The whitewashing of history lessons

In three weeks public school districts in Iowa will be prohibited from teaching that any one race or sex, and its members, are “inherently superior to another race or sex.” 

Also, that the United States and Iowa “are fundamentally or systemically racist or sexist.”

Also, that an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, “is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”

Also, that an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, “bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.”

There’s more in the new law, a lot more, much of it dealing as well with freedom of speech on the campuses of state universities in Iowa. The law is House File 802, adopted this spring by the Iowa Legislature and signed by Gov. Reynolds. 

The law stems in part from concerns of many Iowa legislators, primarily in the Republican House and Senate caucuses. One such concern was opposition to The 1619 Project, a multi-faceted journalism project published in The New York Times Magazine in 2019 on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the Virginia colony of England.

The thrust of the series was that slavery and its consequences lie at the center of the history of the United States — not just that they’re important factors in U.S. history, but that they caused its course and direction.

American historians have debated The 1619 Project ever since its publication. When a curriculum to teach the project in schools appeared, many educators and politicians, particularly conservatives, rose in strong opposition. The portion of Iowa House File 802 prohibiting courses that teach that the U.S. and Iowa are essentially racist (or sexist) comes from legislative reaction to The 1619 Project. Other states passed similar bills.

House File 802 did not enjoy universal approval in the Iowa Legislature. Some lawmakers, most of them Democrats, feared that the law would lead to downplaying the role of racism in the nation’s past. 

They may be right.

Common sense suggests that individuals are not born with racist beliefs. As Lieutenant Cable says in “South Pacific,” racism “is not born in you! It happens after you’re born.” He then sings “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught.”

Little kids of various colors play with each other apparently oblivious to racial differences; it’s only as they age that they learn the distinctions that society makes about people of various ethnicities. Sadly some of them adopt those beliefs.

So on its face House File 802 states what most people would think is obvious.

And yet:

It’s a simple fact that the U.S. Constitution emerged from several weeks of intense debate in steamy Philadelphia as a compromise among states of different types: large and small, and more importantly, free and slave.

The large vs. small problem was handled by giving each state two senators in the Senate, and representation based on population in the House. But how were Southern slaves to be counted in terms of population? They weren’t citizens, and yet they were residents. 

The compromise, to the nation’s enduring shame, was to count three-fifths of a state’s slave population in its total. So a slave became, for purposes of a state’s representation in the House, three-fifths of a person.

That was a compromise agreed to by enough states, north and south, to ratify the Constitution.

Hard to argue that the nation was not “fundamentally and systemically racist” at the time of its founding.

It is true that without the Three-fifths Compromise, the Constitution would not have become our founding document. And racism prevailed despite the honor we grant that document today. 

It took another 75 years before the 14th Amendment made citizens out of former slaves. And it took another 100 years after that before the federal Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act attacked Jim Crow laws and officially granted Black people their full rights as equal citizens. 

If the U.S. is no longer “fundamentally and systemically racist,” it took a long time to get here. 

The danger of House File 802 is that school districts will err on the side of caution, and avoid teaching the seamy sides of American history along with its heroic aspects. The law doesn’t explicitly prohibit teaching both the good and the bad, but timidity is likely to drive the engine.

Fears of First Amendment lawsuits in many school districts tempt educators to downplay the role of religion in America history. Racism is not inborn, but it is certainly a part of our culture.

Today’s students can handle the truth.