The state that once fought against school integration is on the wrong side of history again as it moves to stop African American studies
By Michael O’Looney
The Supreme Court ruled segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional in 1954.
In 1957 Gov. Orval Faubus of Arkansas ordered the national guard to block the entry of nine Black students from entering Little Rock Central High School. Upholding the Supreme Court’s decision, President Dwight D. Eisenhower then ordered 1,200 troops from the Army’s 101st Airborne Division to escort the students through an angry mob to their classrooms, and they did so for the remainder of the school year.
Now, in 2023, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sunders has declared that Advanced Placement African American studies classes would not count toward graduation. She said a “leftist agenda is teaching our kids to hate America and hate one another.”
And this at a school and in a state that opposed the Constitution and letting Black children have the same quality of education as white children. There’s a lesson here that needs to be taught.
In not accrediting these courses, Arkansas ensures that fewer students will take the classes. As an integral part of a multicultural curriculum, the African American studies courses expose students to a history that shows how oppressed people have struggled over time for racial justice. Sure, it’s a past we may not be proud of, but when taught properly — when the history is not whitewashed — it does not teach hatred, only how our country has strived to right its wrongs.
Politicians like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sanders can be expected to say the popular thing, to go off on their biased rants and blame a ”leftist agenda” for a curriculum that fosters racial hatred. But it is a criticism without substance, without an understanding of the importance of Black history courses in a multicultural education.
We are, after all, a multicultural nation.
We need to be forthcoming in helping students understand that strain of racism in our national character so they’ll have a point of reference the next time a white supremacist walks into a church or supermarket and sprays a gathering of African Americans with a fusillade from an AR-15.
In one sense, the history of our country shows how the struggle for racial equality and social justice has been the prevailing theme running through every era — the antebellum years, the Compromise of 1850, the Civil War, the Reconstruction era (when freed slaves basically were enslaved again), the Jim Crow era, even World War II, when Black soldiers were not allowed to fight alongside white troops. And of course the Civil Rights era of the 1950s and ’60s. These classes need to show our failings as well as our victories so that students can see who we were, how we struggled to achieve equality, and what needs to be done to eradicate the residue of racism in America.
Knowledge does not generate hatred. Rather, it opens minds. A glimpse into our past helps us to understand how perspectives have changed over time and how Americans have continually endeavored to construct a better, more just society. Black history classes should, I hope, make students proud to see how far we’ve come, how people like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and the Little Rock Nine have struggled to make this country all that our Founding Fathers hoped it would become.
Michael O’Looney lives in Talent.
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