Dilemmas In Teaching African American History By Robert Harris

In collegiate education, American History has always, has been told from the white person’s point of view. It has also failed to recognize the contributions of African American culture that has helped create America. Overtime many thought this would change, but in reality majority of African-Americans know more about “American” history than African-American history. Because of the lack of knowledge that both black people and non-black people have about African-American history, they tend to have closed off mindsets about how the topic relates to educations. According to Aristotle, “ It’s the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” This powerful quote simply means the we as people must be willing to

Historians have shot down any ideas that expand on the fact that African-American history is more than slavery and segregation because they claim African-American history is to “too violent” or “too graphic” to be taught in an academic setting. Although these assumptions about African-American history could be true, the real reason why African-American Studies aren’t majorly taught in college is because historians don’t have enough information from the past to put into a book. According to the academic article “Dilemmas in Teaching African American History” by Robert L. Harris Jr. the reason why historians have little information about the past from a black person’s point of view is because of racial separations and assumptions. (Harris Jr. par. 14). Because of this, many historians lacked in taking into consideration that black people were individuals with varying opinions and thoughts and not just one ethnic group, and African-Americans have been put into situations they are isolated from the rest of American and stripped of their individualism. This closed mindset society has used in the past has been the driving force behind things like slavery and

During this time period the separation of blacks from whites was widespread. Blacks and whites were separated socially, politically and it was also seem in education. According to the article “Jim Crow’s Schools” by Peter Irons, in the south white and black students were valued differently by their state government, so they were educated differently. (Irons par. 11-12) For example, in a normal school system during the time period of segregation white schools the children were given the curriculum was full of helpful educational tools like new books and passionate educated teachers. The advancement of white school’s curriculum allowed them to be more successful after high school and pursue a profession in medical or law related fields. This highly contrasted with the curriculum at black schools because most of the time the teachers had little training, and children in black schools were only taught skills that prepared them for working as sharecroppers or factory workers (Irons par. 11-15). In the state government’s eyes blacks were worth more than they were working as farming hands than in the classroom. This small minded thinking only made life harder for African-Americans as they dreamed of pursuing different forms of higher education like trade school and