On Misplaced, Harmful Vulnerability & Teaching Traumatic History Equitably and Responsibly
Community Learning Collaborative:
Lizzie Allen
“Our problem as Americans is we actually hate history. What we love is nostalgia.” — Regie Gibson
With my High School dean, left; two of my other black teachers
Introduction — What is my work as an educator?
This May 2020, Nikole Hannah-Jones of the New York Times was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her audacious and controversial
“1619 Project.” The project, named for the year enslaved Africans first arrived in what would become the American colonies, confronts the continued deemphasis of slavery’s impact on the United States’ past and present political, economic, and social dynamics. Notably, the 1619 Project also included supplementary educational material for classroom use. According to “Teaching Hard History,” a 2018 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, 68% of surveyed high school students did not know that it took a constitutional amendment to formally end slavery. Even more egregiously, only 8% of students surveyed could identify slavery as the central cause of the Civil War. The 1619 Project has been met with criticism for its, to some, cynical theses—that, for example, “anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country.” Or, that a desire to protect the institution of slavery from an increasingly abolitionist Great Britain was a primary motive for the American Revolution. Regardless, the 1619 Project attempted to close the gap between high school students’ tenuous understanding of slavery and reality. Even more, the project sought not only to correct students’ ideas about slavery, but to plainly convey the institution’s degree of depravity and its enduring ubiquity. The 1619 Project did this without falling into trite tropes of Blackness as an existence of perpetual victimhood without agency. The project also did not rely on voyeurism to demonstrate the horrors of the plantation economy or the contemporary prison industrial complex. Clearly, it is possible to discuss slavery in a way that is dignified to its victims—and their descendents. Nevertheless, teachers continue to employ harmful lessons and materials—auction block or Underground Railroad simulations; or, in my own experience, a needlessly graphic depiction of the Middle Passage. As evidenced by the SPLC’s findings, these practices are largely unproductive since students still do not understand slavery. More importantly, they can re-traumatize Black students whose lives are still influenced by slavery’s legacy. Since beginning CLC, I have considered my role as an educator. There are many dynamics I have a new appreciation for—the reciprocal nature of education, the importance of partnership—but above all, I hope to center decolonization in my work. As a prospective U.S. history teacher, I envision this most in my reimagining how slavery can be taught, to simultaneously not do harm to Black students while ensuring all students understand its gravity and continuous relevance.
Artifact I: The Anecdote that Inspired my Study
I was one of two Black students in my eleventh grade AP U.S. history class. The other student rarely spoke, so it often felt like I was the only one. Our teacher, Dr. Carr, having decided at the beginning of the year that the textbook was unsuitable, created his own curriculum which included materials like Howard Zinn’s, “A People’s History.” With this, and in addition to him being Black himself, I felt confident that he would approach slavery well. As soon as we were settled in class one day, however, without any introduction or warning, he screened the Middle Passage scene from “Roots.” I remember being so viscerally disturbed I was nauseous. I was dismissed from class. Later that day, Dr. Carr explained to me that he wanted to shock and unsettle my white classmates in order to wholly communicate slavery’s horror to them. He didn’t consider, though, if showing something so graphic and lurid could be harmful—even retraumatizing—for his Black students.
Artifact I: Anecdote, Continued
Dr. Carr remains one of my favorite high school teachers despite this. Although I don’t remember his execution of the
slavery unit favorably, it was ultimately still a valuable lesson. I learned that teachers of color, specifically Black teachers in this instance, are not monolithic. Our conversations complicated my preconceived ideas about what teachers of colors owe their students of color; or rather, how my expectations didn’t align with what Dr. Carr understood his role as. In a later artifact, I discuss a recent interview with another one of my Black history teachers who took a very different stance on whether explicit depictions of slavery are necessary or helpful. Notably, he did not just disagree with Dr. Carr’s contention that material as graphic as “Roots” is essential in getting through to white students—even if this is at the cost of Black students—but that it is also ineffective for white students’ learning.
With this project I seek to examine the misplaced, unfair burden of vulnerability placed on students of color during lessons
concerning their traumatic histories. I do not know the exact “right” way to teach what the Southern Poverty Law Center has aptly called “hard history.” I do know, however, what teaching methods and styles I as a student found productive without doing damage. I remark in the anecdote that I assumed that Dr. Carr would approach slavery well. At the time, I could not precisely articulate what “well” looked like. Immediately after fleeing the class during “Roots,” though, I knew it didn’t need to be that—teaching that forced me and possibly the other Black student into emotional disarray in the hope, not guarantee, that our white classmates might grasp slavery’s magnitude. Why, in a lesson concerning slavery of all things, were white students centered?
Moreover, in an essay on black “trauma porn” in film and television, the writer Morgan Jerkins succinctly describes why I believe
that this moment was so unnerving for me: “...It’s done under the White gaze, and violence toward Black subjects has historically been rooted in spectacle.” Most of my classmates knew that I am biracial. Being one of two Black students in a sea of white ones watching gratuitous violence towards Black people felt like I was not only watching a spectacle, but living one, too.
Artifact II: Reflecting on Brené Brown’s Myopic Notions of Vulnerability
With my final portfolio I wanted to merge two of my main areas of study during the course. First, I focused on
vulnerability in education with Katie Tsai and my partners at SLA Beeber. The topic of my Self-Directed Learning Plan was teaching slavery in a manner that is both dignified and accurate. Eventually, this evolved into how vulnerability is often involuntary for students of color when classroom discussions arise on issues and histories that concern them. This coerced vulnerability is usually decided for those students and is not something they volunteer, making for an inequitable, even harmful experience. Misplaced vulnerability can manifest in many ways—from my own anecdote above; to students being expected to speak for their whole race, religion, or ethnic group; to participation in problematic slave auction and Japanese Internment simulations.
The decision for our group to read Brené Brown’s “Dare To Lead” was spearheaded by Katie because it has significantly
informed her teaching. I was initially skeptical and disappointed. I had hoped to read something together that I believed would inspire more robust and frankly serious discussion. From what I knew of Brown, her doctrine seemed corny and saccharine. Ultimately, my instincts were not completely off—much of “Dare to Lead” is, in fact, trite. Moreover, while reflecting on vulnerability in conversation with teaching “hard history” I think Brown’s vision and conceptualization of it can be short-sighted and ahistorical.
In a few instances, Brown directs people to have empathy even for those whose politics and views they find repugnant in order
to find mutual vulnerability. This feels privileged; in practice it is reserved for those select people not subject to racism, misogyny and other oppression. Why should I, a Black woman, have empathy for a racist or misogynist, someone who does not have empathy for me?
Nevertheless, despite the book’s shortcomings, it was ultimately still a useful vehicle for our group to have real conversations on
themes very relevant to CLC and education: vulnerability, shame, empathy...
Artifact III: Slavery Simulations
“Vernex Harding, the mom of one of three black students in the social-studies class at The Chapel School in Westchester County, said her child told her that the teacher took him and the other two kids, both girls, into the hallway earlier this week and “started to put imaginary chains on our necks, our wrists and shackles on our ankles...
The black students were then brought back into the classroom, where the white kids were pushed to bid on them while teacher Rebecca Antinozzi acted as the auctioneer, the mom said.”
Artifact III: Slavery Simulations, Continued
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s report, classroom simulations can be productive, but only for certain content. Mock elections, for example, have proven efficacy. However, per the SPLC, slavery simulations usually only serve to trivialize a grave subject and to humiliate Black students. Nevertheless, headlines with misguided white teachers employing auction block skits or Middle Passage simulations are plentiful.
Firstly, it is a non starter that teaching slavery with games or skits minimizes the weight of these events. Furthermore, Black students are forced to act out and relive the atrocities committed against their ancestors for the “education” of their white classmates. Still, there are additional nuances evident in the examples that make them even more problematic as classroom material.
The worksheet on trading slaves particularly illustrates this. Language is important. The use of “slave” over “enslaved” is lazy and further belittles enslaved peoples’ personhood. As a history major with a focus on the early nineteenth century, very deliberately, I always use “enslaved” over “slave” when possible. In the 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones steadfastly does the same. “Enslaved” or “enslaved person” places their humanity first, not their circumstances or legal status as property. This worksheet also refers to enslaved people as “workers,” which is both inaccurate and diminishes slaveholders’ culpability in owning people.
In addition, the story of a white teacher acting as an auctioneer at a mock slave auction could also potentially do significant damage. Not only did that event likely retraumatize the Black students forced to participate, it possibly eroded their relationship with their teacher. Teachers, especially to elementary-aged students, are supposed to protect. Following her facilitation of their selling, doubtfully could any of her Black students feel they could trust her or regard her with anything other than suspicion and resentment.
Artifact IV: Quotes from an Interview with my High School African American Studies Teacher, Malcolm Cawthorne
Artifact IV: An Interview...Continued
When deciding which of my Black high school history teachers to reach out to, I had the distinctly rare choice of which one. I had three Black history teachers and a few more in other departments. This was, of course, very much an anomalous experience. As previously discussed, this made me realize early on that teachers of color, Black teachers specifically, are not monolithic—not in why they pursued teaching, not in their philosophies, and not in their views on their responsibilities as teachers of color. Ultimately, I chose to ask Mr. Cawthorne because I was interested in learning more about his ideas on teaching Black history. Candidly, I also think I was seeking confirmation bias, whereas Dr. Carr would have challenged me more. They are very different teachers. I would describe Dr. Carr as having a “Talented Tenth” type mentality, while Mr. Cawthorne would categorically reject any kind of respectability politics. At any rate, I admire them both. They each wrote me a college letter of recommendation.
My conversation with Mr. Cawthorne was very cathartic and I found myself being more forthcoming and honest about Brookline High than I would have been speaking with him while still a student there. Brookline, Massachusetts is a affluent, white liberal utopia that cares deeply about displaying its purported progressiveness. It is not all performative—the town has one the longest continuously-running desegregation programs in the country—but being a student of color was exhausting there, nonetheless. I think this is why I was let down by Dr. Carr in that moment. Until him, all of my teachers of color had made obvious efforts to shield minority students from Brookline’s—for lack of a better word—nonsense, and to wholeheartedly prioritize their well-being and learning. He felt like a dissenter.
My first question to Mr. Cawthorne was if he had shown the video of Ahmaud Arbery’s murder to his African American Studies class, which is always predominantly black. I did not have to ask if they’d discussed it, I knew they had. He said he chose not to show it...
Artifact IV: An Interview...Continued
...I was too focused on his response to take detailed notes of exactly what was said, but in short, his rationale was “it’s not helpful.” The Black students in the class are plenty acquainted with the hazard of existing as a black person, he didn’t need to show a disturbing video to further remind them. A productive discussion could be and consequently was had without it. Mr. Cawthorne also used to teach U.S. history, wherein the class demographics are reversed—they’re mostly white. Nevertheless, for similar reasons he still did not show, for example, Twelve Years A Slave or graphic images of Jim Crow-era lynchings. Perhaps, it might benefit sheltered white students in the class, but the potential outcome for a black student made it not worth it to him: “It means maybe losing their trust, they have less of a belief they can be vulnerable with you.”
Vulnerability is essential, of course, but until Mr. Cawthorne used it in our conversation, I had grown slightly tired of it because of Brené Brown. It has become such an overused buzzword. It felt like the meaning was gone. However, Mr. Cawthorne’s later elaboration on vulnerability reminded me of the class meeting where the CLC partners shared their views on it. Mr. Cawthorne said that “personal testimony” has become a common refrain in education discourse—essentially being vulnerable so your students feel empowered to do the same. He said that when leading conversations around events like the Arbery murder, “I’m scared too. Students need to know this.”
Mr. Cawthorne’s approach to vulnerability is an example of it utilized effectively. The aforementioned exercises, which demand vulnerability from Black students at the expense of their wellbeing and for the benefit of their white classmates, is not.
Artifact V: An Annotated Lesson Plan from the 1619 Project
Artifact V: 1619 Project Lesson Plan, Continued
This artifact is part of a lesson plan provided by the 1619 Project to accompany a kid’s edition of The New York Times.
As previously discussed, the 1619 Project has been criticized by some for its unorthodox timeline and version of events. Unsurprisingly, the project’s more unconventional and complicated arguments were not included in materials intended for K-12 students. Nevertheless, this lesson plan does demonstrate how slavery can be taught if educators are more imaginative, truthful, and above all, seek out content that does not rely on harmful pedagogy.
A few details to pay particular attention to:
Artifact VI: A Quote from David W. Blight, biographer of Frederick Douglass and Professor of History at Yale University
“The point is not to teach American history as a chronicle of shame and oppression...Enslaved Americans were by no means only the brutalized victims of two and a half centuries of oppression; they were a people, of many cultures, who survived, created, imagined and built their worlds.”
Artifact VI: Blight quote, Continued
At the National Museum of African American History and Culture, visitors begin on the bottom floor of the building with the exhibit on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, eventually making their way literally “up from slavery”—viewing galleries representing the Revolution, the Antebellum, the Civil War and Reconstruction—and “to freedom.” Vinson Cunningham of the New Yorker describes this route as an imprecise depiction, writing, “Slavery might be better presented without the escape hatch of freer air above. After all, this is how it was experienced: not as a step on the path to somewhere else but as a cruel normalcy, a permanent condition, the life that one’s ancestors had lived, and that one’s children would surely live, too. The Holocaust Memorial Museum, across the Mall, offers a sober acknowledgment: for millions, this was a lifetime—an entire edifice, not simply a floor.” For most enslaved people, a life in bondage was their life in totality. The tragedy of slavery, then, deserves better than the flippant at best, callous at worst, treatment it widely receives from educators. Most of all, Black children deserve to be taught their history without being retraumatized.
Enslavement is trivialized through the employment of skits or simulations, or simply screening explicit media without commentary in classrooms. Slavery continues to inform every aspect of contemporary Black American life—American life in general. Therefore, it is crucial for students to receive an accurate, appropriately grave education on it. If not, this is how people, in good faith or not, can continue to argue that “slavery wasn’t that bad.” However, this education cannot come at the cost of Black students.
I am chiefly concerned with the teaching of slavery, however, as this quote from David W. Blight maintains, the African American story has always been greater than slavery. The current pedagogy on teaching it negates this truth, though. There are innumerable Black Americans contributors, beyond Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks, which illustrates the breadth and the resilience of the African American experience...
Bibliography
Cunningham, Vinson. “Making a Home for Black History.” The New Yorker, 22 Aug. 2016.
Hannah-Jones, Nikole. “America Wasn't a Democracy, Until Black Americans Made It One.” The New York Times, 14 Aug. 2019.
Jerkins, Morgan. “The Problems With Black Suffering On-Screen.” Zora Magazine, 15 Aug. 2019.
Jesuthasan, Meerabelle. “Evaluating and Reshaping Timelines in The 1619 Project: New York Times for Kids Edition.” Pulitzer Center, 2 Oct. 2019.
Kenney, Tanasia. “Demeaning’ Slavery Education Game No Longer Part of Georgia School Lesson Plan.” Atlanta Black Star, 30 Aug. 2016.
Knowles, Hannah. “'Set Your Price for a Slave,' a Fifth-Grade Worksheet Read. It Landed the Teacher on Leave.” The Washington Post, 10 Dec. 2019.
Serwer, Adam. “The Fight Over the 1619 Project Is Not About the Facts.” The Atlantic, 21 Jan. 2020.
SPLC. “Teaching Hard History.” Southern Poverty Law Center, 31 Jan. 2018.