Getting Close to an Uncomfortable Truth
By Charlie Ward, Software Developer at EducationSuperHighway
In early November last year, I had the chance to visit the National Memorial for Peace and Justice as well as the Legacy Museum with the organization that I work for, EducationSuperHighway.
The intent of the trip was to learn more about America’s history of racial injustice and its legacy today. As a white man from Ireland living in America, I don’t want to give the impression that I understand this topic at its harrowing depths. I’d like to say upfront that I’m trying not to overstate my understanding of racial injustices since I think it’s a bit insulting to those who have to live under racial pressures and threats every day.
That being said, I believe there’s a very strong point to be made for getting closer or ‘proximate’ to suffering to help understand the nuanced experiences of those who’ve endured and continue to endure pain. As Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative says, “if you are willing to get closer to people who are suffering, you will find the power to change the world.” I imagine it as lighting your own torch from a blazing bonfire at the scene of the suffering.
One of the first things you recognize, as you walk through the memorial in Montgomery, is the massive collection of large metal suspended from the ceiling. Each slab representing a county in the United States where a racial terror lynching took place. As you walk through the memorial, the floor begins to descend to a point where the slabs start to rise above your eye line and it dawns on you that these slabs are suspended from the ceiling for a reason: to give you a sense of what it might have been like to observe a hanging body.
As I walked, I learned about the 4,700+ documented lynchings that happened across 840 U.S. counties for non-offenses like trying to organize a voting block or simply looking at a white woman. I began to imagine in detail what it might be like to be a black family living in constant terror of the threat of getting lynched. I imagined what advice parents might have to give to their children so they could have the best chance of just surviving and it was heart-wrenching. At a certain point, a strong feeling of palpable shame started to come over me. The question kept on mentally resurfacing, ‘How could I have known so little about the extent of this suffering? How could I have lived so far from this truth for so long?’
To try and understand the nuanced experiences of those who suffer, I agree with Stevenson that there’s no substitute for getting as physically proximate to the suffering as possible. I also think another viable means for learning more can be getting ‘digitally proximate’ to the truth too. I think the free-flowing of information via the internet helps lift truthful hidden narratives out of the darkness and into the spotlight of the public’s consciousness.
If a more truthful narrative supplants an existing one then we’ve made cultural progress. For example, I think two competing narratives in American culture at the moment are 1) America is the land of the free and 2) America has the highest rate of incarceration per capita in the world. While I think America should be proud of its protection of free speech and a free press, I think freedom in America is a nuanced issue. How can the land of the free also put the most people in prison? While considering this, I also began thinking about how the equity narrative translates to American classrooms and my role at EducationSuperHighway.
I think having more digital equity in classrooms is important because it means that students can investigate questions like these and form their own opinions more freely as opposed to having only one or two narratives told to them in a textbook, which might shy away from or simplify what really happened. There are some pieces of the American history puzzle that are difficult to talk about or teach because of the emotional trauma involved — like slavery or the mass killings of indigenous groups.
Perhaps we skirt around the truth or try to polish it up or simplify it down because it’s painful and uncomfortable to confront a traumatic past along with its legacy today. In the marketplace of products on the internet, the ones with the highest ratings from people tend to rise to the top of pages and public awareness whereas the ones with fewer stars or upvotes tend to sink to the bottom.
As we go forward, I think we will see those narratives that are more rooted in truth begin to rise in the public’s consciousness. The history and narratives are there for those that wish to learn about it and the internet is one viable means of acquiring them. I’m grateful to participate in the work that EducationSuperHighway does to allow students to get more proximate to truer narratives so we can learn from our past and current situation to improve our future.
As I left Montgomery, I observed a beautiful mural in the city where these words by Maya Angelou were painted:
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”
