Dear Family and Community,
They barely teach our history as it is. And now, they want to erase even that.
The Education Department’s new policy to cut funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs isn’t just about removing some feel-good diversity training—it’s about making sure that future generations never learn the full truth about Black history in America. And let’s be clear: they’re not worried about erasing what little Black history is already taught in schools. They’re targeting the parts that expose the ugly truths—the Black Codes, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, redlining, and everything else that shows how the system was designed to keep us oppressed.
They want to make sure white kids never learn how their ancestors benefited from our suffering. They want to keep future generations from connecting the dots between slavery, segregation, mass incarceration, and the racial wealth gap today. Because if they don’t know, they won’t question it. And if we don’t fight back, history will be rewritten to erase our struggle entirely.
I remember being a kid and loving history—until we got to slavery. That’s when everything changed. It felt like the first time a Black person even existed in America was when those 13 Africans stepped off a ship in Jamestown. The lesson was barely taught before the teacher moved on, but that moment was enough to shift the way the white kids looked at me. Suddenly, I wasn’t just a kid in the class. I was “the Black kid.” They turned around, stared, whispered. The way they treated me changed. And I hated history after that.
This is what they want to preserve—this distorted, watered-down version of the past that leaves out the real story. They don’t want Black kids to learn their true history, and they don’t want white kids to feel uncomfortable knowing it. But discomfort is necessary. The truth is necessary.
So I’m calling on all of us—parents, educators, community leaders—to fight back. Reach out to your representatives. Flood Congress and your local school boards with demands that our history be taught in full. We cannot let them erase us from the books.
We are more than slavery. We are more than struggle. We built this country, and our children deserve to know the truth.
In unity and resistance,
Claude D. Rhodes
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