The dangers of whitewashing black history | David Ikard | TEDxNashville

Should white people care about the whitewashing of black history? Most people will likely answer yes to this question, if only because it sounds politically correct to do so. What will hopefully become clear is that whites have as much to lose by whitewashing black history as their African American peers.

David Ikard is a Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University. His research and teaching interests include African American Literature, black feminist criticism, hip-hop culture, black masculinity and whiteness studies. He is the author/co-author of four books, including "Breaking The Silence: Toward a Black Male Feminist Criticism" (2007), "Nation of Cowards: Black Activism in Barack Obama's Post-Racial America" (2012; co-authored with Martell Teasley and winner of the 2013 Best Scholarly Book Award by DISA), "Blinded by the Whites: Why Race Still Matters in 21st-Century America" (2013), and "Lovable Racists, Magical Negroes, and White Messiahs" (2017). His essays have appeared in African American Review, MELUS , Palimpsest, African and Black Diaspora Journal, The Journal of Black Studies, and Obsidian III.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

I am the proud father
of two beautiful children:

Elijah, 15, and Octavia, 12.

When Elijah was in the 4th grade,

he came to me,

he came home from school
bubbling over with excitement

about what he had learned that day

about African American history.

Now, I'm an African American
and Cultural Studies professor,

and so, as you can imagine,

African American culture
is kind of serious around my home.

So, I was very proud
that my son was excited

about what he had learned
that day in school.

So I said, "What did you learn?"

He said, "I learned about Rosa Parks."

I said, "Okay, what did you learn
about Rosa Parks?"

He said, "I learned that Rosa Parks
was this frail, old black woman

in the 1950s, in Montgomery, Alabama,

and she sat down on this bus
and she had tired feet,

and when the bus driver told her
to give up her seat to a white patron,

she refused because she had tired feet
and it had been a long day,

and she was tired of oppression,

and she didn't give up her seat.

And she marched with Martin Luther King
and she believed in non-violence."

And I guess he must have looked at my face

and saw that I was
a little less than impressed

by his history lesson.

And so, he stopped and he's like,
"Dad, what's wrong?

What did I get wrong?"

I said, "Son, you didn't
get anything wrong,

but I think your teacher
got a whole lot of things wrong.

(Laughter)

He said, "But what do you mean?"

I said, "Rosa Parks was not tired,

she was not old

and she certainly didn't have tired feet."

He said, "What?"

I said, "Yes!

Rosa Parks was only 42 years old -

yeah, you're shocked, right?
You never heard that.

Rosa Parks was only 42 two years old,

she had only worked six hours that day
and she was a seamstress.

And her feet were just fine.

The only thing that she was tired of

was she was tired of inequality.

She was tired of oppression."

And my son said,

"Well, why would my teacher, you know,
tell me this thing, you know?

This is confusing for me."

Because he loved this teacher,
and she was a good teacher,

a youngish, you know,
twenty-something, white woman,

really, really smart, pushed him.

So I liked her as well,
but he was confused.

"Why would she tell me this?" he said.

He said, "Dad, tell me more.
Tell me more about Rosa Parks."

And I said, "Son, I'll do you one better."

He was like, "What?"

I said, "I'm going to buy
her autobiography

and I'm going to let you
read it yourself."

(Laughter)

So as you can imagine,

Elijah wasn't too excited about this new,
lengthy homework assignment

that his dad had just given him,

but he took it in stride.

And he came back after he had read it

and he was excited
about what he had learned.

"Dad," he said,

"not only was Rosa Parks
not initially into non-violence,

but Rosa Parks' grandfather,

who basically raised her
and was light enough to pass as white,

used to walk around town
with his gun in his holster,

and people knew

that if you messed with Mr. Parks's
children or grandchildren,

he would put a cap
in your proverbial bottom.

(Laughter)

Right? He was not someone to mess with.

And he said, "I also learned

that Rosa Parks married a man in Raymond

who was a lot like her grandfather."

He was a civil rights activist,

he would organize events,

and sometimes the events would be
at Rosa Parks's home.

And one time, Rosa Parks remarked
that there were so many guns on the table,

because they were prepared for somebody
to come busting into the door,

that they were prepared for whatever
that was going to go down.

Rosa Parks said, "There were
so many guns on the table

that I forgot to even offer them
coffee or food."

This is who Rosa Parks was.

And in fact, Rosa Parks, when she was
sitting on that bus that day,

waiting for those
police officers to arrive,

and not knowing what
was going to happen to her,

she was not thinking
about Martin Luther King,

who she barely knew;

she was not thinking
about non-violence or Gandhi;

she was thinking about her grandfather,

a gun-toting, take-no-mess, grandfather.

That's who Rosa Parks was thinking about.

And my son was mesmerized by Rosa Parks,

and I was proud of him
to see this excitement.

But then, I still had a problem,

because I still had to go to his school
and address the issue with his teacher.

because I didn't want her
to continue to teach the kids

obviously false history.

So I'm agonizing over this,

primarily because I understand
as an African American man

that whenever you talk
to whites about racism

or anything that's racially sensitive,

there's usually going to be a challenge.

This is what white sociologist
Robin Di Angelo calls "white fragility."

She argues, in fact because whites
have so little experience

being challenged
about their white privilege,

that whenever even the most
minute challenge is brought before them,

they usually cry, get angry or run.

(Laughter)

And I have experienced them all.

And so, when I was contemplating
confronting his teacher,

I wasn't happy about it, but I was like,

"This is the necessary evil
of being a black parent

trying to raise self-actualized
black children."

So I called Elijah to me and I said,

"Elijah, I'm going to tell
your teacher, you know,

I'll set up an appointment
with your teacher

and try and correct this,
and maybe your principle.

What do you think?"

And Elijah said,
"Dad, I have a better idea."

And I said, "Really? What's your idea?"

He said, "We have
a public speaking assignment,

and why don't I use
that public speaking assignment

to talk about debunking
the myth of Rosa Parks?"

And I was like,

"Well, that is a good idea!"

(Laughter)

So Elijah goes to school,

he does his presentation,

he comes back home,

and I could see
something positive happened.

I said, "Well, what happened, Son?"

He said, "Well, later on in that day,

the teacher pulled aside
and she apologized to me,

for giving that misinformation."

And then something else
miraculous happened the next day:

she actually taught
a new lesson on Rosa Parks,

filling in the gaps that she had left
and correcting the mistakes that she made,

and I was so, so proud of my son.

But then, I thought about it.

And I got angry.

And I got real angry.

Why? Why would I get angry?

Because my nine-year-old son

had to educate
his teacher about his history,

had to educate his teacher
about his own humanity.

He's nine years old!

He should be thinking about basketball,
or soccer, or the latest movie ...

He should not be thinking about
having to take the responsibility

of educating his teacher,
his [classmates], right,

about himself, about his history.

That was the burden that I carried,

that was the burden
that my parents carried,

and generations before them carried.

And now I was seeing my son
take on that burden too.

You see, that's why Rosa Parks
wrote her autobiography.

Because during her lifetime -

If you can imagine:

you do this amazing thing;

you're alive and you're talking about
you civil rights activism,

and a story emerges
in which somebody is telling the world

that you were old, and you had tired feet,

and you just were an accidental activist,

not that you had been an activist,
by then for twenty years;

not that the boycott
had been planned for months;

not that you were not even the first,
or the second, or even the third woman

to be arrested for doing that.

Right? You become an accidental activist.

Even in her own lifetime!

So she wrote that autobiography
to correct the record.

Because what she wanted
to remind people of

was that this is
what it was like in the 1950s,

trying to be black in America
and fight for your rights.

During the year, little over a year,
that the boycott lasted,

there were over four church bombings.

Martin Luther King's
house was bombed twice.

Other civil rights leaders' houses
were bombed in Birmingham.

Rosa Parks's husband
slept at night with a shotgun,

because they would get
constant death threats.

In fact, Rosa Parks' mother
lived with them,

and sometimes she would stay
on the phone for hours

so that nobody would call in
with death threats,

because it was constant and persistent.

In fact there was so much tension,
there was so much pressure,

there was so much terrorism,

that Rosa Parks and her husband lost
their jobs and they became unemployable,

and eventually had to leave
and move out of the South.

This is the civil rights reality

that Rosa Parks wanted to make sure
that people understood.

So you say, "Well, David,

what does that have to do with me?

I'm a well-meaning person,
I didn't own slaves, you know,

I'm not trying to whitewash history,
I'm a good guy, I'm a good person."

Let me tell you
what it has to do with you.

And I'll tell it to you
by telling you a story

about a professor of mine,
a white professor,

when I was in graduate school,

who was a brilliant, brilliant individual.

We'll call him Fred.

And Fred was writing this history
of the Civil Rights movement,

but he was writing specifically
about a moment

that happened to him in North Carolina,

when this white man shot
this black man in cold blood,

in a wide open space,

and was never convicted.

And so, it was this great book,

and he called together
a couple of his professor friends,

and he called me to read a draft of it
before final submission.

And I was flattered that he called me,
I was only a graduate student then,

and I was kind of, you know,
feeling myself a little bit.

OK, yeah! I'm sitting around
amongst intellectuals,

and I read the draft of the book.

And there's a moment in the book that
struck me as being deeply problematic.

And so I said, "Fred," as we were
sitting around, talking about this draft -

I said, "Fred, I got a real problem
with this moment

that you talk about
your maid in your book."

And he said -

I can see Fred get a little up, you know.

He's got a little "tight," as we say,

And he said, "what do you mean?
That's a great story!

It happened just like I said!"

I said, "Hmm... can I give you
another scenario?"

Now, what's the story?

It was 1968:

Martin Luther King
had just been assassinated.

His maid, domestic - we'll call her
May Belle - was in the kitchen.

Little Fred is eight years old;
little Fred comes into the kitchen.

And May Belle, who is only seen
as smiling and helpful and happy,

is bent over the sink, and she's crying.

And she's sobbing,

inconsolably.

And little Fred comes over
to her and says,

"May Belle, what is wrong?!"

May Belle turns and she says,
"They killed him!

They killed our leader!
They killed Martin Luther King!

He's dead!

They are monsters!"

And little Fred says,
"It'll be OK, May Belle,

it'll be OK, it'll be OK."

And she looked at him and she's,
"No! It's not going to be OK!

Did you not hear what I just said?!
They killed Martin Luther King!"

And Fred, son of a preacher,

looks up at May Belle and he says,

"But May Belle,

didn't Jesus die
on the cross for our sins?

Wasn't that a good outcome?

Maybe this will be a good outcome.

Maybe the death of Martin Luther King
will lead to a good outcome."

And as Fred tells the story,

he says that May Belle
put her hand over her mouth,

she reached down
and she gave little Fred a hug,

and then she reached into the ice box

and took out a couple of Pepsis,
gave him some Pepsis,

and sent him on his way
to play with his siblings.

And he said, "This was proof that even
in the most harrowing times,

a race struggle, that two people
can come together across racial lines

and find human commonality
along the lines of love and affection."

And I said, "Fred, that is some BS."

(Laughter)

(Applause)

And Fred was ...

And Fred was like,
"But I don't understand.

That's the story!"

I said, "Fred, may I ask you a question?"

I said,

"You were in North Carolina, 1968.

If May Belle would have gone
to her community -

you were 8 years old -

what do you think 8-year-old African
American children were calling her?

Do you think they were
calling her by her first name?

No, they called her Ms. May Belle,
or they called her Ms. Johnson,

or they called her Auntie Johnson.

They would have never dared
call her by her first name,

because that would have been
the height of disrespect.

And yet you were calling her by her first
name every single day that she worked,

and you never thought about it.

I said, "May I ask you another question?

Was May Belle married?

Did she have children?

What church did she go to?
What was her favorite dessert?"

Fred could not answer
any of those questions.

I said, "Fred, this story is not
about May Belle, this story is about you."

I said, "This story made you feel good,
but this story is not about May Belle.

The reality is what probably
happened was May Belle was crying,

which was not something
she customarily did.

So she was letting her guard down.

And you came into the kitchen,
and you caught her at a weak moment,

when she was letting her guard down.

And see, because you thought of yourself
as just like one of her children,

you didn't recognize that you were
in fact the child of her employer.

And she found herself yelling at you,

and then she caught herself realizing
that if I'm yelling at him,

and he goes back and he tells
his dad or he tells mum,

I could lose my job.

And so she tempered herself.

And even though she needed consoling,

she ended up consoling you
and sending you on your way.

Perhaps so she could finish
mourning in peace."

And Fred was stunned.

And he realized that he had actually
misread that moment.

And see, this is what
they did to Rosa Parks.

Because it's a lot easier to digest
an old grandmother with tired feet,

who doesn't stand up
because she wants to fight for inequality,

but because her feet and her back
are tired and she's worked all day.

See, grandmothers,
all grandmothers are not scary,

but young, radical black women,
who don't take any stuff from anybody,

are very scary,

who stand up to power
and are willing to die for that.

Those are not the kind of people
that make us comfortable.

So you say,

"What do you want me to do, David?
I don't know what to do."

Well, what I would say to you is:

There was a time in which
if you were Jewish you were not white,

if you were Italian you were not white,

if you were Irish you were not
white in this country.

It took a while before the Irish, the Jews
and the Italians became white, right?

There was a time
in which you were othered,

when you were the people on the outside.

Toni Morrison said, "If in order for you
to be taller I have to be on my knees,

you have a serious problem."

She says, "White America
has a serious, serious problem."

To be honest, I don't know
if race relations will improve in America,

but I know that if they will improve,

we have to take
these challenges on head on.

The future of my children depends on it.

The future of my children's
children depends on it.

And whether you know it or not,

the future of your children,

and your children's children,

depends on it too.

Thank you.

(Applause)