The Conversation (0)
Ellie Abraham
Aug 20, 2021
A teaching facility in Utah has come under fire for distributing a history packet that contained the claim that “most slaves were generally treated kindly”.
Northridge Learning Center in Layton, Utah was criticised by parents who raised concerns about the content relating to enslaved people in the United States.
Nancy McKendrick, a parent of a student at the learning center, shared an image of a passage from the history packet with the local newspaper The Salt Lake Tribune.
Along with the claim that most slaves were treated "kindly" it also stated, "many had reasonable living conditions and hours of services".
It also claimed: “Many slaves worked so closely with their masters that they were treated as family.”
Beginning in the 1500s, 12 million enslaved Africans were brought to the United States for the purpose of slavery.
Northridge Learning Center told indy100: “We are grateful to those who called attention to the egregious and unacceptable language in our history textbook regarding slavery.
“The offending course, including that passage, have been immediately removed from our curriculum, and we are ensuring that our new history texts are accurate and not ‘whitewashed.’
“Further, we sincerely apologise for not recognising it ourselves, and for any emotional offense or harm it may have caused.”
Special assistant to the vice president of equity, diversity and inclusion at the University of Utah, Emma Houston, told the Tribune: “Individuals who were enslaved were not treated with kindness.
“That’s a fact. They were stripped of their names and cultures and everything. It’s an issue of reporting history—not the history that we want it to be, but the actual history of how individuals were treated.”
Adrienne Andrews, Chief Diversity Officer at Weber State University, said what was written about slaves in the history packet is “obscene”, explaining: “It negates the facts and real lived experiences of people who were brutalised.”