History Takes a Multihued Turn for Newport Students

To some students in Angela Newman’s history classes, every month feels like Black History Month. While debates rage over bringing long-ignored minority cultures into the curriculum, and textbooks slowly change their European outlook, Newman and her students at Newport Harbor High School are a living laboratory in educational diversity.

World history classes include lessons on Mali as well as ancient Greece. Some unexpected details about Abraham Lincoln come out in U.S. history. And the results are sometimes surprising for everyone involved.

“I am an African American and so I definitely teach history from an African American perspective,” said Newman, the first black teacher in recent memory at Newport Harbor, where there are 12 black students among the largely white population. “Some of the kids really resist hearing information they’re not used to, so it’s been quite an experience--for all of us.”

Her 11th-grade U.S. history students were taught in earlier grades in Newport Beach that Lincoln was a uniquely moral man who freed blacks from slavery.

They have another side of Lincoln to learn in Newman’s class. He did not believe blacks to be the equal of whites, he said in a speech, and felt the races should live separately.

While Newman saw herself as teaching about Lincoln and the Civil War in their full complexity, some of her students saw the lessons as the vilification of a hero. They were just another example of how no matter what country, culture or century they study, racism seems to stain the past.

If Abraham Lincoln isn’t worthy of reverence, who is?

Nationwide, educators and ethnic organizations are arguing and in some cases changing curricula that tended to teach that most of the worthwhile literature and history are rooted in Europe. Columbus “discovered” America, students were taught 40 years ago; now they are more apt to learn about his role in subjugating the Native Americans who had been here thousands of years. San Francisco’s public schools last year became the first in the nation to mandate that students read books by nonwhite authors.

Newman’s students are mostly unaware of these vast educational politics. In the classroom where they struggle with the astonishing new information that comes their way, educational theory becomes personal, through the hands of one dedicated teacher. Many immerse themselves in these thought-provoking ideas. Others squirm in their chairs as Newman pokes holes in their long-held beliefs.

‘Past Generations’ Were the Oppressors

They also strike back. So discomfited are some students, Newman said, that they challenge her openly. They wonder aloud at her teaching ability or flatly state their disbelief in a lesson. One student said, “You just don’t know what you’re talking about.”

In interviews, her students almost unanimously say she’s an excellent teacher. They like the way she makes them think. But some say the emphasis on oppression of African Americans feels overdone.

“It seems like she ties everything back to how we [mistreated] the blacks over the last century,” said Chad Smith, 16. “I mean, I’m sorry that happened, but it’s past generations that did that--it’s history--and it’s like she can’t release it.”

In the heat of one classroom debate that seemed to link past sufferings of blacks to whites of the present, Justin Reynolds, 16, said he felt pushed to the limit.

“Finally I just said out loud in class: ‘I take no blame for anything my ancestors did!’ ” Justin said.

Or the time she posited the idea that all Americans, save Indians, are immigrants.

“I mean, I must be like, a fifth-generation American,” Justin said in disbelief. “I do not see myself as an immigrant.”

At the same time, these students suddenly see clearly that much of their previous education has come from a white perspective. And with surprising insight for such young scholars, they are able to think of those times as reflections not of good or evil teachers, but simply as teachers who brought their own, perhaps unconscious, history and culture to the classroom.

“In eighth grade the teacher taught that blacks sold each other out in Africa and it was their fault for being enslaved,’ Justin said. “He said if they hadn’t done that it never would’ve happened.”

That teacher was a white man who grew up when segregation was still legal and largely accepted. He was a product of his times, Justin said.

Whose emphasis do they believe to be more historically accurate?

Chad smiles. “Miss Newman’s. I mean, come on, it was definitely the whites’ fault.”

Although everyone knows exactly what side of an argument Newman favors, she is open to their points of view, the students said.

“She gives you both sides of an event and lets you decide for yourself,” said Jodi Dieckmeyer, 16. “It’s not like she just teaches one side of things and then requires you to agree with her.”

Their teacher’s cultural outlook comes through most clearly in her yearning for them to empathize with the suffering of others, they said--a lesson they don’t always accept.

Sneers aimed at one student during class led to a lecture from Newman on how such snickering starts wars. First people start talking about one set of people, then it becomes all right to hate them. Then it becomes all right to hurt them.

“That was just too much,” said Brandy Dutor, 16. “We were like, huh? A war from teasing? No, that’s going too far.”

Getting a Taste of Slaves’ Work

Another lesson had better success. Newman brought just-picked cotton for the students to de-seed. They had to do as thorough a job of cleaning the bolls as slaves did before the invention of the cotton gin.

“It was really hard because you couldn’t tear the cotton boll,” the same requirement slaves had to meet, said Taighe Concannon. “But it helped show you what the slaves went through.”

Still, discussing the humiliations and hardships of slavery with an African American teacher, they said, was a little weird.

“It felt funny because, well, you didn’t want her to be hurt,” Concannon said. “You didn’t want to offend her.”

Principal Bob Boise sees that as a learning experience for his students.

When he hired Newman, Boise said, he had every expectation that her cultural perspective would shine through her teaching. He also anticipated that it would be a new and sometimes uncomfortable experience for some of her students.

“All teachers bring their backgrounds to the classroom, and she’s no different,” Boise said. “The point is, she’s a great teacher.”

When Boise arrived at Newport Harbor High last year, he found a school of 2,000 students that in recent years had gone from almost solely white to one that is 76% white and 20% Latino, with a smattering of other ethnic groups. he said. The students’ limited exposure to black people, he said, makes it especially important for them to have black role models.

Newman moved from San Diego to Orange County last year. She applied for jobs in 10 school districts in the area and received offers from all.

“Angela walked in the door and blew me away,” Boise said. “She had a fabulous resume and wonderful references. Also, I’m a former history teacher myself, and I could tell that she knows her subject inside out.”

Born and raised in Arlington, Va., Newman grew up in a comfortable home and attended a private, mostly white high school.

“It’s not just that I’m African American that is different for these kids,” the 30-year-old teacher said. “I’m also from the East Coast, I’m from the South, and I’m from a much more politically liberal environment.

“Those factors also are a part of who I am.”

But she says she and her husband, an attorney, also are happily living in Newport Beach, where 92% of the residents are white and 91% are registered Republicans. Although she is keenly sensitive to matters of race, she says she personally has experienced neither discrimination nor racism.

“Not in high school, not in college and not here in Newport,” Newman said.

Not all of her classes deal directly with race--or at least, they don’t start out that way.

In her ninth-grade world history class, students are in the middle of the European Industrial Revolution. They learn how the spinning jenny boosted the textile industry. In a quick aside, Newman also points out how in the U.S., the invention of the cotton gin prolonged slavery in the South by creating demand for cotton. Then she went back to Europe.

Or take her teaching of the westward expansion for the 11th-graders. The focus was on the suffering of Native Americans. Newman hopes her students will never enjoy a John Wayne-style cowboy movie.

Nevertheless, students also had to write passionate arguments from the perspectives of both settlers and Indians in their journals.

Soon the class will study the 1960s--the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. For that section the class will take to the sports fields wearing tie-dye and re-creating Woodstock.

“History can seem so ancient to them that, especially with the ‘60s, I try to make them see it was a time when young people--young people like them--changed the world,” Newman said.

As for Black History Month, which lasts through February? In 11th-grade U.S. history, it is going unnoticed.

“Actually,” Newman said, smiling, “I’m not doing anything special.”