Education

Student Columnist Demands ‘White History Month’ About ‘Bad History Of White People’

Font Size:

According to a columnist for the Texas State University student newspaper, America should have a “White History Month” — with a twist. Rather than celebrating the achievements or history of white people, Americans would use the month to “focus the national gaze upon the bad history of white people.”

“[American] history is idealized and topics like slavery or native genocide are barely studied. This being said, America should have a White History Month solely focusing on the racist atrocities committed by people of European descent in this country,” undergraduate student Jeffrey Reagan wrote in TSU newspaper The University Star published last week. In the column — titled “The convincing case for ‘White History Month'” — Reagan explains that the the month would serve to educate the American people on the “blatantly racist brutalities committed by white people.”

As Reagan puts it, “America needs a White History Month because the blatantly racist brutalities committed by white people are casually left out of core curriculum.” (He admits that he learned much of what he knows about white people’s “blatantly racist brutalities” from “perusing Tumblr.”)

The column also offered some of Reagan’s own ideas for White History Month, like filling the month with “public service announcements on how the United States locked up Japanese-Americans during World War II.” He also suggested a national discussion on past racism in jury selection, saying that “we as a country can discuss how so many trials in the South purposely took place with all white juries. These juries were used to ensure a not guilty verdict for obviously guilty white defendants, like in the case of Emmett Till.”

Reagan closed his column by stating that Americans need a White History Month so we “can focus the national gaze upon the bad history of white people, which is lacking from our education system. The saying goes, ‘learn from your mistakes.’ However, if people never learn what those mistakes are, they can’t learn from them.”

Follow Peter Hasson on Twitter @PeterJHasson