BY SONYA MCCOY-WILSON, ED.D

“Truth, Reconciliation, and Education”: Healing the Original Sin of Slavery

by

Sonya McCoy-Wilson, Ed.D. Executive Coach McCoy Wilson Consulting, LLC

The United States has found itself incapable of escaping the original sin of slavery. A full 156 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, we find vestiges of slavery in every U.S. system and every social and political movement since the U.S. Civil War. The once-titled “dark and peculiar institution” is indeed the dark underbelly of every governmental, educational, and social policy from the U.S. Constitution and its 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, to landmark Supreme Court cases like Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 and the Jim Crow laws of the post-Reconstruction South to Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, as well as the eight Civil Rights Acts (and restoration of those acts) between 1957 and 2021. Indeed, America has a dark past as well as a dark present. Yes, the conceptualization of Americanism is a beautiful dream—for some. However, for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) communities, the Americanism and the “American dream” have been largely relegated to whites. Various measures have been attempted with the aim of transforming the United States into the democratic republic that it set out to be. None of these measures—the Civil War, Reconstruction, copious amendments to the Constitution, civil rights acts, affirmative action—have truly been successful. These measures have ideologically failed because the entire nation has not been invested in dismantling the system that birthed a slave colony and eventually a democratic republic. That system is deeply rooted in the ideology of “the white plantocracy.” That system is predicated on eugenics. That system is white supremacy itself. I argue here that the best way to dismantle white supremacy is through education and re-education. Truth, reconciliation, and education are the best hope we have for moving the country forward into authentic equity and inclusion. This essay posits truth, reconciliation, and education as the best model by which to transcend America’s dark past.

Truth

When one imagines truth and reconciliation, one naturally envisions South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its emphasis on restorative justice (Tutu, 2019). According to Tutu (2019), the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was a “court-like body

established by the new South African government in 1995 to help heal the country and bring about a reconciliation of its people by uncovering the truth about human rights violations that had occurred during the period of apartheid” (p. 1). Unlike similar initiatives, such as the Nürnberg Trials of World War II or the International War Crimes Tribunal of 1972, the goal for the TRC in South Africa emphasized “truth and reconciliation” rather than punitive recourse. As such, “truth and reconciliation” in South Africa represented a global model for restorative justice. The U.S. must go further than restorative justice, however. We must strive instead for transformative justice, which seeks to dismantle oppressive systems and transform society (Ruffin, 2020). As a means of facilitating transformative justice, the U.S. must be dedicated to telling the multiple and manifold truths of the history of race in the country. There is a proverb that argues, “until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter” (cited in Brooks, 1994). Therefore, we must articulate, clearly and often, that educating children in a culturally responsive way is not about shaming white people, so that they simply feel ashamed about the parts that they have played in oppressing Black and brown people. Rather, the history of race and white supremacy in America must be reframed by the surviving lions as a cautionary tale that warns future generations about what can happen if we only allow history to glorify the hunters. Achebe explained that he became a historian and a writer “so that the story of the hunt will also reflect the agony, the travail—the bravery, even, of the lions” (Brooks, 1994). Ultimately, the truths that manifest from this reframing should operate as a justification for dismantling white supremacy as the core of systemic and systematic racism in the U.S. Not only must we dismantle white supremacy because we do not want to repeat the historical events of oppression in the U.S., but we also want to break the cycle of the oppressed/oppressor relationship (Freire, 1970/2000). By dismantling white supremacy, we have the potential to break irrational racial hierarchies and make the world a better place. What does the “truth” look like? Ultimately, truth is testimony. The U.S. can arrive at this ever-elusive truth by first acknowledging that the nation has yet to heal the wounds that slavery inflicted and then establishing a national body (or commission) that focuses on the victims—the descendants of enslaved Africans—and the harm they have endured in the 156 years since the Emancipation Proclamation. The goal of testimony is not only to achieve a sense of purgation for the oppressed person but also to begin the process of atonement for the oppressing group or system. In this case, that system is the white supremacist ideology interwoven systemically into the United States of America. Truth also constructs an impartial historical record of the past (Tutu, 2019, p. 2).

Reconciliation

Only when we can hold space for “the lions” to be heard can the country hope to reconcile its dark past—its original sin of slavery. Reconciliation must include reparations and begin with changes in the ideological state apparatuses that perpetuate the ideology of a nation state (Althusser, 1970). According to Althusser (1970), there are repressive state apparatuses (RSA) and ideological state apparatuses (ISA). RSAs are used by the ruling class to dominate the working class through aggressive, confrontational, and violent means. In the case of the U.S., the ruling class can be correlated to the “white ruling class,” as class and race are inextricably linked in the American binary construction of race. Accordingly, RSAs are police forces, armed forces, lower courts, and prisons. ISAs, on the other hand, use nonviolent means to oppress the working class by perpetuating oppressive systems that keep the ruling class in power. Those ISAs are typically churches, media, sports, social organizations, and educational systems. Some examples

of the systematic racism permeating ISAs like school systems can be found in school-to-prison pipeline theory and practice (Heitzeg, 2009), redlining (Rothstein, 2017), high-stakes standardized testing, and school performance-based funding models.

Education

Some may argue that systems are immutable. However, Baldwin (1962) claimed instead that “not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced” (p. 12). Societies have adopted some defeatist perspectives about change, believing that nothing ever really changes, so we might as well accept varying degrees of evils. In fact, many change leaders sabotage their efforts to exact sustainable change by targeting symptoms of larger problems rather than targeting the core of the problems. I would argue that the core of the problem of anti-Black racism and white supremacy in America begins with educational systems (ideological state apparatuses), not judicial or policing systems (repressive state apparatuses). There are several generations of Americans who have been systematically miseducated and therefore have accepted myths of American meritocracy and counternarratives about the brutalization of Africans in America. We must, therefore, transform how people think before we can change how they behave. And if we hope to do this, we must be in the business of liberation education. Others have proposed truth and reconciliation in the U.S. However, what differs from those arguments and the one I posit here is the vehicle by which the nation could hope to heal. Although Táíwó’s (2020) argument rightly situates the American race problem in what he calls a “political morality” (or immorality), he leaves us with few solutions. Táíwó (2020) poses the question, “Does the U.S. need a truth and reconciliation commission?” His answer is yes; however, Táíwó does not illustrate how this would look in practice. Over the course of American history, we have never witnessed the country attempting to change its dark past through reeducation on a massive scale. King (1963) argued, “while it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless.” Clearly, as we have witnessed for the past 60 years, the restraining of the heartless through legislation is a precarious business. However, education, if done carefully and thoughtfully, can change hearts and minds. King (1963) also noted that religion and education must play a significant role in changing the hearts of the nation. Religion, however, has simply functioned to perpetuate oppressive ideologies. Hence, the cure for racial immorality and the original sin of slavery is a complete dismantling and rebuilding of the American educational system, so that it no longer seeks to indoctrinate citizens with American myths and nationalism rooted in eugenics, but rather, truly strives to educate “we the people,” beginning with foundational education in the K–12 system.

Liberation Pedagogy

Freire (1970) advocated for liberation pedagogy, which was not (as some bastardized understandings present it today) simply a practice of teaching learners to have psychological realizations and discuss them in class. For Freire, liberation pedagogy was a practice that could be lifted out of classroom spaces. Liberation pedagogy sought to transform students, give them a voice, and call them to action so they might dismantle oppressive systems. “The agency of this transformation is what Freire called conscientization,” says Bertoff (1990, p. 362). Freire defined conscientization as the process by which one becomes a subject with agency to act upon and transform the world (Freire, 1970/2000, p. 32). Only this type of education can truly dismantle oppressive systems.

“Banking models” are in direct conflict with liberation pedagogy. In the U.S., the banking concept of education persists. As Freire (1970/2000) described, “education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories, and the teacher is the depositor” (p. 72). Thus, the teacher is subject and the student is object. The teacher is the holder of all knowledge and truth, and the students simply “receive, memorize, and repeat” (Freire, 1970/2000, p. 72). Banking concepts of education are designed to build a citizenry so blinded by nationalism and loyalty to the nation state that they are either unwilling or afraid to lift the veil and critique the flaws that lie beneath. We cannot transform the world by infantilizing our students and rendering them mute and incapable of critical thought. We must instead liberate students so that they are empowered to first recognize oppressive systems when they encounter them; next, give voice to action and work to dismantle oppressive systems; and finally, transform their world into a liberatory space.

Culturally Relevant and Responsive Teaching

Culturally relevant teaching is the best vehicle by which we could hope to liberate future generations of Americans. Culturally relevant and responsive teaching argues that education for all must include cultural perspectives that represent the diverse groups of students those educational institutions serve in the U.S. In other words, culturally relevant teaching seeks to deconstruct the myth that the U.S. is a “white” nation and decenter whiteness as the primary lens through which we frame all knowledge in the U.S. Through this culturally responsive framework, the “voices of the lions” are heard. Culturally relevant teaching facilitates transformative justice rather than simply restorative justice. As Ruffin (2020) explains, restorative justice seeks to repair harm, but transformative justice seeks to transform systems, structures, and institutions. Ladson-Billings (1995) developed a culturally relevant model of pedagogy divided into four propositions. First, the concrete experiences of learners should be considered a credible source of meaning-making. In other words, individuals’ lived experiences should be privileged over those who have simply studied those experiences. Second, like Freire (1970/2000), LadsonBillings argued that knowledge emerges in dialectical relationships of collaboration. Third, culturally responsive pedagogy must include a deep ethic of caring between educators and learners. Finally, culturally responsive educators must value an ethic of personal accountability (Ladson-Billings, 1995, p. 471). A large body of literature has focused on culturally relevant and responsive teaching, starting with Irvine (1990), who first provided a counternarrative to deficit-model theories in education. Then, Gay (2013) outlined educator professional development and cultural responsivity. Hayes and Juarez (2012) indicted American school systems as being gatekeepers of white supremacy and proposed culturally relevant teaching as the solution to address systematic racism. Matias (2013) examined white liberals who teach Black and brown students but lack intersectionality and true cultural responsivity. Khalifa (2010, 2011, 2012, 2015) examined urban K–12 systems and their propensity to approach Black and brown students through pedagogies informed by deficit-model ideologies. Khalifa (2015) concluded that the impetus for the reproduction of white supremacism is self-hatred and internalized racism (McCoy-Wilson, 2020), and that cultural responsivity should be embraced. When we endeavor to reeducate a nation so deeply entrenched in white supremacy and anti-Black racism, we must include curricula that also address racial identity development for all of the diverse populations in the U.S. Although the binary construction of race complicates this

type of discourse, there is a body of work (Cross, 1971, 1991; Poston, 1990; Helms, 1992) that has summarized the stages of racial development for various diverse groups in the U.S.

Conclusion

If we ever hope to escape the original sin of slavery, we must seek truth, reconciliation, and education. The essential component is education. The U.S. must exorcize the ghosts of slavery and anti-Black racism through a progressive and transformative framework. The country was torn apart on the question of enslavement and the underlying ideology of white supremacy that kept slavery alive and resulted in a bloody civil war. In the two centuries following the U.S. Civil War, the country has persisted in clinging to the myths of whiteness and white superiority that birthed the war in the first place. And now, in 2021, those who still hold to white supremacy and anti-Black racism cloaked as “states’ rights,” conservatism, nationalism, and other antidemocratic ideologies are waging battles in the state departments of education, the courts, and the legislature that threaten to send the nation back to its dark past. Ultimately, we must unlearn several hundred years of miseducation in educational systems that have gone to great lengths to massage the truth. The country must heal the wounds of white supremacy if we want to usher in transformative justice and avoid destruction.

References

Althusser, L. (1970). Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. In Lenin and philosophy and other essays (pp. 121–176). Monthly Review Press. Baldwin, J. (1962, January 14). As much truth as one can bear. The New York Times. Section 7, 120–148. Bertoff, A. E. (1990). Paulo Freire’s liberation pedagogy. Liberation Education, 67(4), 362–369. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41961745 Brooks, J. (1994). Chinua Achebe, the art of fiction no. 139. Paris Review, 133(Winter). https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1720/the-art-of-fiction-no-139-chinua-achebe Cross, W.E., Jr. (1971). The Negro-to-Black conversion experience: Toward a psychology of Black liberation. Black World, 20, 13–27. Cross, W. E., Jr. (1991). Shades of black: Diversity in African American identity. Temple University Press. Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. B. Ramos, Trans.; 30th Anniversary ed.). Continuum. (Original work published 1970) Gay, G. (2010). Culturally responsive teaching (2nd ed.). Teachers College Press. Gay, G. (2013). Teaching to and through cultural diversity. Curriculum Inquiry, 43(1), 48–70. https://doi.org/10.1111/curi.12002 Hayes, C., & Juarez, B. (2012). There is no culturally responsive teaching spoken here: A critical race perspective. Democracy & Education, 20(1), 1–14. https://democracyeducation journal.org/home/vol20/iss1/1/

Heitzeg, N. A. (2009). Education or incarceration: Zero tolerance policies and the school to prison pipeline. Forum on Public Policy Online, 2009(2). https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ870076 Helms, J. E. (1992). A race is a nice thing to have: A guide to being a white person or understanding the white persons in your life. Microtraining Associates. Irvine, J. J. (1990). Black students and school failure: Policies, practices, and prescriptions. Greenwood Press. Khalifa, M. (2010). Validating social and cultural capital of hyperghettoized at-risk students. Education and Urban Society, 42(5), 620–646. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013124510366225 Khalifa, M. (2011). Teacher expectations and principal behavior: Responding to teacher acquiescence. The Urban Review, 43, 702–727. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-0110176-z Khalifa, M. (2012). A re-new-ed paradigm in successful urban school leadership: Principal as community leader. Educational Administration Quarterly, 48(3), 424–467. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X11432922 Khalifa, M. (2015). Can Blacks be racists? Black-on-Black principal abuse in an urban school setting. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 28(2), 259–282. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2014.916002 King, M. L., Jr. (1963, December 18). Address at Western Michigan University. https://wmich.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/MLK.pdf Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312032003465 Lorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Crossing Press. Matias, C. E. (2013). Check yo’self before you wreck yo’self and our kids: Counterstories from culturally responsive white teachers? . . . to culturally responsive white teachers! Interdisciplinary Journal of Teaching and Learning, 3(2), 68–81. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1063061.pdf McCoy-Wilson, S. (2020). “We have a Black professor?” Rejecting African Americans as disseminators of knowledge. Journal of Black Studies, 51(6), 545–564. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934720925777 Poston, W. S. C. (1990). The biracial identity development model: A needed addition. Journal of Counseling and Development, 62(2), 152–155. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6676. 1990.tb01477.x Rothstein, R. (2017). The color of law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America. Liveright Publishing. Táíwó, O. (2020). Does the United States need a truth and reconciliation commission? The Philosopher, 108(2), 20–25. https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/taiwo