You Won’t Believe What This Textbook Publishing Company Called African Slaves

 

Image courtesy of missy via flickr,
Image by missy via flickr, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.


Everyone knows that textbooks are supposed to be bland and boring; something that all school-aged children are forced to lug around in backpacks and wearily heft onto desktops as the students slump into their seats.

Most people know that textbook pushing is big business. Publishing company McGraw-Hill Education is set to be looking at an initial public offering (IPO) this year, with an estimated valuation of around $5 billion.

Publishing companies work with education boards to produce textbooks so that their books become mandatory reading (therefore, mandatory to purchase) for all schools in an area. Pretty sweet deal.

A few days ago, a black Texas mom found her ninth-grade son’s World Geography textbook, published by McGraw Hill Education, in which African slaves brought to America through the slave trade are referred to as “immigrants” and “workers.” First big fat oopsie. Second oops is that slavery is mentioned in reference to people of European origin.

Somehow it was important for McGraw Hill to mention that white people were enslaved, but all those black African people who were chained up in the bottom of ships and recorded as property were “workers.”

 

Screenshot from Facebook.
Screenshot from Facebook.

Yeah, they worked. They worked really hard. But they weren’t “workers.” They were slaves.

McGraw Hill apologized for language that “did not adequately convey” the experience of the African slaves. Yet they refuse to recall the textbooks. Which means that students will learn that Africans came to America as “workers” for as long as those textbooks sit in school classrooms. And we all know the life of textbooks– those things are indestructible! Basically, those textbooks will only be replaced when the Texas board decides to spend another several million dollars for a new edition of grade nine textbooks.

It is also worth noting that zero black people are executives for McGraw Hill Education.

I am a teacher. I know that good teachers will rage against what is clearly a whitewashing of American history, and may even use this snafu as a teachable moment to encourage their students to discuss how word choice impacts perception. But not all teachers are good teachers– some will just teach straight out of the textbook.

Our kids deserve better. Our schools deserve better. Black Americans deserve better. Demand that this publishing company #RecallAndReplace these textbooks.