Kerry Washington Talks Black History Not Beginning With Slavery, “Black People Were A Lot Of Things Before Segregation and Jim Crow

Kerry Washington wants the narrative to change when it comes to the way Black History is taught to children.

Recently, the actress is best known for her lead role in the hit tv series Scandal, was interviewed on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. She spoke about the protests that are happening all across the globe in the wake of George Floyd’s death by the hands of police brutality.

While speaking on the conversations she has with her children about the events that’s going on right now, Washington said she is seeing “a lot of posts [talking] about [how] privilege looks like discovering that racism exists as opposed to knowing that it exists. So, I think for a lot of Black families, we don’t have the privilege of ignoring what’s going on and pretending that it’s not happening.”

“The thing I’ve been thinking about a lot, honestly, with my kids — and with my friends’ kids … [is] education,” she said.

“And a lot about talking about race and introducing ideas of race. And really thinking about the idea that for a lot of kids — kids are introduced to race at Black History Month or in the concept of change-makers like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks,” she went on to say.

“And I think it’s really important that we start to introduce the idea of race with a Black history that begins before teaching kids about what Black people were told they couldn’t do, right?”⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Kerry made a suggestion of teaching children about the Maasai Warriors, who are apart of Kenya’s oldest tribes, according to Buzzfeed, the kingdom of Ghana, or Queen Nefertiti.

“This idea of teaching kids that Black history and Black people were a lot of things before segregation and Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement,” she continued.

“So that we understand the beautiful complexity and elegance and richness of Black History before refusing to be put in the back of the bus,” she said.