A Curriculum of Repression: A Pedagogy of Racial History in the United States

This book examines the pedagogy of white supremacy in the United States, the American Colonization Society, and the eugenics movement during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Both education and the larger society promoted the idea of the sacred mission of Anglo-Christians, who were seen as God’s chosen people. Public policy and education were used to teach whites that black people were inferior and unsuitable for citizenship. Federal, state, and local governments, as well as religious leaders in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, argued for the removal of all black people from the United States. Others used education as a means of discrediting the intelligence of African Americans while, at the same time, miseducating and deculturalizing African Americans to artificially create a homogenous society.

The Author: Haroon Kharem is Assistant Professor of Education at Brooklyn College. He also teaches courses for the Teaching Fellows Program and is a scholar of African American history and studies. His recent articles deal with images of African Americans, African Free Schools, the Moors in Spain, and black males in education.