by cucumber martini
I was on the phone with my brother recently when he said, “Remember when you used to hate women?”
Ugh, yes. I do.
I am a white woman, and while growing up, the struggles of other women and disenfranchised groups were of little concern to me. When I was younger, I more or less thought that if a woman had any issues with society, it was her own fault. Feminists were women who complained because they weren’t strong enough to make it in the world. If I was a confident, capable woman and you couldn’t be like me, you sucked. It took me years to completely erase this idea and understand my privilege and the historical and present-day oppression of women.
Starting at the Beginning
I’m not super ashamed of my 10-year-old self. I don’t expect young children to be too well-versed in complicated societal constructs like gender and race. However, my youthful ignorance does highlight the failings of the educational systems around me. Systems that did not correct my myopic views or ensure they weren’t there to begin with.
And I’m embarrassed to have maintained some backward ideas about women and other underrepresented groups when I grew up and went to college. As a privileged person, I thought that simply being a Democrat meant that I was fighting injustice. As a result, I had a limited understanding of the toxic social structures that influenced people’s everyday actions and beliefs.
For most of my life, I had no real grasp of the power of social constructs. I didn’t seek out resources or guides to better understand how our capitalist society disenfranchises and marginalizes people. This influenced the longevity of my severely skewed perceptions of reality.
I held obtuse views, refusing to believe that the media, society, or systems that influenced me were patriarchal and complicit in female struggles. Worse than my perspective on women, I didn’t give the struggles of BIPOC and other marginalized groups much thought.
Can We Fix The Damage?
If young people don’t get the resources to understand and dismantle the racist and sexist values of white supremacy, then it is more likely than not that they are not going to seek this knowledge out and allow ignorance to permeate.
So, how can we give new generations of young people the guidance to understand the social and economic complexities that fuel oppression?
There are many answers to this question, I’m sure. Still, while contemplating the undoing of my unsettling childhood views, I returned time and time again to education and the importance of giving young people access to diverse, well-rounded learning outlets.
Textbooks: The Main Issues
In middle school and high school, I was always excited to learn about the formation of the United States government and the history of progressive social movements. Invisible to me at the time was the overwhelming male whiteness of it all. Our studies about the American Revolution, the western expansion of the United States, the Robber Barons at the turn of the 20th century, and Cold War politics were all centered on white men.
My high school textbooks relegated women and other marginalized groups to an isolated portion of whatever chapter we were studying. The authors only ever showed people of color and women on the fringes of progress and innovation. Their struggles and triumphs seemed to have no connection to what white men were doing. Section titles like Women in Society and at Home let us know these underrepresented people still existed at these times but indicated that they weren’t relevant to the “important” parts of history.
I honestly remember feeling bored when we would get to a section of the textbook about women or people of color. It was like, “ugh, a passage about women sewing during the First Constitutional Convention and working in factories during World War II. Snooze. Get me back to the interesting parts!”
Hiding the Truth
Throughout my early education, my textbooks presented stories of marginalized people as isolated in time and scope. The subjugation of women was written as if it was an isolated incident, as was the entire history of the Atlantic Slave Trade and colonization. It was as if these atrocities happened and then suddenly ended, cut and dry.
The authors wrote about reconstruction from the perspective of sitting presidents. They presented no narratives from the viewpoint of the people transitioning from one form of enslavement to another. There was no analysis of the white, patriarchal structures and ideologies that continue to permeate American society and oppress BIPOC and women.
When we studied social travesties and massive inequalities that were legally “fixed,” we learned that the white men who held power at the time were saviors. We rarely learned about the activists and other people who pushed these issues to the forefront. And we definitely didn’t discuss the enduring issues these people still face as those in power passed limited protection laws.
I blame my disinterest in the plights of women and BIPOC at the time partly on the lack of representation and identity in textbooks. Entire eras and cultures were treated as afterthoughts. We studied whole generations of human beings as groups, not individuals.
A Singular Focus
If a section ever included details about marginalized people’s struggles, it did not tell them within the greater context of white male dominance. The authors presented influential women and people of color as rare exceptions to the invisible patriarchal power structures. And I don’t think the achievements or plights of LGBTQ people ever showed up in readings at my high school or middle school.
In the rare instance that the text included marginalized peoples’ stories, women and BIPOC were portrayed as nebulous groups whose identities were conceptualized through their relationship to the white men in power.
For example, the authors focused the sections about the end of slavery on leaders like Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. We got to know these men, their ideologies, and their roles in government. The Trail of Tears? I didn’t know too much about the Native Americans that were displaced, but I learned a lot about the election of Andrew Jackson and his presidency. (A villain, yes. Of interest to me as a child, also yes!)
Thanks in no small part to my textbooks, the young me did not care about the marginalized people I knew nothing about. I just thought they weren’t as important as their white male counterparts. These harmful ideas stayed with me when I was picking out college classes. Black studies? Boring. Women’s studies? Boring. How our Founding Fathers shaped the country? Excellent. The cycle continued.
This hindered my ability to see precisely how the oppression of marginalized groups is coordinated and connected. And by obfuscating the ways in which oppression is systemic and cyclical from a very early stage in our education, our textbooks keep us from seeing clearly how we are still under the thumb of these evil power structures and how we perpetuate them.
High School History Today
It’s been ten years since I graduated from high school, so a small part of me hoped this critique would be out-of-date. But sadly, after doing some research, I can’t say that high school textbooks have made massive changes since I was a student.
To get a feel for what textbooks were like today I bought a copy of America’s History, published by Bedford/St. Martin’s. It’s an AP history textbook on a co-worker’s child’s junior year syllabus.
I noted vast improvements in the opening chapter. Or maybe I am just a more considerate reader now. The textbook begins by explaining how Europeans were able to conquer American populations. Europeans’ strength was their desire to correct their lack of resources and unstable economies. It suggests that Europeans became imperialists because they had to, not because of their intellectual superiority.
The book also mentions that many American civilizations that Europeans and other colonizers conquered were far ahead in medicine and other scientific endeavors. Europeans simply had the advantage of being f-ing disgusting and full of diseases which helped them wipe out large swaths of American civilizations. It seemed to imply that European colonizers did not rightfully earn their place in North and South America. They were portrayed as people forced to focus on exploration because of their unfortunate circumstances at home. At the very least, it’s a correction to the widely accepted narrative that white settlers dominated because they were superior. But it’s definitely not accurate.
Lots of Similarities
And the improvements ended there. The book describes the founding of the United States, somehow managing to avoid mentioning the female or Black experience. Instead, I found short descriptions about why planters wanted to maintain slavery and sprinkings of information about some white women who wanted equal opportunities to white men.
There was no deep analysis as to why these social movements came to pass or any information about how oppression was able to continue. Likewise, there was no evaluation of the parties whose rights were not written into the Constitution or any information about how the Founding Fathers’ careful work created the foundation for the patriarchal society we have today.
Similar to the textbooks of my day, there are sections of the text (usually marked by different page colors and formatting) that will give you a little bit more insight into the plight of women and Black people, though traditionally presented as the result of a certain white man’s heroic intervention.
History According to Who?
The texts we use in our classrooms today would have students believe that the success of women and BIPOC is primarily due to centuries of white leadership. They completely erase minority identities and achievements. Basically, the narrative of the textbook remains white.
And who writes these sucky textbooks and designs the curriculums that teachers are essentially forced to follow? Is it the disengaged students who don’t end up graduating? Nope. Is it the white men who are taught from a young age that the world is theirs for the taking? Erm, yep. It’s pretty hard to write an inclusive narrative when the narrators aren’t an inclusive body by systemic design.
Teaching in American
Ok, cool, so changing the narrative of history textbooks that are written by white men and mandated by the school and state governments that white men run seems pretty daunting. But as power dynamics slowly shift, we may be able to revise some of this bullshit.
For the next phase of my research, I decided to go straight to the source – an actual educator. I had the pleasure of speaking with a former teacher and current college counselor in Chicago, Calyn Dolan-Delmore, about how youth education falls short.
Throughout her teaching career and current role as a counselor, Dolan-Delmore worked with a primarily Black student body. She highlighted the difficulties of getting students of color to engage with material exclusively about white men, noting it can be very hard for students to appreciate and engage with material they don’t identify with. She told me the only time her Black students were taught about people similar to themselves in their history curriculum was in segments about slavery.
Dolan-Delmore explained the low high school graduation rates of black students in Chicago and linked it to the idea that from a young age, people of color are taught not to see themselves as people in control of their own futures.
Our teachings do not allow students to appreciate their Black identity and culture. They leave white students without an understanding of a society outside of themselves and people of color with little sense of hope and belonging in this white supremacist nation. Sure, women and people of color have the right to an education, but it is only to learn about their oppressors. Not very inspiring.
During her time as a teacher, Dolan-Delmore had the privilege of teaching 12th-grade English, which left her unencumbered by the need to focus on exam preparation. As her students were predominantly Black, Dolan-Delmore assigned books written by Black authors about Black people. The conversations around these books proved to be the most fruitful of Dolan’s tenure as an English teacher. Unfortunately, many teachers aren’t equipped or motivated to write their curriculums or are too bogged down by exam preparation, leaving readings outdated and white-centric. These are just some of the factors thwarting improvements in high school curriculums.
A Turning Point
So, given the major insufficiencies of my high school textbooks and overall education, a situation that has clearly not improved in any significant way, how did I transform from being a conservative, self-centered child, to a passive liberal in college, to the person (hopefully much improved) I am today?
I had a liberal group of friends in college, and I maintained the same group after college in New York City, with the addition of more liberal friends I met there or knew from high school. I lived in a liberal bubble, and I never really experienced or recognized gender and racial inequality at play. It wasn’t until I got depressed and moved back home that I saw a whole new world.
I had always lived and worked in a city. Now, I was working in the manifestation of White Flight (the suburbs) at a family-run company. It was a grossly “traditional” place of work that made the set of The Office look chic and the people on it progressive and interesting. It was a boys club (not in the finance bro, city way, but in the sad ex-high school football player way), where women’s work and opinions were underappreciated. No people of color held high-up positions. For the first time (but sadly not the last), I saw a woman in a meeting voice reasonable concerns and then get reprimanded for being too “pushy.” It didn’t end there. I was privy to racial slurs and other racial prejudice, such as recruiters not considering a candidate because their name sounded Black (I reported this recruiter).
This experience really pissed me off. So I decided to attend lectures and read books on racial and gender inequality. My perspective quickly changed.
Final Reflections
In retrospect, it’s clear to me that my textbooks stymied my ideological growth. Since my formal education ended, I have sought out learning resources and better understood the issues. Nevertheless, I fear the mark these history textbooks will leave on people. And I worry about what will happen to those who don’t seek out other perspectives to learn from.
Our education systems make it difficult for people to truly grasp the experiences and viewpoints of marginalized groups. And this is coming from a white person. Can you imagine being a BIPOC and only reading about white people??? Disengagement and disillusion wouldn’t begin to cover it. Teenagers and young people must be self-motivated and seek balanced and diverse learning resources if they want them. Which, as previously noted, is a big part of the problem.
Ideal Ideas for the Future
If I had my way, I would not let our textbooks separate the marginalized of society. Instead, they would tell a rich story of the actions and reactions of all people. They would show how power systems are built and fortified. They would show how those systems of power affect all within them.
I’m tired of young adult academic books othering social groups into separate historical narratives or erasing them from history altogether. When I was growing up, there was “history,” and then there was “cultural studies.” The latter always seemed to refer to BIPOC communities, and the content always seemed to focus on “home life,” “craftsmanship,” and “traditions.” This separation in our textbooks created the idea in our classrooms that science, progress, and government are reserved for white people.
This is wrong, and we need to create reading outlets (a website with supplemental readings, perhaps?) that offer diverse viewpoints that give the same weight to all people, regardless of skin color, gender, and identity. A more robust study of minority groups’ impact on history generally, not just in a “cultural” sense, despite the prolonged oppression of these groups throughout history.
Let’s Start Now
My history textbooks made me evil.
After studying them with this in mind, I recognized the difficulty of realizing and dismantling white supremacy.
But we can do better. We can note the accomplishments of white dudes while simultaneously conveying how they have negatively impacted the “others” of society and current societal norms and identities. It’s sad, but hopefully, we can remedy this through improved educational resources for future generations.
Let’s rewrite our history, starting with textbooks.
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