The thesis of all of my courses is, simply put: There is no America without Black America. Any history student in any of my courses confronts the reality that American law and society were built on a white-Black binary. European colonization created a racial capitalism rooted in the sanctity of private property, dispossessing the indigenous and enslaving Africans as chattel property. American slavery drove colonial expansion, compelling indigenous participation in slavery to maintain tribal sovereignty. America has never substantively apologized for slavery nor has it undergone a systematic process of reckoning and repair--yet. Any immigrant or immigrant descendant must reckon with that fact. Any international student must understand it up front. Historically, American law and society engineered immigration to be white until the 1965 Immigration Act significantly opened immigration access to non-whites. As of 2020, the demographic profile of the United States continues to show increasing racial diversity, measuring a population that is 58% White, 19% Hispanic (white & nonwhite), 12% Black, 6% Asian, 4% Multiracial, 0.7% Indigenous, and <1% Other.  For young Americans under 12, non-whites are already the majority demographic in their age group; with projections estimating a national white population below 50% by the year 2045. Yet the institutionalized design of white supremacy can remain in place even with demographic shifts, unless it is actively understood and dismantled. Any immigrant or immigrant descendant of any race will strengthen their knowledge and their community by recognizing that they have entered into a system historically built to reward their partnership with white supremacy. It is here that all people benefit by adopting cooperative antiracism. To resist becoming unwittingly part of a historical trend in which an immigrant group trades precarity for allegiance to white supremacist systems requires the tools and lessons of Black History. For this reason then, antiracist coalition building requires learning about Black contributions to America and Black strategies of protesting injustice in America. 

In recent times, with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) Movement, we have seen the urgency and necessity for holding serious, difficult conversations about race with our respective communities of friends, family, classmates, coworkers, and neighbors. We have seen pledges to anti-racism initiatives and renewed commitments to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Critique and understandable pessimism or even cynicism attend these efforts. It is my aim to lend substance to institutional initiatives to address racism and to teach others to as well. As a descendant of 17th-century European colonists and 20th-century German immigrants, I have been a beneficiary of white privilege in America. With that knowledge, I recognize my duty to make amends.  I recognize too that generations of distrust have made coalitions between slave-descended Black communities and predominantly white institutions tenuous.  Historically successful coalitions should serve as models for building interracial trust.  Everyday micro- and macro- actions of professor and student alike should serve as efforts to make good on the potential these models inculcate.

Any student in my courses will enter into spaces together--whether they be physical or digital--with the understanding that the past we will be studying is for our multiracial present. We will recognize that the Black freedom struggle is at the bedrock of the civil rights that many marginalized and racialized communities possess today.  Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Anti-Racism initiatives—as well as resistance to them—will continue to be part of social and professional landscapes. Knowing this, I task my students with imagining how they will be collaborators and leaders in the next generation’s iteration of addressing pervasive anti-Black racism in America and in the world.

To the best of my ability, I offer what I can from my reading and research in an invitation to students to read and think with me.  In this work, I dig into the knowledge produced by those who were enslaved in the Americas.   In conversation with their contexts and ours, we understand human ingenuity under oppression.  So too can we  discover that viable solutions to many of modern society's most intractable problems might be best addressed by turning to visionaries who were forged in resistance.