State Sen. Jesse Hamilton (D-Central Brooklyn) and Assembly Member Diana Richardson (D-Crown Heights, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Flatbush) will head a rally tomorrow in Brownsville to call on state lawmakers to support Hamilton’s legislation (S. 5454) requiring black history studies in every school and at all grade levels in the state.
The rally will also draw attention to a series of troubling incidents regarding black history education around the city. This includes including Bronx school principal of Intermediate School 224, Patricia Catania, who reportedly told an English teacher, Mercedes Liriano, she should not teach about the Harlem Renaissance, and reportedly targeted black teachers and students for mistreatment, and a PTA member of Public School 118, The Maurice Sendak Community School in Park Slope utilizing photos of performers in blackface on a flyer advertsing a fundraiser for the school.
“We will not allow black history to be erased, to be denigrated, or to be sidelined by ignorance,” said Hamilton.
“We must build an education system that embraces the inescapable truth that tomorrows America will be even more diverse, will call for even more understanding, and will require us to be better versed in the American stories of our African-American, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latino, and African diaspora brothers and sisters. Black History matters. It is integral to our American story,” he added.
“The significance and humanity of African American history is often treated with blatant indifference, but through the implementation of this history into the curriculum of our schools, the undeniable contributions women and men of color have made towards society, can help strengthen understanding and awareness,” said Richardson.
Also supporting Hamilton’s legislation is National Action Network Crisis Director Rev. Kevin McCall. “In the climate we are in we need this bill like never before. Nelson Mandela said, ‘Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.’ The Black History bill will create change and confidence in our youth by providing role models outside of sports and entertainment. I commend Senator Hamilton and Assemblywoman Richardson,” McCall said.
In support of the proposed measure, Hamilton released the finding from a Southern Poverty Law Center report titled “Teaching Hard History.” The report found:
– Only 8 percent of high school seniors surveyed can identify slavery as the central cause of the Civil War.
– Two-thirds (68 percent) don’t know that it took a constitutional amendment to formally end slavery.
– Fewer than 1 in 4 students (22 percent) can correctly identify how provisions in the Constitution gave advantages to slaveholders.
– Fifty-eight percent of teachers find their textbooks inadequate.
– Popular textbooks fail to provide comprehensive coverage of slavery and enslaved peoples, The best textbook achieved a score of 70 percent against our rubric of what should be included in the study of American slavery; the average score was 46 percent.
– Forty percent of teachers believe their state offers insufficient support for teaching about slavery.
The SPLC further finds (quoting from the report):
– We teach about slavery without context.
– We tend to subscribe to a progressive view of American history that can acknowledge flaws only to the extent that they have been addressed and solved.
– We teach about the American enslavement of Africans as an exclusively southern institution.
– We rarely connect slavery to the ideology that grew up to sustain and protect it: white supremacy.
– We often rely on pedagogy poorly suited to the topic.
– We rarely make connections to the present.
– We tend to center on the white experience when we teach about slavery.
The rally is slated for 2:30 p.m., tomorrow, Feb. 14 at P.S. 298 Dr. Betty Shabazz School, 85 Watkins Street in Brownsville.
