Wheel of emotions coloring page7/30/2023 To my surprise, although the discussion was emotionally charged, students did not divide along lines I had predicted. Most, however, whites and blacks alike, were confused and eager to learn.Īs I put the question to the class, “Was Nat Turner’s revolt justified?,” I expected an even hotter expression of arguments than usual. But in contrast to past patterns, this year there was an unusually high number of whites who, following the political climate of recent years, blamed blacks for their claims of victimization and continuing anger, opposed affirmative action as “reverse discrimination,” wondered if slavery was all that bad, and selected examples from history to justify their view of the present (just like historians do). We were about to discuss The Confessions of Nat Turner, a text that in the past had generated heated emotions as we debated whether students thought Turner’s 1831 slave revolt, in which 55 whites were killed, was ‘justified.” Among the 41 students in the course there were, as usual, about ten African-American students, two international students of color, and the predictable handful of sensitive white liberal students. There was even more anticipatory energy than usual in my Black History class that late January day in 1991.
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