Scholars: Racial Backlash Robs White Students of U.S. History

Dr. Terry Anne Scott has been told that her classes change lives. She said she can’t count the number of white students who, in their evaluations for her African American History, Blacks and the Law, and Civil Rights and Black Power classes, have said, “I was raised to be racist, and taking your courses has allowed me to see things differently.”

Dr. Alex VitaleBut to some, Scott’s teachings as an associate professor and chair of the history department at Hood College seemed like a threat. Last year, according to Scott, after she helped to create an African American Studies elective for high schoolers in Frederick County, Maryland, based on her college course, a slate of candidates for the county school board ran on a platform of trying to get rid of it, along with other examples of “woke ideology.”

The opposition to Scott’s course is only a small part of the backlash to the racial reckoning of 2020 that was sparked by the murder of George Floyd. All over America, from local elections to state legislatures, proposals are popping up to limit and re-shape how the country’s racial history is taught.

According to the free speech organization PEN America, since January 2021, 229 bills have been proposed that would affect issues of race in American schools, such as restrictions on teaching critical race theory, the concept that racism is not only based on individual biases but embedded in the country’s legal structures. Fifteen have passed.

Florida has been a particular site of activity. Elementary school teachers have been forced to empty their classroom libraries in response to a law requiring that all books be approved by a media specialist as free of “unsolicited theories that may lead to student indoctrination.” Gov. Ron DeSantis banned the pilot of the College Board’s Advanced Placement African American Studies course. DeSantis also replaced nearly half the board of the state’s New College of Florida, part of an attempt to transform it into a beacon of so-called anti-wokeness.

“At the core is an attempt to cement white supremacy,” said Scott. “It is an attempt to erase not only [record of] the historical processes that led to systemic racism but also to erase the vast contributions of African Americans to the building of wealth and the very existence of this country.”

Inspired by the current conditions, Scott left her position at Hood last summer to become the founding director of the Institute for Common Power, the educational branch of Common Power, a voting justice nonprofit organization. She said restrictions being put into place have a powerful negative impact on learners of color.