Is history too white? This was the topic of the flex meeting last night in SSV 151. Charles Hood, an English professor, and Dr. Cynthia Lehman, a history professor, were the presenters of this meeting, but staff and students were welcome to speak up.
Lehman started the meeting by asking the audience, “Are we actually doing what we say we’re doing?” She then gave background information about herself, general black history information, and talked about how schools have changed allowing black studies to be taught.
She discussed, with the help of the audience, how teaching black studies has empowered communities and students.
When asked what our administration thought about black studies, Dr. Thomas Shey, a sociology professor, asked, “Do you really think our administration is listening?!”
Lehman showed three Martin Luther King speeches that are less known, followed by a very controversial memorial statue to King.
Hood’s flex was entitled “Whose History?” which was focused on the Native Americans and how students are taught about them.
The floor then opened up to discussion. The main questions of the night were, “Has AVC done enough to diversify the curriculum and campus? What remains to be done or have we gone too far?”
No one could really answer these questions. However, when Lehman asked what everyone thought diversity meant, many people spoke up.
“It sounds like gobbly-gook,” Matthew Rainbow, a biology professor, said.
Zia Nisani, another biology professor, said it sounded “dangerous” because it opened the door to people talking about conspiracy theories and creationism in biology classes.
Vejea Jennings, an English professor, tries to diversify his students but runs into his own roadblocks. “I sit with my students [but] they want to talk about race [as if] that’s their first critical thought.”
Shey added that he “encourage[s] his students to be diverse.”
