This commentary is by Robert L. Walsh of South Burlington, who taught African American history at South Burlington High School from 1980 to 1995, was an adjunct faculty member at the University of Vermont from 2001 to 2006, and was a member of the Vermont House of Representatives 1983-89. He was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, a veteran of the Vietnam War, and received the Bronze Star. He is founder and president of the Vermont African American History Project, which encourages African American history instruction in Vermont’s elementary and secondary schools.
Before the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, northern businessmen, when negotiating with their southern counterparts, avoided mentioning slavery. Instead, they substituted the euphemism “peculiar institution.”
Today, with our school boards and teachers being attacked for presenting an accurate account of our country’s history, rather than addressing racism, we resort to new euphemisms — diversity, equity and inclusion.
Without question diversity, equity, and inclusion are important concepts, but they don’t address the problem. Racism is our problem. It’s the United States’ original sin and is deeply embedded in the nation’s DNA.
David Wellman’s “Portraits of White Racism” defines racism as “a system of advantage based on race.” Beverly Tatum’s book “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria” defines racism as “prejudice plus power.”
The Declaration of Independence’s ideal that “all men are created equal” was compromised as the founding fathers drafted the Constitution. When ratified on June 21, 1788, the Constitution contained a provision that slaves were to be counted as three-fifths of an individual in determining representation in the House of Representatives. Sixty-nine years later, in the Dred Scott case, the U.S. Supreme Court reafirmed that slaves were property.
It took four years of war and ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868 before African Americans were declared citizens with full rights to life, liberty and ownership of property. Since then, racism, individual and systemic, has continually been a blight on our society.
Some examples are the Jim Crow laws, segregation, the UVM eugenics program, the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II, and financial and real estate institutions’ redlining policies.
Racism’s companions are hate and violence: lynchings, the Ku Klux Klan, the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, and the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2022. Its symbols are the swastika and the Confederate flag.
Critical race theory states that “U.S. social institutions (criminal justice, education, housing, health care, labor) are laced with racism embedded in laws, regulations, rules and procedures that lead to differential outcomes by race.”
If one studies the history of the African American experience, the validity of critical race theory will be readily apparent. The best resource I have found on the subject is “The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story” published by The New York Times in 2021. It is available on Amazon ($22.80).
Currently, conservative activists are demanding that critical race theory not be taught in our schools. It is not.
Nevertheless, last November Vermont State Rep. Art Peterson, R-Clarenden, asked the Mill River School Board to ban the subject. Rep. Peterson’s comments following the meeting had little relevance to critical race theory. He suggested that racism is an individual problem. He continued, “I refute that harm is being done right now. I think we’ve got laws in place that prevent discrimination.”
Peterson is entitled to his opinion; however, harm is being done every day. One only needs to ask former state representative Kiah Morris, Tabitha Moore, Lisa Ryan and Celine Davis what happened to them.
Similarly, also last fall, Elizabeth Cady, a member of the Essex-Westford School Board, told her colleagues that “equity seeks to divide people by race to want the same outcome for each group, often using racial discrimination to get it.”
Google defines equity as “the quality of being fair and impartial.” Once school board officials, administrators and teachers have a better understanding of racism, they will be able to respond to attacks with facts. In turn, diversity, equity and inclusion programs will become more effective.
Racism will not be eradicated in the immediate future. To accomplish that will require a commitment to teaching our children an honest account of American history. To understand racism, however, we must start by studying the experience of the African Americans, the only group that was forcibly brought to our shores, enslaved for 400 years, and continuously denied the freedoms and rights we espouse in the Declaration of Independence.
