Juneteenth and the lack of black lives in US curricula

[BmorePat87]

The fact that this conversation is now occurring is part of the reason why this needs to be taught in schools. Part of the problem is also treating black culture as a monolith, especially with regards to the most impoverished segments of black culture. For the sake of this discussion, though, that's what I will be referring to.

You can't ignore redlining and it's decades long legacy. White families are given access to loans to purchase homes and repair infrastructure in their neighborhoods while black families are not given access to it. We know homeownership is the biggest contributor to wealth and essential in generational wealth.

As more black families moved into the middle class, neighborhoods could legally deny them the right to purchase homes. In some cases, realtors engaged in blockbusting, where they sold to black families above market value and then convinced white families to move and sell for under market value because of the new black neighbors. As neighborhoods went from predominantly white to black, local governments pulled funding and businesses and services left. You can compare neighborhoods in the same county that were built by the same people for the same price and see how blockbusting has affected them. Home values soared in one area while they plummeted in the other. Plummeting home values also means underfunded schools.

Going back to redlining, decades of being unable to access federal loans caused home values for black neighborhoods to sink. Fast forward to urban renewal, and data shows that the majority of neighborhoods affected were in redlined areas and the vast majority of families were black. So the government seizes your home and gives you a "market value" for it, but that market value isn't enough to purchase a new home. Your family has now lost what meager contributor to wealth that they had.

This also coincides with deinstitutionalization, the Vietnam War, and the War on Drugs. I don't think we need to elaborate on those.

We can jump forward to the 90's, though, and compare maps of red lined neighborhoods to maps of gentrified neighborhoods. You're going to see a lot of overlap. If your family lost their home and had to rent, they're now seeing their rent skyrocket as property owners try to push them out to sell property off to developers.


and all of this goes back to socio-economic status. People are quick to use race as the only factor and ignore socio-economic disparity. There is some truth in the statement that black culture does not support the nuclear family, but not as it is being presented here. Black culture puts far more emphasis on community. Historically, we can look to how black American culture was created as a result of slavery ripping families apart in Africa, putting people together with others of different cultures, and ripping families apart in the US. Contemporarily, we can look at current issues. Data shows they are more likely to volunteer in their neighborhoods and give more of a percentage of their income to charity. They also are more likely to take a community or extended family approach to family. Does their culture inherently reject the traditional close family unit? Of course not. However, things like unplanned pregnancy, incarceration, and widowhood are tied to your economic status. When one community has had decades of policy that has disproportionately affected healthcare, wealth, and incarceration rates.

Again, this is why you cannot hide this part of history. This is why we can't suggest that all was well after the Civil Rights Act. This is why suggesting that black communities are holding themselves back, ignoring the fact that hundreds of years of slavery and subjugation absolutely have put the black community in a hole. Giving someone in an 80 foot hole a 20 foot ladder and blaming them for not being able to get out is the problem.

We also need to emphasize the triumphs in black history and culture. The strength and the resiliency in history is a crucial topic to teach. As an educator to a minority-majority student body whose curriculum does not do enough to emphasize non-mainstream/white history, it's a challenge finding the right balance with the limited time available.