Oklahoma School Superintendent wants the truth of the Tulsa Race Riot to be taught but he also doesn’t want White kids to feel badly about it. Governor DeSantis in Florida feels the same way. What is the proper emotion for White kids to feel after learning about racism? It seems to me that is up to the individual child and is uncontrollable and not really the business of the educators. Some things will make you feel pride and other things might make you ashamed. There is no right way to feel about the past because people are still arguing about the past.

How do you take the White Racism out of the Tulsa Race Riot? White people targeted black people based on a run in between a Black man and a White woman. White people killed hundreds of Black people just because they were Black. White people either participated in the riot or did nothing to stop the riot. Should a White child feel badly about being White and the behavior of his race? Well, yes, if they are decent human beings. White people did a terrible thing to Black people. Thems the facts.

This idea that history has to show the American past in an admirable light seems incredibly wrong headed to begin with. First, history is about people. People are fallible. People sometimes do terrible things. The Civil War was one of the significant events in American history. In order to understand what happened and why this was so important in American history, difficult subjects have to be addressed. It doesn’t put everyone in a positive light. But I don’t think it will be any more traumatic than teaching first graders that one day an active shooter might appear in their classroom and how they should act when this occurs.

What doesn’t help is for educators to be even handed about a subject where being even handed is absurd which is what the Florida Department of Education tried to do. They were concerned that the slavery discussion was too one sided for the anti-slavery side. You heard it right. They wanted children to have a more positive view of the slave owners. This is dumbfounding. Why is that so important? Why can’t some White people be the villains in this particular story?