Was Buffalo “unexpected context”?

The US History Regents – a New York State graduation requirement, was cancelled this week. A question was somehow likely to upset students just confronted with the white supremacist massacre in Buffalo. The New York State Education Department wrote “the tragedy in Buffalo has created an unexpected and unintended context” as they announced the cancellation. They are also starting the process to exempt students who would have taken this exam from this graduation requirement.

The exam was written two years ago, and shelved during the pandemic. There was apparently a question which invoked, in part, the Second Amendment.

Challenge:  The New York State Education Department, in the person of Commissioner Betty Rosa, wrote that Buffalo created an “unexpected… context.”  I am calling out their questionable honesty. Mass shootings are not an “unexpected context” in the United States, not anymore.

Challenge:  The New York State Education Department, in the person of Commissioner Betty Rosa, wrote that Buffalo created an “unexpected… context.”  I am calling out their questionable honesty. White supremacist violence against others is not an “unexpected context” in the United States. It has, tragically and sadly and infuriatingly never been unexpected here.

All history is the story of struggle and conflict. But unlike whatever was wrong in Ancient Rome or the Indus Valley, US History is with us today. The Ottoman Empire kidnapped children to become janissaries which was awful, but the practice, and then the Empire, ended. This is history. But discrimination, loss of freedom, and violence are realities that many Black people and other groups face on an ongoing basis in the United States today.

United States History is not traumatizing because someone was going to ask a bad question. It is traumatizing, for many, because someone asked a good question.

And the only way to make the study of United States history not be traumatizing is to teach the next generation not just what happened in the past, but how to change it in the future.

But how do we teach young people to change history, if we have been lousy at changing it ourselves? I’m a step ahead. The beginning is to recognize that the – we can’t call it “unexpected context” – the beginning is to recognize that the “uncomfortable context” is United States history, current politics, and conditions, themselves.