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| Alicia Humphrey Class of 2017 |
I like to think I came to college with a fairly holistic background in history. My dad quizzed me on U.S. presidents with flashcards as a young child. I went through a phase of interest in WWII in 5th grade and devoured Anne Frank’s diary. I took AP U.S History, Human Geography, and even World History in high school, allowing me to more than test out of my history requirements at UofL. I participated in National History Day and even took the Social Studies written examinations for academic team for years. I considered myself pretty advanced in the subject by the time I graduated high school. Therefore, any class I took in college having anything to do with history I dismissed as an easy A, review of material I’d probably already covered.
It wasn’t until I took a Latin American and Latino Studies class that I realized how much I had been missing. As a student studying Spanish, it made sense for me to supplement my language studies with a cultural and historical appreciation of the people who actually speak that language. I assumed the class would be easy, but on the first day, I was bombarded with information entirely new to me. From the Chicano movement to the Platt Amendment to the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo to Texjanos to the Mexican-American and Spanish-American Wars, every minute brought another term, poem, author, activist, law, and even war I had never heard of. I learned, for the first time, the history of the Latin Americans, a people I had never been taught about with struggles no teacher had ever mentioned in history class. I learned that many of them had been forced to become American citizens and then been denied their property rights. I heard of how they had been discriminated against, how they are torn between two cultures, and how Chicano leaders have fought for their rights. For the first time in college, every single day, I learned something I didn’t know before I walked in the door.
This brings to light a huge issue with American education. Our curriculum for history focuses only on material that’s either about us or makes us look good as a nation. We spend most of our time on the American Revolution, the Civil War, the culture of the 1920’s, the rise of American poets, the Rockefellers, and the Carnegies. Even when we do dare to venture into global affairs, 9 times out of 10 it’s to claim the U.S. brought about the end of WWII. Although I could recite and spell the names of all U.S. presidents by the time I was in 5th grade, I couldn’t tell you what the NAACP is or what started the Mexican-American War. This is a huge problem because it has led to completely inaccurate perceptions of Latin Americans, relevant especially in the light of recent immigration reform debates. I shouldn’t have to pick up a minor in Latin American and Latino Studies to learn about the history of people who aren’t white and to understand their perspectives today. History is more than just white, Anglo-American history, and we as a country should do better to teach it that way.
Alicia Humphrey is a junior McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville. She studies English and political science.