What High-School Students Should Learn About Race

“Americans, especially white Americans, don’t like to talk about race,” says University of Massachusetts professor Lawrence Blum in this thoughtful Harvard Education Letter article. “Many Americans think we are in a ‘postracial’ society, partly because a black man is president, so they don’t need to give much thought to race anymore. This view is completely and deeply wrong.” 

What’s needed is what Blum calls racial literacy. From his experience teaching a course on race in a diverse Massachusetts high school, Blum has distilled five key messages:

• Inaccurate ideas about race are still influential. In the 17^th century, whites regarded blacks as inferior, and despite the fact that modern science has shown that all humans are genetically the same, the 17^th-century view still permeates our society.

• The first step toward racial literacy is understanding the history of slavery. Before the English colonies fully embraced the slave trade, people of African ancestry were often equal to white indentured servants. Blum taught his students “that it was not a matter of fate that blacks became slaves in America but a historical process that could have turned out differently.” 

• Race is fundamentally an asymmetric category. The discomfort felt by a white student in a predominantly African-American class is different from the discomfort a black student has in a predominantly white honors class. The black student is vulnerable to being viewed as intellectually incapable, whereas the white student would be unlikely to feel that way. Of course, whites can be victims of racial exclusion, rejection, or stereotypes, says Blum: “All students are hurt by racism. Understanding the asymmetry sensitizes us to the different forms and degrees of hurt.” 

• Racial literacy is not the same as multiculturalism. All ethnic groups should be celebrated, but racial literacy gets into how racial groups were kept in an inferior status and fought back over time. 

• Race is about more than skin color. Recent immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean have significant educational and motivational advantages over native African Americans. “It is unrealistic to expect native-born blacks to miraculously acquire these cultural advantages,” says Blum. 

“Five Things High-School Students Should Know About Race” by Lawrence Blum in Harvard Education Letter, November/December 2012 (Vol. 28, #6, p. 8, 7), www.edletter.org. 

From the Marshall Memo #458