“We the people of these United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” is the iconic beginning of the American Constitution. The phrase “We the people” is often spoken with reverence as being the foundation upon which the American democracy is built on. However, these hallowed words were not referencing much of Holmes High School students, which student population is almost 80% ethnic minorities. “We the people” is strictly mentioning white people, not native americans, not african americans, not hispanics, no one who wasn’t from America or had a darker skin tone.
The state of Texas has ignored much of minority history in its attempt to whitewash the history we are taught in schools. While many of the people we learn about are important, almost all have a common ethnic background and–surprise, surprise–they aren’t minorities. For many students, this is not just an oversight of boring history, it’s their culture and their own background that is being ignored. Without the reinforcement of their history being taught, schools could be sending the message that minority students’ culture isn’t as important as other people’s. The state of Texas has tried to correct this issue in the creation of separate classes that explore Mexican American history and there is a fight to introduce an African American studies class going on right now. Personally, I feel that to fully correct the mistake, these minority classes need to be incorporated as a part of Texas and U.S History courses. They shouldn’t be separated, and should instead be combined because they are integral to both our state and our country’s history. However, under the current system, there are many blindspots when it comes to Minorities and their impact on our history.
A big problem is that we measure the start of history in America with the arrival of white people. The empires of the Aztecs and Incas, and other civilizations are never talked about. The existing culture of the Americas are completely dismissed in favor of the arriving European culture. We recently just celebrated Thanksgiving, which we are taught as the harmony between the pilgrims and natives sharing a meal. The harsh truth is that this is an outlier when talking about settlers relationship with natives. Many natives were treated as slaves, used for forced labor, had harsh taxes imposed upon them, and had settlers attempt to destroy their culture and replace it with their own. Schools ignore these facts though, and only talk about the one “good relationship.”
African American history tends to be briefly taught in school and hardly scratches the surface of what their people and culture have done to better our country. The current curriculum only talks about African Americans as slaves before the civil rights movement. This seems to say that in between the time that they were enslaved to the civil rights movement in the 1960’s that no one from their background made an impactful contribution. However, this is not true as people like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas had huge impacts in their time period. I think that one of the most overlooked figures in African American history is Malcolm X. Two years ago I didn’t know who Malcolm X was, I’d never heard the name in history class and had no idea who he was. Malcolm X was a human rights activist during the civil rights movement who spoke out on African Americans mistreatment in America. He was a very inspirational figure who wouldn’t conform to what white america believed how a “colored” person should act. He was assassinated, but never once allowed his morals to be compromised. It’s a tragedy that Malcolm X’s cultural impact is ignored by our school system.
The lack of ethnic history continues with Mexican American history. The only notable names we are taught is Cesar Chavez and Santa Anna, who, if we didn’t live in Texas, we might not even know his name. The Texas Revolution is interesting because I know for me, a born and raised Texan, I of course was not rooting for Mexico to win the war and saw many of their actions, especially at the Alamo, as evil. It’s the way the history is tinted though, it’s not easy to be neutral and just learn the history when it involves where you live. The obvious truth is that more than two Latino people have impacted our country, but we don’t learn any other than those two.
One such important person would be Sylvia Mendez, who paved the way for desegregated schools. She wanted better access to education and after years of litigation was allowed to attend an “all-white” school. Her effort later paved the way for the better known Brown V. Board of Education which happened less than ten years later. It’s hard to say the Brown V. Board of Education case would’ve been successful without Sylvia Mendez and her family’s effort to set a precedent. Sadly, almost no one knows who she is and her efforts to stop segregation. This is just another example of our history’s blindspots.
Today many people of middle eastern descent are often judged harshly by society due to their unique culture and because of one groups actions on September 11, 2001. Their actions don’t define a whole culture and they are another group ignored by our history teachings. We should know about people like Hassan Kamel Al-Sabbah, an electronic research engineer who received 43 patents, including his most relevant to today, the television transmission. For all of us TV watchers, including me, we’d have to thank Hassan. There are countless names of people that have made an impact on our country and continue to do so today. I can honestly say that in school I have never learned of a person of middle eastern descent to have a positive impact. Our history seems to focus on the negative.
People of Asian descent would also be included in the group of ethnicities that history classes fail to recognize. The Vietnam War Memorial is historical and important to so many people; the memorial’s design was created by Maya Lin. Maya Lin is a woman of Asian descent who has made her mark on America through her architecture. There have been many people like Maya, and it is almost a given that there will be countless just like her to come. The question is whether or not they will be looked on kindly and remembered by American history.
There are plenty of ethnic backgrounds that suffer the same fate in our history like the ones above. American history fails to mention people from backgrounds deemed as “not American”. The topic of what America has done wrong in history hasn’t been discussed, but some backgrounds are judged by the terrible actions of the few and not by the great of the many.
While there have been strides made to try to include these cultures into history, we have to do a better job of learning them. It’s easy to dismiss misconceptions when you have learned of the importance of each ethnic background. Hopefully one day soon, the elected officials on the State Board of Education will change the curriculum to address the many problems with it, but until that day, it is our responsibility as students to ask questions and take it into our own hands to learn what these forgotten Americans have done for our country. If we continue to let these cultures sit in the shadows, then the division in our country will only deepen. Education can bring us all together when we realize everything they’ve done and how, at the end of the day, while we may have different backgrounds, we are all American. I beg you to ask questions in your classes, and to educate yourselves on this issue, because it’s a part of all of our history.
You can start by checking out my future columns, where I introduce you to other pieces of American history that you probably haven’t learned about in class.