I am taking stock today as it is my 51st birthday. Each year, I reflect upon my life, accomplishments and, most of all, past regrets. My biggest regret is not being a better advocate in the continued battle for civil rights.
My mother was the first person who made history come alive for me. She was just a few credits shy of getting her doctorate at the University of Minnesota when life and work interfered with further academic intentions. In the 1950s, she took every history class that the university offered and graduated top of her class. She taught history and social studies classes at local schools, even developing the Brooklyn Center curriculum. She also majored in math and is a phenomenal mathematician, but that is a separate story. I was fortunate to have someone, a personal tutor in a way, who provided deeper insight into historical events and made me want to learn more.
The schools that I attended (Forest Elementary, Hosterman Junior High, and Robbinsdale-Cooper High School) were fantastic; well-funded public schools in an inner ring suburb – District 281. However, there was not a lot of diversity. We may have been ten miles from downtown Minneapolis, but my classrooms were primarily filled white middle-class kids.
African American studies were a subset of American History. That is telling in itself, as it removes the history of slavery, placing it in a neat little envelope apart from the American history storyline of our great founding fathers. My classes covered the history and evils of slavery, but pretty much ended with the emancipation proclamation. Little else was said after that; a short note on Jim Crow laws and the civil rights movement. However, the civil rights movement, Korea, and Vietnam were never really explored in full, it was more of an overview.
It was not until college that I realized the massive gaps in my history education. After completing a course on Native American Studies, I was astounded at how little I knew beyond a few basic historical mile markers. Unfortunately for me, I never took any African American studies classes in college while I completed a BA, MA and PhD. This meant that the sum of my understanding about African American history was high school classes.
I had never heard about Juneteenth until this year. Feeling quite stupid, I asked my husband if he had ever heard of Juneteenth. He attended a very diverse public-school system in Delaware and also holds a doctorate. Like me, Juneteenth was something new to him. And then I asked my mom if she had ever heard of Juneteenth. No, she had not.
To put this in context, my mother and I are both historians. We each have a track record of academic excellence that resulted in various awards, membership in Phi Beta Kappa, and careers that focused on some type of American history. On a daily basis we continue to read and research about historic events online. As two progressives, white, and highly educated women, we should be the ones aware of Juneteenth; yet we did not.
For me, this explains a lot about the racial divide in America. If you are white, chances are you have not been adequately taught about the history of the African American community, Native Americans, or any other minority. If you are white, it may be easy to dismiss racial tensions, as you are completely unaware of the current obstacles that any person of color continues to face today. Your knowledge of American history is likely lacking. Then there are regional differences too, whether you learned history in the northern or southern United States. Was it the War of Northern Aggression or the Civil War? Same outcome, but different perspectives of the war, slavery and the future.
I am going to add on one more layer of institutionalized racism. As I was looking for a potential college scholarships and meeting with counselors in high school, the seeds of racism were further sowed in the back of my mind. This was the same for my husband in Delaware. We were both told that because we were white, our options were limited. This is in 1987. Both of our counselors went on to point out that if we were a black male or black female, we would have many more scholarship options; we just were part of the wrong demographic. In my white, lower-middle-class home, I was taught to not judge individuals on their race or religion. Yet, my counselor’s statement immediately made me resent those who were of color, because they were offered better scholarships. I put myself through college, paid my bills, and eventually received a few scholarships from the theatre department at the University of Minnesota. I survived, and continued on to graduate school. Now imagine if I were raised in a racist home and could not afford college, never went to college; scholarships were not an option.
This may be one of the many reasons why so many white Americans consider themselves oppressed and believe that minority groups are stealing their opportunities. You’ve got to be carefully taught.
