Research

History reveals patterns in behavior through events of the past. By learning about history, we can seek to avoid past mistakes.
History can help us understand what is going on in the world, gain knowledge about ourselves and others, inspire change, reveal the best ways to be good citizens, and help us make better decisions. It can also help to prevent the repetition of past mistakes.

All youth struggle with their identities during their adolescent years. However, African Americans are faced with added social character challenges, such as having to deal with the notion that society does not think they can become high achievers. There are also significant, proven inequalities that come from being black.

Recent data gathered by the University of San Bernardino’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism (CSHE) reports a rise of 9% in hate crimes in 2018. Reports reached a high for the decade with 2,009 incidents across 30 U.S. cities in 2019.

Bryce-LaPorte further supports Black Studies on the basis that mutual respect for Afro-Americans must come through increased knowledge of their contributions to American culture.

When we look into African American history, we see that African Americans helped to build and improve our nation and influence society as a whole. All people look for ways to improve and increase their voice. By learning history, African American students can do just that.

Racial identity can impact the self-esteem of a child both while they are developing and throughout their lifetimes. Swanson, Cunningham, Youngblood II, and Spencer discussed the fact that children who were taught at a young age about their racial identity were less likely to feel a difference between their personal and group identity.

Sheehan talks about how history can provide us with lessons from the past so that we can live to have a better future (2005). He argues that by sharing history with students, moral and practical lessons can be taught so that we know how to behave in the future.
 
Sheehan also brings up an important point about using more than one history to teach students so that falsehoods can be brought out in the open (Sheehan, 2005). This is extremely important for African American history. Students need to be able to understand their history and recognize that their ancestors helped to make America a better place to live.
 
Racial socialization has been defined as “the developmental processes by which children acquire the behaviors, perceptions, values, and attitudes of an ethnic group and come to see themselves and others as members of the group.”
 
By acquiring behaviors, perceptions, and values as one group — but more importantly, as a whole — students are able to gain knowledge and to use it as a form of power and understanding.
 
Even though history is full of mistakes and times of struggle, those factors make it even more important. All students should become aware that struggle helps us to overcome personal bias. Our lived experience is imperfect, but it helps us strive to understand what is really true (Sheehan, 2005).

Sources

Sheehan, James J. “How do we learn from history?” (2005). Retrieved from https://www.historians.org.

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