Dear Black students,
The last seven months have presented you with a whirlwind of challenges that undoubtedly disrupted your schooling: The coronavirus pandemic, police killings of unarmed Black people, uprisings for racial justice, Western wildfires and a contentious presidential election in which efforts to disenfranchise voters in Black-majority cities have been bold and deliberate. You have to make sense of misinformation campaigns by politicians who think saying “fake news” will make their lies go away.
With all the distractions and attacks, it may sometimes be difficult to recall our legacy. For generations, we have fought for freedom and freedom’s antecedent, a quality education. Always, the upholders of white supremacy have tried to control us by obstructing our path to the schoolhouse through law, propaganda and duplicity. Now, they are doing it again.
Quoting his owner in his book, Life of an American Slave, the abolitionist Frederick Douglass wrote, “[I]f you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave.” Douglass knew that an undereducated populace will be controlled. What we witnessed during this election was evidence that miseducation doesn’t just allow the continued control of Black people. The 57 percent of white people who cast their ballot for Donald Trump — who has yet to accept the truth and concede the election — represents a white achievement gap that marks a generation unfit for the workforce, college and democracy.
Even if half of America chooses ignorance, we should not. CONTINUE READING: Black students: Don’t let white efforts at miseducation deny your legacy