Eurocentrism and American Education

by Mary Green

My textbooks greatly condensed and/or remained silent about the achievements and struggles of the African American community (and, really, every community identified as nonwhite). To claim that my (required) high-school American history courses presented history through a Eurocentric lens is an understatement: the teachers chose to only focus on European culture and the “achievements” of white America.

My Literature courses rarely covered literary works of nonwhite writers and (barely) attempted to examine nonwhite characters in literature. On the rare occassion, these courses did so in a very troubling way: texts with nonwhite characters that highlighted the nobility, humanity, and/or complexity of a white character were used to explore American racism (texts like Ernest Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying, Stephen King’s The Green Mile, and Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mocking Bird, for example). This, obviously, is extremely problematic because, outwardly, one sees Black characters being taught in English class and thinks, “Yes, finally!” .... until one realizes that these characters are only being used as a way to further explore white characters.

Before I attended high-school, the idea that knowledge is biased, that history is not simply a set of objective “facts,” and that the American literary canon is not just about literary merit was absurd to me. Yet, the ways in which Eurocentric (read: white) ideology is embedded in an American high-school education is undeniable and troubling. However, from my experiences, the failures of various departments in America’s public schools and the complete disregard for African Americans and other nonwhite communities that have founded and shaped American life forced me to think critically about what I was being taught and why I was being taught that particular information.