By Mark Altreuter
Imagine a world without racism, and how the world would get there. You probably can’t. Now, let’s take a dive into why not. Over the years, systemic racism has been brewing in schools whether overtly or more discreetly. This is because people are not being taught that they should not have stereotypes about different races of people. Now, as I hope you–the reader–know, racism is not good, and should be tarnished. We do not want repeats of the world’s racist past, e.g.⁽¹⁾ slavery in America, internment of Jews in Germany, of Japanese in America and Canada, the KKK⁽²⁾, and many, many others. Even as I am writing this, my school is in the midst of racist attacks on Wayland’s community via Snapchat and bathroom graffiti. In order to make sure there is no repeat of the world’s terribly racist pasts, children and adolescents need to be taught that all human races are equal, and that all races of people should be treated equally. Most likely, the students committing these racist attacks in the Wayland community were not taught these values properly. These teachings are especially useful for kids like me because I grew up in a school system with a high majority of the students being white, and there were only 3 or 4 kids that were Black in my grade of 60 people during my 5th grade year. That’s only 5-6 ⅓% of students in my grade that were Black! Even then, most of those students came from the urban area of Boston and came to school on a 1 hour bus ride. This all led to me and most of my fellow classmates having no immersion in classes with other races. Methods of teaching this subject include: direct lessons on what race actually is, direct lessons on how terrible events of our past were for certain peoples’, and immersing children in an area of equality so they can learn for themselves that there is no superior race. If this is done, it will ensure that there is no repeat of a race of people being discriminated against, or even outright being forced into inhumane conditions of life due to their race.
Secondly, no one wants their history to be lost, or for misrepresentation of their race to occur, and we need to make sure that it never happens. White history is taught in America all the time, whether it be white presidents, artists, actors, etcetera. On the other hand, people of color haven’t had true representation in American history. My first memorable teaching on the history of non-white persons didn’t come until 5th grade, when my class was read a book titled “Refugee”. Since then, I have immersed myself in the history, culture, and heterogeneity⁽³⁾ of non-white races. My indulgence in such things was a necessity, one which I treasured. I believe that it is not only a necessity for me, but for all children and adolescents to learn about the aforementioned aspects of non-white races’ pasts. If this history is not taught in schools, then it shall be forgotten, leading to the loss of non-white representation in history indefinitely. This loss of cultural and racial history can lead to misrepresentation in future scenarios. For instance, when the infamous 9/11 terrorist attacks occured, all Muslims were thought to be at blame. This led the widespread hatred against Muslims in the US, causing another terrible event of extreme discrimination. If Muslim culture and history had been taught in the US, there would have been more understanding that not all Muslims were enemies of the United States. We know this from WWII, where there were approximately just 11,000 German-Americans internees out of the 1.2 million German-Americans in the US at the time. Also, the number of Italian-American internees during WWII is believed to be just 1,881 out of the reported 695,000 Italian-Americans that resided in the US during WWII. These numbers are extremely low when compared to the upwards of 112,000 Japanese-American internees during the war, which was close to 100% of all Japanese-Americans on the Pacific Coast. German and Italian history had been taught throughout the US, which prompted the US to be less associated with the idea of interning German-Americans and Italian-Americans whereas the relatively unknown culture of the Japanese heavily influenced the US’s extreme internment of the Japanese-American race.
Some people against the teaching on race and discrimination argue that teaching on the such subjects destroys American culture and tradition, since public schools are breeding grounds for societal change. I would argue that societal change is not a bad thing, as long as it is done right. If we[the United States] teach both race and discrimination and patriotism of heroic American idols and heroic history, such as certain patriotic aspects of the United States in World War II, there will be societal change in the way we understand that wrongdoings have existed in our past, and that America is not perfect country, yet Americans will still be patriotic. In my–and many others–opinion, blind patriotism is weaker than patriotism in which the persons are aware of the wrongdoings of the country they are patriotic towards. It helps people realize that though there are bad things that have taken place, they still love their country; it makes people realize if they love their country so much after knowing its dark secrets, then they truly are patriotic. The US has had some mistakes, sure, but they always attempted to fix them. They were never fully fixed, but at least resolved. For instance, during World War II, the US interned ~120,000 Japanese-Americans due to their military conflict with Japan, and fear of espionage which was caused by systemic racism towards Asians, in this case specifically Japanese. A strong majority of the interned were not aligned with the Japanese cause, and had been falsely accused of allegiance to the Japanese emperor. The Supreme Court then heard the case of a Japanese-American woman named Mitsuye Endo. She was an employee at the DMV⁽⁴⁾ in Sacramento, California who had never been to Japan and only spoke English; she even had a brother in the US Army! Ms. Endo had been interned at Tule Lake and also at Topaz, and had thought of it as an extreme injustice due to her proven loyalty to the US. Endo challenged the constitutionality of her internment, and decided to take her case to court, to get herself and many other Japanese-American internees released. The Supreme Court voted unanimously in her favor and began to release the thousands upon thousands of internees, and allowed them to repopulate the West Coast of the US.
America has kept quiet about its history with people of color for too long, and needs to break out of its silence to teach on it. For all the aforementioned reasons, this must be done to give equality to the people of the Earth, especially in the United States of America. The history of race and discrimination must be taught in schools all over. So, I leave you with this: do not hide your thoughts; let your opinions be heard, and join me in combating this overarching issue of racism.
WORD BANK
¹) E.g.: Exempli gratia(For example)
²) KKK: Ku Klux Klan(An extremist organization of white supremacists with a belief that they are the superior race, and people of color should be punished for existing)
³) Heterogeneity: “The quality or state of being diverse in character or content.”
⁴) DMV: Department of Motor Vehicles