Black History: Update 6/8/2026

For as long as I can remember there has been a pervasive slogan known to many black millennials and Generation X: "You have to work twice as hard, to get half as much as the other kids." Although it was presented as a rallying cry, to study harder, practice more, master your craft. As an adult I see that phrase as a way of framing work=dedication without a ceiling. To work, is expected, but to grind it out day by day is exceptional. Race matters in the framing of this viewpoint, more so now than any other time in the last 30 years. The culture of hard work and what that phrase evokes, posturing all my struggles as part of who I am. In the wake of AI, volume of work can be multiplied and cheapened as AI agents race to replace workers and jobs meant to provide for a generation of workers.

Examples of black scholars are few and far between, not because they don't exist, but because they don't fit the stereotype.

With Black history being removed from classrooms, (https://www.quorum.us/spreadsheet/external/KBYQbCxNgAheAgQCtQZC/)

there is a large disservice being committed; not only for Black students but for the whole student body. I believe that education is about balance, weighing your hypothesis with the evidence provided by textbooks, articles, novels, and lived experience. When voices are removed from the curriculum, we are no longer calling it education but a one-sided commercial, for lack of a better term. I imagine a future where students are allowed to ask questions, questions that pertain to their identity; to students' curiosity about how we got where we are now. The inventions, the civil rights battles, Black Panthers, the writers, and figures known the world over for their courageous feats that have echoed into eternity.

Regardless of the omissions in the classroom the people outside of the classroom have made their voices heard: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/many-states-are-limiting-how-schools-can-teach-about-race-most-voters-disagree/2023/10

Think deeply about the removal of a whole section of your education, your ingroup. Education is like an ecosystem; where misty knowledge of math feeds the vines of logic. Knowing what lies on the other side of the bridge that divides us can help us understand and appreciate our cultural differences.

Having taken a recent trip to India, Singapore, and Thailand the cultural richness of these places gave me a better understanding of why cultural celebrations are maintained. Temples, language, even mannerisms are so deeply understood that they are taken for granted. As subtle as a bob of the head, appropriate and inappropriate eye contact; while some are as fundamental as eating with your hands and refraining from interaction with domestic workers. The book Caste, by Isabella Wilkerson does a great job breaking down the invisible made visible, societal values and continued traditions that impact the way we see and treat each other.

As a BCBA that works in multiple private and public settings, I have an everlasting curiosity when it comes to accepted customs, unspoken rules that invisibly dictate spaces expectations. Not only from my own experiences examining people's trinkets, and in turn indirect values; but the media that's fed me the "standard" decor of American households. This awareness allowed me to develop a layered personality and set of rules in my own household. Pictures of ancestors long passed, remind me of where I come from and who I am representing in this day and age. Remembering who we were, will help us build a greater homage to who we want to become.