Racism is such a touchy topic that many US educators avoid it – we are college professors who tackled that challenge head on

It is not easy to teach about race in today’s political and social climate.

One hundred and sixty years after the United States abolished slavery, racial differences continue to spark pervasive misunderstanding, engender social separation and drive political and economic disparities. American educators are naturally intimidated and, at times, discouraged by the huge task before them.

Yet race and racism are key components of American history. Understanding this history illuminates central aspects of American identity for students.

We are university faculty members – one Black, one white – who decided to tackle this topic head on.

Following the rash of police killings of unarmed Black Americans in 2014 and 2015 that inspired the Black Lives Matter protests, we began collaborating on a unique effort at the University of Missouri, where we both taught at the time, to heal our campus and society using the tools of education.

The shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, had enormous reverberations at Mizzou. It spurred walkouts and protests, and ultimately the resignation of the university’s president.

Yet we knew the memory and lessons of this event could too soon fade into the past.

Race and the American story

American history is punctuated by recurrent cycles of racial injustice, response and forgetfulness.

The American Revolution inspired a wave of abolitionist fervor – even Thomas Jefferson vehemently condemned slavery as a “cruel war against human nature itself.” Then the political and economic concerns of white Americans eclipsed the issue for decades.

This cycle repeated itself after the Civil War ended slavery in the U.S. in 1865.

Reconstruction efforts in the South were incredibly successful in securing social and political equality for the freedmen. Then came the backlash: the rise of the racist and violent Ku Klux Klan in 1865, followed by the federal government’s political compromises with the South and the withdrawal of federal troops. Justice was delayed another century.

As documented in our new book, “Race and the American Story,” the course we created at Mizzou was a conscious effort to halt this vicious cycle of forgetfulness and apathy.

The Race and the American Story course launched in 2017 with the aim of bringing white and Black students and faculty together in the same classrooms to have honest conversations about issues of race in American history. It combines a focus on historical documents and music with an emphasis on small group discussion.

Students are regularly surprised by how directly the historical texts we assign relate to their own experiences as 21st-century Americans.

Frederick Douglass’ Fourth of July speech – in which Douglass, who escaped slavery, wonders what patriotism means to Black Americans – reads to them like a Black Lives Matter manifesto. They are amazed that Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in the 1830s, predicted that the civil rights struggle would be even more difficult than abolition of legal slavery.

Students share these reactions and other insights with each other, rather than responding to the professor. By engaging in a common learning process about race and humanity, our students become friends – through and because of their differences, not despite them.

Music also serves as a shared touchstone – if not always a common ground – between white and Black Americans.

In one assignment, our students create an annotated playlist of songs that deal with the topic of race. We spend a class period or two listening to this music. Students explain why they chose particular songs, and then everyone reacts to that track.

Students who have recently read and discussed Ida Wells’ report on lynching in the South, for example, may hear similar themes in Billie Holiday’s iconic performance of “Strange Fruit.”

As students get to know each other on a personal level through their shared love of music, they may not even notice that profound learning about race and difference is also happening.

In many ways, the course design hinges on the fact that we are so different from each other, both as academics and as people.

When one professor is a Black female ethnomusicologist and the other is a white male political theorist, students can expect an eclectic blend of disciplinary knowledge and lived experiences. We learned about race and the American story through very different lenses, and we leverage our own experience and knowledge to make students feel more comfortable sharing theirs.

We invite our students to begin examining issues of race in American history from multiple entry points and from cultural perspectives that can speak powerfully to both Black and white Americans.

K-12 race education is lacking

We believe many U.S. students haven’t gotten a satisfactory education on issues of race for a long time.

Most elementary, middle school and high school students over the past 50 years have received some version of what we call the “Mount Rushmore” narrative of American history.

It goes something like this: A few great white men, plus Martin Luther King, Jr., did great things for America, a country that has had its problems in the past but is always getting better and better.

This version of history emphasizes progress and minimizes the gravity of past and present injustices against African Americans.

In recent years, this K-12 situation has worsened. In the place of unthinking Mount Rushmore-ism, U.S. schools now sit at two extreme poles.

On one side, some schools have begun instituting curricula inspired by Howard Zinn’s 1980 book “A People’s History of the U.S..” Zinn’s text surfaces the stories of people overlooked by most historical accounts, from the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 to the 1960s California farm workers’ movement led by Cesar Chavez.

Curricula based on Zinn’s work – for example, California’s ethnic studies program – complement and counterbalance the Mount Rushmore narrative. But they tend to downplay or reject the founding principles of the U.S. and the understanding of humanity that gave rise to the American political tradition itself.

Meanwhile, many states and school systems have adopted textbooks and curricula that emphasize the country’s fundamental goodness, omitting or neglecting historical racial injustices. Florida and Oklahoma have even enacted laws that some teachers interpret as prohibiting the teaching of slavery and historical racism.

Trapped between these two extremes are many educators so fearful of saying the wrong thing that they simply avoid the subject of race altogether.

Race and the American story: A bigger project

Some colleges do a little better. Black Studies programs may balance out the Mount Rushmore narrative with not just Zinn’s “untold stories” model but also the works of Black historians like Carter G. Woodson and Darlene Clark Hine.

Yet many American higher education institutions still teach Mount Rushmore in some courses and Zinn in others, contending that this approach provides “intellectual diversity.” We see this as a recipe for incoherence and confusion.

The successful course we co-designed at Mizzou demonstrates that colleges can tackle race in a thoughtful, nuanced way that builds bridges. We find that students are hungry to learn in this way. They regularly express gratitude for the opportunity to talk about race in ways they didn’t think was possible in higher education today.

After “Race and the American Story” launched in 2017, faculty members at other universities began to get in touch. They wanted to coordinate their efforts to teach honestly and productively about race with ours. In 2019, we hosted our first annual symposium for these faculty members and their students. We have since hosted many more events and conversations with professors, community members and students nationwide.

Our approach gives students and citizens a kind of “North Star” to orient race relations in the U.S. – one based on deep historical knowledge, a commitment to justice and a disposition toward genuine cross-racial conversation.

Mutual understanding doesn’t appear out of thin air, but educators can teach it.