Education Week - February 8, 2023 - 15

We Don't Teach
Enough About
Black Fear in
U.S. History
By Brittany L. Jones
O
f all the possible
human emotions
that exist, fear
might be the one
we least want
to experience.
Unless someone
is watching a horror movie, going to a
haunted house, or thrill-seeking, I do
not know many people who wake up
seeking to be scared or afraid. As a Black
woman living in a world where being
Black is scary enough, I certainly try to
avoid situations that elicit fear. However,
my work as a teacher and a researcher
suggests that more attention should be
given to fear-specifically Black fear-
when teaching U.S. history.
Today, politicians across the
country are trying to remove, with
success in more than a dozen states,
discussions of race and racism from
history for fear that white children will
feel guilty to think of themselves as
oppressors. In that political context, it's
no wonder that Black fear is still rarely
taught in U.S. history classrooms.
As a former high school social
studies teacher and now social studies
teacher educator and researcher, I
never understood the role of fear in U.S.
history until I decided to analyze how
U.S. history standards portray emotions,
with a specific focus on fear.
What I found is that Black fear is not
taught in U.S. history because teaching
Black fear sits in tension with the narrative
that U.S. history is a story of progress.
The narrative of progress in U.S. history
suggests that over time, conditions have
improved for everyone, and the goal of
this narrative is to distance the present
from the oppressive systems on which this
country was founded.
To teach about Black fear in U.S.
history would be to acknowledge that
the events we celebrate as progress
did not eradicate the foundations of
anti-Blackness on which this country
was built. Teaching Black fear should
not be confused with Black oppression
but rather an amplification of Black
humanity.
In my analysis of Virginia's United
States History Social Science Standards
of Learning and Curriculum Framework
2015, from the state in which I
taught, fear was mentioned 12 times,
and not one of those times referred to
the fear experienced by Black people
in our country's history. Instead, I found
that when we teach about people's fears,
what we are often teaching about are
expressions of their power.
EDUCATION WEEK | February 8, 2023 | www.edweek.org/opinion | 15
For example, when white Southerners
are described as " fearing " enslaved
rebellions, the standards referenced that
fear as justification for implementing
harsher fugitive-slave laws and
legislation that severely restricted
the rights of free Black Americans.
Another example describes Southern
states " fearing " that President Lincoln
would abolish slavery. The standards
referenced that fear as justification to
secede from the Union. (These state
standards and curriculum framework
are still being used, although they are
currently undergoing revisions.)
I noticed that every time the
standards focused on the fears of groups
of people, that fear served as both a
catalyst and a justification for those
groups to inflict violence. I found that in
how we teach U.S. history, fear is much
more than an emotional expression of
fright. To possess fear is, as historian
Joanna Bourke noted in a 2003 journal
article, " nothing more than emotional
displays of power. "
Upon further analysis, I found that
this " emotional display " was only
powerful when it was fear attributed to
white people. Although the standards
I realized that
teaching about
Black fear
drastically
challenges
dominant
narratives of
U.S. history.
But Black people did fear and
continue to fear. And an examination
of the permanence of Black fear in U.S.
history would produce a necessary
counternarrative to this idea of
progress.
Why do we hold up the abolition of
enslavement and the signing of the 13th,
14th, and 15th amendments as turning
made multiple references to Black
suffering, Black people were never
described as fearful. This emphasis
on Black suffering with the omission
of Black fear strips Black people of
their humanity, while simultaneously
rendering them powerless.
In trying to understand why students
learn about Black suffering absent
of Black fear, I realized that teaching
about Black fear drastically challenges
dominant narratives of U.S. history, so
much so that it is more comfortable to
talk about the many ways that Black
people suffered, instead of the emotions
that suffering produced.
points in Black American life when
Black people continued to fear for their
lives from lynchings and other racial
terror during Jim Crow? If the election
of President Barack Obama supposedly
solidified the country as a post-racial
society, then why do Black people still
fear being unlawfully killed by police
today?
I would also argue that Black fear
is not taught in U.S. history because
it forces us to acknowledge that the
existence of the 13 colonies and,
eventually, the United States was
predicated on inflicting harm to
Black people and other historically
marginalized groups.
To explicitly teach about Black fear in
an historical context, we would have to
understand not only what caused that
fear but who. Teaching about the causes
of Black fear means that we would have
to explicitly name how every day white
people, communities, and social groups
have actively wielded racial violence to
maintain power and control throughout
U.S. history.
Black fear should be taught as a
through line of the history of this
country. When we pay attention to
Black fear, we can understand how
that fear served as an impetus for
Black resistance movements. Attention
to the pervasiveness of Black fear
over the course of four centuries of
history illustrates the intransigence
of anti-Blackness. And, perhaps most
importantly, attention to Black fear
gives Black children a historical context
for their present-day fear of anti-Black
racism.
JONES is a doctoral candidate at
Michigan State University in the
curriculum, instruction, and teacher
education program. Prior to her
doctoral studies, she was a high
school social studies teacher in
Richmond, Va.
http://www.edweek.org/opinion
Education Week - February 8, 2023

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