Silenced Memories: An Examination of the Sociocultural Knowledge on Race and Racial Violence in Official School Curriculum

Abstract

Drawing from the theoretical lenses of cultural memory and critical race theory, we examined how elementary level and middle school level social studies textbooks represent the history of racial violence directed toward African Americans and resistance to this violence in the U.S. Using a literary analysis method, we found that textbooks often presented vivid accounts; however, these narratives often presented these acts as detached from the larger structural and institutional ties that supported and subsequently benefited from these actions. We contend that this limited representation of racial violence has an adverse effect on the larger sociocultural memory and sociocultural knowledge available to students, thus limiting the extent to which students can fully understand the legacy of racism and racial inequity in the U.S.

Thanks to the staff at Equity & Excellence in Education and the anonymous reviewers for their feedback and suggestions on this manuscript.

Keffrelyn D. Brown is an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and affiliated faculty with the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests focus on understanding how teachers acquire, understand, and use sociocultural knowledge in their classroom practice and examining school-based and societal discourses circulated about African Americans.

Anthony L. Brown is an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and affiliated faculty with the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. His research interests focus on the history, policy discourse, and educational experiences of African American males and how African American historical experiences are depicted in official school curriculum.

Notes

1. We use the terms African American and black American interchangeably. When discussing peoples of African descent that were subjected to slavery, we use the term “enslaved African(s)” as a way to distinguish the human personhood of these individuals from the social condition in which they existed (i.e., slaves, former slaves, etc.). However, when presenting direct text taken from the textbooks examined in this study, we use the terms that were selected by the textbook authors.