Title: By teaching slavery adequately, we can overcome our history
Headings: Slavery still shapes all of our lives, yet students aren’t taught its history
Slavery still shapes all of our lives, yet students aren’t taught its history
Glossing over America’s original sin means we can never overcome it
Andre Perry

Content: We, too, can only learn from our history when we know it. Learning the sordid details of U.S. slavery means recognizing that the current racial wealth gap that has black families seeing one dollar of net wealth for every 10 gained by white families stems from the system of white supremacy that did everything to maintain slavery — even go to war. Brems and others should understand that our current criminal injustice system, one that sees African Americans incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites, is a remnant of America’s fight to suppress black civil rights since the end of slavery. We should recognize the connection between slavery and the use of local property taxes to fund school districts, a system that blesses wealthy suburbs with educational largesse, but results in students of color receiving $23 billion less in education funding. These are issues that will touch black students’ lives, and they should know this history so they can begin dismantling modern systems of oppression. The 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery in 1864, came out of black people’s struggle for emancipation. One of the most damaging consequences of this miseducation of our children is the impression that our very democracy was developed by an idealistic group of “founding fathers,” many of whom owned slaves. The reality is that the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery in 1865, came out of black people’s struggle for emancipation. Soon after, early civil rights legislation barred housing discrimination. The passage of the 14th Amendment, which ensures that those born in the U.S. are citizens and entitled to equal protection of the law, also occurred as a result of black people’s demand for liberty.