“Erasing Black History Is Not the Role of the College Board.” (online headline)
The College Board, though a nonprofit, is a fixture in the country’s education infrastructure. Taking its courses and succeeding on its exams has long been a way for savvy high school students to make themselves more attractive to the most selective colleges and, upon acceptance, win college credit.
The inclusion of Black history into this enterprise is a meaningful act.
The Black scholars who pioneered the teaching of Black history long before it was popular to do so understand this. “We have to tell the truth,” one of those scholars, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, a professor of African and African American studies at Harvard University…
Those opposed to the re-centering of Black history at the heart of the nation’s story instead of its periphery understand it, too, which is why they have mobilized against it.
The question now is whether the majority of Americans in the middle, and at institutions like the College Board, are able to see the backlash clearly, not as some kind of culture war sideshow but as the very lifeblood of the anti-democratic, sometimes violent political movement gaining currency in the United States.
Black history is a direct threat to this movement.
It humanizes the enslaved and their descendants. It lays bare the terrible cost of white supremacy, not only to Black Americans but to the nation. It opens the door for exactly the reckoning that makes interracial coalitions possible, giving life to democracy and pluralism and stripping would-be tyrants of their power.
The problem is that looking directly at this history is a prospect that terrifies many white Americans….
It is no coincidence that the Black writers under assault, like Mr. Coates and Ms. hooks, have been militant in refusing to allow America to forget. “The time to remember is now,” Ms. hooks wrote. “The time to speak a counter hegemonic race talk that is filled with the passion of remembrance and resistance is now. All our words are needed.”
Connect the Dots 101 
Leave a comment