained that he and the group of White men stopped a race riot. They were acting in the best interest of the city. They were the \u201cgood\u201d guys. [The term \u201crace riot\u201d is one we hear all of the time now, but Waddell created it]. For over 100 years, the truth was not known about Wilmington 1898 because history was told by the victor. In 2000, the North Carolina General Assembly established the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission to investigate what really happened. On May 31, 2006, the official report about the coup and massacre was published, and only now is the true history being more widely publicized. I had forgotten about Absalom, Absalom! and its lesson to be critical of history and stories about the past. I recently reread my final paper for my Civil War and Reconstruction class, which included this sentence: \u201cIn the 1890s, violence kept Black men from voting, such as in the Wilmington Race Riot.\u201d Even as a history student, I had the facts wrong. I recognized that the \u201cWilmington Race Riot\u201d intimidated Black voters, but I didn\u2019t mention anything about the massacre or coup. How could that be? I looked at the date of the paper: I turned in my paper on May 16, 2006. The official report from the commission was published 15 days later. If I had taken the class one year later or even months later, I presumably would have known about the true history rather than the false history of the victor. This, along with all of the other examples I mentioned earlier, are clear examples of how racism and white supremacy are embedded in our education system: through the system ignoring work by Black authors, not correctly or critically teaching history and literature, not striving for racial diversity of students and teachers, or in this instance, through blatant lies that are canonized as historical fact.\u00a0 As I continued to research Wilmington 1898, I also began thinking more critically about Confederate statues. I\u2019ve always vehemently disagreed with everything the statues stood for and tried to avoid them on tours, and yet, I remember saying not too long ago that the statues were a part of history and taking them down was a complex problem. Now, I realize that the statues were erected in the late 1800s and early 1900s often by the Daughters of the Confederacy or similar groups to glorify a false history and uphold white supremacy:\u00a0 In the late 1800s, early 1900s, the two key organizations\u2014United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans\u2014set out to rewrite the history of the Civil War. And they\u2019re very, very effective in doing that. They put together what historians refer to as the myth of the Lost Cause. These monuments are yes, ostensibly, honoring Confederate soldiers, but we want to think about when they were placed, why they were placed. They\u2019re part of, as I said, part of reinforcing white supremacy, justifying Jim Crow on the landscape. So they\u2019re very powerful but maybe in a way that many people driving by them don\u2019t understand. \u2014Dr. Monica Gisolfi, Associate Professor of History, UNC Wilmington (source)\u00a0 The statues are a visual representation of a history that must be studied critically but not glorified. By understanding history, we can better understand the present. The true history\u2014not the history of the victor or of the \u201cLost Cause\u201d or \u201cRace Riots\u201d\u2014dictates that we tear down the statues, rename our schools, rename our military bases. This is just a small step to take in fighting racism, but especially knowing the history and symbolism, this step is vital. Conclusion What and how we learn as children and young adults shape what we believe. At each stage of my learning journey, I thought I knew what racism was. But I didn\u2019t, and I am still learning. Learning doesn\u2019t stop after high school or college\u2014it is an ongoing journey. Learning and thinking critically means that we can change our beliefs and perspectives, we can better empathize with others, and most importantly, we can act.\u00a0 Even though I don\u2019t have my doctorate in history, I am a historian. I realize now that I have a duty to study history and share what I learn with others. I hope this blog post is a start. And perhaps, it has made you, dear reader, reckon with your own history of learning and realize that not only are you allowed to change your mind and your actions in light of uncovered history, it is imperative that you do so.\u00a0\", \"US English Male\");\n                }\n            };\n        <\/script>\n     <\/br><br \/>\n<i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI&#8217;m interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great deal more about contemporary life.\u201d<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2014Toni Morrison<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The recent violence against Black people and the protests have only highlighted the systemic racism that has existed in our country for centuries. As a White woman who majored in English and history in college, I have been reflecting on my own history of learning in this country. What did I read, what did I learn, what experiences did I have that evolved over time and shaped my understanding about racism? By understanding the past, I believe that we can impact the present and change the future. I\u2019m sharing my reflections and commentary because perhaps you are also facing similar reckonings and wondering how we move forward.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Grade School<\/span><\/i><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I grew up in Colorado and was privileged to attend a Catholic grade school. We learned about slavery and the Civil War in social studies class. The Civil War was portrayed as a series of bloody battles. The North was good and victorious, and the South lost and was bad. Abraham Lincoln was a hero for freeing the slaves. In social studies, we also vaguely learned about Jim Crow as \u201cseparate but equal\u201d. We celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day\u2014he and Rosa Parks were considered \u201cgood\u201d for standing up for civil rights in a peaceful way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In seventh and eighth grades, I read <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To Kill a Mockingbird<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2014two common novels that were (and often still are) taught in almost every junior high school across the country. I have always believed in the power of novels to be able to create empathy and let us understand the trials and triumphs of those who we would otherwise struggle to understand or just simply ignore. However, upon reflection, the fact that these two books are taught to seventh and eighth graders is completely absurd to me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To Kill a Mockingbird<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the White man, Atticus Finch, is the hero and savior of the story. He\u2019s portrayed as \u201cgood\u201d for defending a Black man and fighting against injustice. The novel creates \u201ca comfortable moral position for white people: It lets them disdain white supremacy without feeling implicated in it. It&#8217;s a less comfortable position for nonwhite people.\u201d (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2015\/7\/16\/8974447\/harper-lee-go-set-a-watchman-racism-controversy\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">source<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[Decades after <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To Kill a Mockingbird<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> was published, it was revealed that the novel had allegedly been taken from a manuscript that author Harper Lee had written called <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Go Set a Watchman<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. The same characters of Atticus Finch and Scout appear in this novel, which was published in 2015. The novel focuses on the adult Scout and her discovery that her father, the hero of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To Kill a Mockingbird<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, is racist. Allegedly, in the 1950s after Harper Lee\u2019s publisher read the original manuscript of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Go Set a Watchman<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, he told her to focus on the part of the story when Scout was young because it would sell better. Therefore, America ended up getting the White savior version of the story in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To Kill a Mockingbird<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> without having to confront the hero\u2019s\u2026or their own\u2026racism.]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/library\/%20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-8878 size-large lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/NEW-TDM-Library-Display-Ad_Large-C-1024x341.png\" alt=\"TDM Library: your one-stop-shop for update, expert DEI Resources. Explore the platform with a free trial. Click here to learn more.\" width=\"1024\" height=\"341\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/NEW-TDM-Library-Display-Ad_Large-C-1024x341.png 1024w, https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/NEW-TDM-Library-Display-Ad_Large-C-600x200.png 600w, https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/NEW-TDM-Library-Display-Ad_Large-C-300x100.png 300w, https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/NEW-TDM-Library-Display-Ad_Large-C-768x256.png 768w, https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/NEW-TDM-Library-Display-Ad_Large-C.png 1200w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 1024px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 1024\/341;\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">has long been debated and many think it should be banned. Upon reflection now, it is very clear that Mark Twain wrote the novel as an ironic satire for adults. Indeed, the first page of the novel says: \u201cPersons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By order of the Author.\u201d Yes, the novel is told from the perspective of a child and thus appears accessible to young readers; however, \u201cmany teenagers\u2014and even adults\u2014may find it hard to grasp the irony in Twain&#8217;s telling, the deliberate saying of one thing when the reverse is intended.\u201d (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/archive\/opinions\/1996\/01\/14\/rethinking-huck\/60843355-b00d-4d8a-87a4-76d36436b077\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">source<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">). This novel has been whittled down to be a coming of age story taught to 13-year-olds rather than a complex commentary on racism in America treated with deep critical thinking.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In grade school, the scope of my learning about civil rights was limited, and racism was portrayed as a relic where good prevailed over evil during the Civil War and where good people who peacefully protested brought an end to racism during the civil rights movement. More than this, racism was always taught in very geographical terms: It was limited to the southern and northern states, not where I lived in Colorado.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And yet, while there were a handful of Latinx students attending my school, there were zero Black students or teachers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">2. High School<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I was privileged to attend a Catholic high school. A handful of Black students attended my school; however, I only shared a few classes with Black students and none of these were AP or honors classes\u2014and our school did not have any Black teachers. Although I didn\u2019t think of it then, I now realize that this could be because there was bias in assigning advanced classes to Black students.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Throughout freshman and sophomore year, my education on the Civil War and the civil rights movement continued similarly to grade school, though I do recall reading my first piece of literature by a Black author when we read <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fences <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in my freshman year English class. It was not until junior year of high school that I finally began expanding my education thanks to my AP U.S. History teacher, Mr. Hamilton. Whereas Reconstruction after the Civil War had only been quickly glossed over in previous classes, we devoted weeks to studying Reconstruction and its ultimate failure. We also discussed lynchings, the KKK, and other scare tactics that white supremacists used in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Mr. Hamilton was always very clear in his directive that his students must be critical of history because history is always told by the victor.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A surprising moment for me came when I saw a picture of KKK members dressed in their hoods while riding a Ferris wheel (see <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/12\/04\/books\/review\/linda-gordon-the-second-coming-of-the-kkk.html\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">New York Times<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> article<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">). The sharp contrast of seeing the hooded figures who represented unbelievable cruelty and racism against the backdrop of an amusement park ride was jarring to say the least. But what was perhaps more jarring for me was that this photo was taken in Colorado. For years, I had been taught (and naively believed) that racism was not only in the past, but that it was in the South. Now, I was forced to reckon with the fact that racism was in my home state. [I found out after high school that Stapleton International Airport, which was the main Denver airport for over 65 years until 1995, was named after former Denver Mayor, Benjamin Stapleton, who was a known KKK member (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.coloradopolitics.com\/denver\/former-denver-mayor-stapleton-and-his-involvement-with-the-kkk\/article_38d2e3b0-ad77-11e9-bce2-c7d8f1d24435.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">source<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">)].\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When we studied the civil rights movement, Mr. Hamilton had us read Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa.upenn.edu\/Articles_Gen\/Letter_Birmingham.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cLetter from a Birmingham Jail\u201d<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, which further opened my eyes to the complexity of racism. I remember my friends and I talked in awe about the letter\u2014commenting on how logical, how beautifully written, sometimes less than peaceful means were necessary to enact change [a fact that those who only see MLK as a non-violent peacemaker still fail to see]. However, I still felt that the problems MLK addressed were in the past. [Of course, racism in the country has not changed and his words from the letter ring very true today:\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather &#8220;nonviolently&#8221; in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Entering AP English during my senior year of high school, I read <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Invisible Man<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by Ralph Ellison. It captivated me, likely because a novel, as Ellison states in his 1981 prologue, \u201ccould be fashioned as a raft of hope, perception and entertainment that might help keep us afloat as we tried to negotiate the snags and whirlpools that mark our nation\u2019s vacillating course toward and away from the democratic ideal.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When we began discussing the novel in class, I remember my AP English teacher, Mr. Hilbert, saying plainly to us: \u201cYou don\u2019t think racism exists today, in this school, in these halls?\u201d He was the first teacher who called out the fact that not only did racism exist today but that it existed at our school, a Catholic school that taught all people were made in the image and likeness of God and every human deserved to be treated with dignity\u2014but that in action promoted little to no racial diversity.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Later that year in AP English, we also read <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Bluest Eye<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by Toni Morrison (a novel I would read two more times in college) and <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Absalom, Absalom! <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">by William Faulkner (which I would read again senior year of college and write about in my final paper). Taking a philosophy class and comparative religion class my senior year of high school also helped me see beyond my myopic views.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">3. College<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I was privileged to attend Cornell University where I majored in English and history. The second semester of my Freshman year, I took a class called Civil War and Reconstruction. Here I understood why Reconstruction ultimately failed. There was no unity in the federal government, which was led by a weak president who was impeached by the House of Representatives but acquitted in the Senate [history unfortunately does repeat itself]. While there was certainly some progress, formal Reconstruction was all but abandoned in the 1870s. The rise of violence and intimidation of Black people was allowed to continue. Even in my final paper for the class, I acknowledged that the failure of Reconstruction allowed racial violence and inequalities to continue for decades, but I still did not overtly mention that racism existed today.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I took a wide range of classes at Cornell, including 20<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">th<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Century Women Writers of Color, and was exposed to many different viewpoints and beliefs from my classmates and professors. During my senior year, I took an intellectual history class on trauma where I revisited Faulkner\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Absalom, Absalom! <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and was preoccupied (perhaps even a bit obsessed) with the South and how history can never fully be known. Indeed, the novel is rife with examples of telling and retelling of history, and even making up history where gaps exist.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">4. Post-College<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I was privileged to move to Durham, North Carolina in August 2009. I had lived in the West, then the North. Now it was time to live in the South\u2014the place I associated with evil when I was in grade school. I thought that we had moved past racism. Barack Obama was president. The Civil War was long over, and the South wasn\u2019t going to rise again. Within the first week of being in North Carolina, my now husband and I went to Carrboro. We were walking outside of a coffee shop\u2014my husband was wearing a Cornell t-shirt, and we were talking in our non-Southern accents. A guy walked past us and said: \u201cDamn Yankees. Some job you did reconstructing us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At the time, I remember asking my boss at my first job if this was normal and something that was going to happen all of the time. She assured me it wasn\u2019t, and I dismissed it as a one-off experience. When I first arrived in North Carolina, I also remember seeing the Confederate monuments and flags. They have always made me uncomfortable, and I would try to avoid them when out-of-town guests would visit.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Within the first year and a half of living in North Carolina, I decided I wanted to continue to study history and applied to PhD programs. I wanted to study the social history of the postcolonial American South with a specific focus on women\u2019s studies. I was not accepted. So I turned away from history as a profession and instead dedicated my career to marketing and operations. I got married and focused on my career and on expanding my personal and professional networks. I moved to Atlanta for a year and a half and then back to Raleigh, North Carolina. I\u2019ve continued to read diverse novels and history, but my original passion for history more or less fell to the background. I got wrapped up in my life. In the past decade, I never encountered anyone else who said \u201cDamn Yankee\u201d, and I let the Confederate monuments fade into the background. I was privileged and allowed myself to believe that we had made progress as a country in addressing inequality and dismantling racism.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">5. 2020\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The recent violence against Black people and ongoing protests woke me up to just how much work we as White people must do to address inequality and dismantle racism. I have begun reading more and have felt my passion for history return. Similar to when I was shocked by the photo I discovered back in high school of the KKK members on a Ferris wheel in Colorado, I was shocked to learn about the coup d&#8217;\u00e9tat and massacre in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898. I highly recommend watching the documentary <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/wilmingtononfire.com\/\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wilmington on Fire<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to learn more, but to summarize: In the late 1890s, Wilmington was a thriving port city where Black and White citizens both owned successful businesses and were part of the city government. However, on November 10, 1898, a group of white supremacists burned down the Black-owned newspaper, forced resignations and established themselves as government officials, violently murdered at least 60 Black citizens [some reports say it was hundreds], and exiled Black citizens. The new government was allowed to stay in power, and the violence was never punished.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Alfred Waddell, who was the coup leader and took over as Wilmington mayor, published a newspaper article a few days after the massacre and coup. The article explained that he and the group of White men stopped a race riot. They were acting in the best interest of the city. They were the \u201cgood\u201d guys. [The term \u201crace riot\u201d is one we hear all of the time now, but Waddell created it]. For over 100 years, the truth was not known about Wilmington 1898 because history was told by the victor. In 2000, the North Carolina General Assembly established the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission to investigate what really happened. On May 31, 2006, the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/digital.ncdcr.gov\/digital\/collection\/p249901coll22\/id\/5842\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">official report<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> about the coup and massacre was published, and only now is the true history being more widely publicized. I had forgotten about <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Absalom, Absalom! <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and its lesson to be critical of history and stories about the past.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I recently reread my final paper for my Civil War and Reconstruction class, which included this sentence: \u201cIn the 1890s, violence kept Black men from voting, such as in the Wilmington Race Riot.\u201d Even as a history student, I had the facts wrong. I recognized that the \u201cWilmington Race Riot\u201d intimidated Black voters, but I didn\u2019t mention anything about the massacre or coup. How could that be? I looked at the date of the paper: I turned in my paper on May 16, 2006. The official report from the commission was published <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">15 days later<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. If I had taken the class one year later or even months later, I presumably would have known about the true history rather than the false history of the victor. This, along with all of the other examples I mentioned earlier, are clear examples of how racism and white supremacy are embedded in our education system: through the system ignoring work by Black authors, not correctly or critically teaching history and literature, not striving for racial diversity of students and teachers, or in this instance, through blatant lies that are canonized as historical fact.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As I continued to research Wilmington 1898, I also began thinking more critically about Confederate statues. I\u2019ve always vehemently disagreed with everything the statues stood for and tried to avoid them on tours, and yet, I remember saying not too long ago that the statues were a part of history and taking them down was a complex problem. Now, I realize that the statues were erected in the late 1800s and early 1900s often by the Daughters of the Confederacy or similar groups to glorify a false history and uphold white supremacy:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the late 1800s, early 1900s, the two key organizations\u2014United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans\u2014set out to rewrite the history of the Civil War. And they\u2019re very, very effective in doing that. They put together what historians refer to as the myth of the Lost Cause.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These monuments are yes, ostensibly, honoring Confederate soldiers, but we want to think about when they were placed, why they were placed. They\u2019re part of, as I said, part of reinforcing white supremacy, justifying Jim Crow on the landscape. So they\u2019re very powerful but maybe in a way that many people driving by them don\u2019t understand.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2014Dr. Monica Gisolfi, Associate Professor of History, UNC Wilmington (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.whqr.org\/post\/coastline-how-capture-confederate-history-without-side-stepping-embedded-white-supremacy#stream\/0\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">source<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The statues are a visual representation of a history that must be studied critically but <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">not<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> glorified. By understanding history, we can better understand the present. The true history\u2014not the history of the victor or of the \u201cLost Cause\u201d or \u201cRace Riots\u201d\u2014dictates that we tear down the statues, rename our schools, rename our military bases. This is just a small step to take in fighting racism, but especially knowing the history and symbolism, this step is vital.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Conclusion<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What and how we learn as children and young adults shape what we believe. At each stage of my learning journey, I thought I knew what racism was. But I didn\u2019t, and I am still learning. Learning doesn\u2019t stop after high school or college\u2014it is an ongoing journey. Learning and thinking critically means that we can change our beliefs and perspectives, we can better empathize with others, and most importantly, we can act.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Even though I don\u2019t have my doctorate in history, I am a historian. I realize now that I have a duty to study history and share what I learn with others. I hope this blog post is a start. And perhaps, it has made you, dear reader, reckon with your own history of learning and realize that not only are you allowed to change your mind and your actions in light of uncovered history, it is imperative that you do so.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/library\/%20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-8045 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/TDM-Library-Footer-Ad-C-1024x85.png\" alt=\"Display ad for TDM Library. Text says &quot;Find more content like this in TDM Library. Start my free trial&quot;\" width=\"1024\" height=\"85\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/TDM-Library-Footer-Ad-C-1024x85.png 1024w, https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/TDM-Library-Footer-Ad-C-600x50.png 600w, https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/TDM-Library-Footer-Ad-C-300x25.png 300w, https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/TDM-Library-Footer-Ad-C-768x64.png 768w, https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/TDM-Library-Footer-Ad-C.png 1200w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 1024px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 1024\/85;\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI&#8217;m interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great15<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":985,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,5],"tags":[79,76],"tdm_type":[92],"class_list":["post-983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-fundamentals","category-blogs","tag-personal-stories","tag-race","tdm_type-articles"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Diversity &amp; Equity Training| The Diversity Movement<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Blog Post: &quot;Reckoning the Past: A Historical Review of My Education on Racism&quot;\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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