CONNECTIONS
After reading Sleeter, through the first couple of pages, I instantly was reminded of the four I's of oppression specifically Institutionalized oppression. Sleeter talks about how minority groups are perceived in textbooks using African Americans as an example and them usually being tied to slavery and immigration is used as a historical period. We know this is not the case and I think it is tied to institutionalized oppression because the true voices of history from minority groups in America are being silenced by white people who create the textbooks and ultimately, school curriculums. This all goes along with critical race theory and there being a lack of crucial parts of history being left out of most curriculums in schools across the nation. Sleeter includes on page four "Black middle school students interviewed by Ford and Harris (2000) all expressed a desire to learn more about Black people in school." The students want to know more about their own culture while in school but instead are blocked of important historical events. From my own experiences in my school system, I was fortunate enough to have a 7th-grade history teacher who was also my half-brother's uncle who was African American teach us a lot of African American history, especially during February. During this time, I was shocked to find out so much history I did not know about and I am very grateful to have him as a teacher because he did not shy away from educating us on black history and he was very passionate about teaching it as well. Something else I'm realizing from that time was how appropriate he was about it as well, we were 12-13 years old and I believe that is not the right time to learn about the dark sides of history and he knew that so instead of teaching us about events such as the Tulsa Massacre (which I later learned about as a Junior in High School) he taught and told us stories of prominent black historical figures and how their stories impacted our nation's history and thinking back on it now, I really appreciate that. It depends demographically on where you are in the country right now where you'll be taught this side of history or you won't. Another example, being from Rhode Island, I learned a lot about black history and other events that would fall under the CRT category. My roommate from New Hampshire did not learn as much as me about these certain topics. He is well aware of it now but as we are both history majors, we speak about what we learned in grade school and the differences are very interesting. I want to leave with a question being, where do you come from and did you learn anything about CRT? If so, how much?
The link provided shows how some states in the US view CRT.
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