J Rucker- Lanier M.S.

Student-Led Townhall Meeting 1

Jah’kya Rucker

Lanier M.S. Student Townhall

February 21, 2018

​ ​Don't Whitewash Our Past:

Ensure an Equal and Unbiased Representation in Our Social

Studies Curriculum

I’m Jah’Kya Rucker and I’m here addressing biased history

textbooks.

955- that's the number of pages that are in a Pearsons US History

Textbook, and if I may ask how many pages do you think are on

African-American figures?

I was once reading a Texas Social Studies Textbook, and it stated:

“Slavery was a bad thing, but it had some good aspects to it.” Quick

question, what part of torturing, beating, and enslaving humans was

tolerant? They treated slaves as if they were animals, but it quote on

quote had some good aspects? I started learning history in of the 3rd
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grade and I noticed “black history month” and I asked myself, why don’t

we just learn about “black history”throughout the school? There isn’t a

“white history month” because we learn it throughout the whole school

year. In most people’s eyes that’s the only history they know or are ever

taught. I remember sitting in U.S. History class one day while we were

talking about the Boston Massacre, as we started talking about Crispus

Attucks the board says that all we “need to know” is that he was to first

African-American to die. First off, who even is he? Well I wouldn’t be

able to tell you that because it’s not something that I “need to know”.

That made me think, who gets to choose what are in those textbooks?

Who gets to choose what we don’t need to learn, and why do we choose

to hide things under the bed? Who chooses who we get to learn about

and why don’t we just learn ALL of our history?

Back in 2009, the Texas State Board of Education tried but failed

to kick Darwin out of their science curriculum. They got the ring back

the following year with social studies standards. Exposure and studies of
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the KKK and Jim Crow Laws have been conveniently revised right out

of the history textbook. How many of y’all know Texas even had Jim

Crow Laws or even if you know who Malcolm X is. In the eyes of future

Texas school children, none of that ever happened. ​After examining

copies of the 7th grade, 8th grade, and high school-level books, it was

clear that this curriculum is rigged with exclusions, making frequent use

of convenient, misleading history including slaveholder violence kind of

.. acceptable. Sure, Texas’s new textbooks aren’t ​completely ​false. But

that doesn’t mean they’re anywhere close to 100% true.

I feel that if we were to create a committee of educators, and not

businessmen, with different types of people including race, religion,

socio-economic, etc. to craft our social studies books there wouldn’t be

things like bias and prejudice in those textbooks. One corporate giant

shouldn’t decide what more than 7 million kids get to learn.

As a young African American female I would hope I could learn

more about my own history in our schools textbooks or even just in

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class. Let’s learn from our mistakes, do not - whitewash our history.

Let's teach the next generation to grapple with our country's real history,

the history of ALL its people so that we and the next generation of

students can have the chance to become better citizens and the chance to

build a better society. Thank You.