Black History Month, Fortune Cookies and essentialized education

Yesterday I helped out in a kindergarten class that was "learning" about Chinese New Year. The class was making fortunes (as in the kind you might find in a cookie from panda express), decorating fireworks, and reading some story about a dragon. On top of that, they were copying words on a handout about "chinese counting," and although all the numbers were written out in Chinese, the teacher couldn't pronounce the words and the pictures that went with the numbers included things like chopsticks, lanterns and of course....fortune cookies. Man, I thought: Here is this class of all white kids, attending this school filled exclusively with other white kids, in a neighborhood where only white people live, and they are learning about "Chinese" culture and traditions from a white teacher, using a work sheet designed by (no doubt) a company dominated by, you guessed it, more white people. And I can only imagine that this is the only lesson they get about anything Chinese for the rest of the year.

It all made me wonder about the danger of so-called multi-cultural education. What are the repercussions of creating and facilitating essentialized lessons about non-white (as in non-western non european, not anglo/North American, other, them, etc.) people places and traditions through a narrow lens of appropriated whiteness. In my entire elementary and secondary education I probably had this same lesson about "Chinese New Year" in a variety of different forms each year, and in the absence of having a personal relationship or any exposure to actual Chinese people, how could I help but understand them in any way other than in terms of chow mein, fortune cookies and red envelopes. Not only that, what about the one or two chinese kids in my school and the thousands of chinese kids in other schools who every year listen attentively while their culture is reduced to a one day lesson about food and fireworks.

Can anyone realistically argue that this doesn't have some sort of greater social consequence? As far as I can tell, one of the problems with "multi-cultural" education is that even the name itself is a misrepresentation. This type of education is derived from the cultural perspective, bias and understanding of one culture and one culture only: European-descended white Americans. The education kids receive in public school is about as authentically chinese as I am. It does nothing to challenge the infectious white normalcy that characterizes not only education but just about every other aspect of American social space and public life. So while Chinese kids learn that the significance of their ethnic identity ranks with groundhog day and St. Valentine, white kids are reinforced over and over again with the idea that the way they look, feel, act, behave, eat, dance, write, talk and breathe is normal, significant and correct, they are also learning that everything else is just a token leftover from immigration and the American melting pot. It appears that there's even more to educational equity than resources and standardized tests.

As I sat and contemplated this idea of co-opted, pre-packaged, whitened-out culture as the only source for multi-culturalism in the public school system, I thought about my all time favorite aspect of public schooling: Black History Month. Oh black history month, the time when: prime time television airs thirty second clips of well-dressed African-Americans achieving greatness, daytime and evening talk shows interview prominent black entertainers and celebrities and we all take a moment to praise the cultural, athletic and historic accomplishments of African-Americans. If it can even be imagined, the study of black history in the public school classroom is even more ridiculous and contrived. Students learn about "I Have A Dream" and Martin Luther King Jr. when they celebrate his birthday in January so teachers have to get really creative when February rolls around and its black history month again.

Oh you know, there's the Rosa Parks anecdote (which is always a watered-down version of an incredible struggle for freedom that doesn't even validate the intricate tactical organization and community mobilization that surrounded the bus incident-much of which was done by women); not to mention a brief overview of significant black athletes and entertainers: arthur ashe, magic johnson, jackie robinson, maybe even flo jo if you're lucky; in particularly progressive cases you might hear about the Harlem Rennaissance, freedom marches or the first black person to (insert significant political office and/or leadership position here); and in some classes students even learn about things like the underground railroad (which in reality is no more than a valorization of the benevolent white folk that guided the black people from slavery) or maybe read uncle tom's cabin or a speech by Frederick Douglas. Man, that's a whole lot more than fortune cookies and fireworks isn't it?
As it turns out, it isn't. The truth of the matter is that while the expression is different, the message is the same: Black people and black culture are represented as static fixtures, historical, political and social entities that exist in isolation (and clear distinction) from the white American norm.

When kids sit in classrooms year after year, and read the same speech by Martin Luther King, Jr, what are they really learning about African-Americans? Are they learning about the complexity of diasporic culture and the diversity of African-American identities? Are they learning about historical, institutional and systemic racism and discrimination? Of course not. They are learning a token or two about a couple of important events or individuals, the significance of which, even if they are exposed to, they will unlikely ever learn to situate in the greater context of African-American identity and experience.

Most of the people I grew up going to school with now hold college degrees and are currently pursuing advanced education and/or have joined the capitalist work force. And as they all sit at the brink of the adult stage of their lives in which they will raise their own children (who will do the same projects and read the same books as they always did during February) I can almost guarantee that none of them know anything more about African-American history than they did in the first grade. The worst part is, these kids received some of the best public elementary and secondary education in the country AND made it through higher education. What does that suggest about what the rest of the nation's children are learning about black history, or anything else for that matter? How can we claim to live in a world of equality, or even envision one, when the very substance of what we are teaching focuses on, benefits and reproduces a single, dominant group. What's more, Black history month probably does more justice to black culture than any other study of history does to any other marginalized group in the entire scope of public education curriculum. What are the consequences for all the kids who belong to these groups who are educated by this system? One can only imagine. I know that I grew up in a world where (aside from the fact that I'm a woman), most everything I learned about validated my entire identity and existence. I also know that there are social, psychological and academic advantages that came with that type of education, and that in contrast, there are serious consequences for those who are not receiving it.

I hope to be an educator myself someday. I hope to conceive of and create a curriculum in which the story of history is told through the voices of the people I am teaching. I hope to create a space in which the cultural and ethnic history of each individual is validated, spread and understood for its unique complexity, and that no one group is valorized over another. I've often been told that, in terms of my professional dreams I'm incredibly unrealistic. And although this may be the truth, I can ensure my future students of one thing, there will be no fortune cookies on Chinese New Year, No latkes during Hannukah and no posters of famous black athletes hanging on the walls during black history month.