Slavery and The Holocaust

It's been almost two weeks since I arrived home from Europe, tired but satisfied. My soul was fed during that trip by both the beautiful sites and the time I spent with friends. My friends and I took a road trip from Zaandam (outside of Amsterdam) through Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, and into Italy. Although we didn't plan to stop in Germany, we wound up spending a night in the small city of Darmstadt on our way back to Zaandam because it's located at about the half-way mark and because my friend has a special interest in the city. She is a tour guide at the Corrie ten Boom House in Haarlem, The Netherlands. The ten Boom family hid Jews in a secret closet during the Holocaust and saved many lives before they were found out. You can check out the Corrie ten Boom House and learn more of their story here: https://www.corrietenboom.com/old/information.htm

During my research for Race Among Friends, I witnessed how high schools students in the U.S. studied the Holocaust with great empathy and respect. They were highly attentive while visiting The Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., and still talked about Elie Wiesel's Night a year after they'd read it. High school teachers know how hard it is to get students to even read the assigned work, let alone discuss it during the following school year, so clearly these students were deeply impacted by this curriculum. I was fascinated to learn, however, that the very white students who couldn't seem to get enough of the Holocaust were not so interested in learning about American racism toward African Americans. Instead, they were frustrated and angry and created distinct discourses to proclaim that racism is over and that they were tired of talking about it.  

I asked one of the kids in my study, Anthony, and African-American honors student, about this phenomenon among his classmates.