Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies Book Review

Full disclosure: I was given a copy of this book from Coriolis Company in exchange for an honest review.

Ever since I read White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo, I have been seeking out resources and stories regarding racism and the marginalized experience. I’ve always been interested in history, especially in areas that aren’t as well known. Black history in the United States is a great example because of the controversy surrounding the teaching of it in schools. One year ago this week, the State of Florida banned them from instructing students in a newly created advanced placement course in African American Studies. Colin Kaepernick, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor address this particular issue in today’s book Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies with powerful readings and essays that effectively tie in past and present struggles with educating people on this subject.

Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies brings together important texts that demonstrate the importance of learning said topic in the United States. These include literature, political theory, law, psychology, sociology, gender and sexuality studies, queer and feminist theory, and history. Many works are present like those by Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Angela Y. Davis, Octavia Butler, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and bell hooks. The book also contains original essays written by the editors detailing how we got here and pieces by Brea Baker, Marlon Williams-Clark, and Roderick A. Ferguson elucidating on how we can fight back. They illuminate the ways that we can collectively work towards freedom for all in a multitude of ways like abolition, feminism, racial justice, economic empowerment, self-determination, desegregation, decolonization, reparations, queer liberation, and cultural and artistic expression.

The book is divided into three parts: How We Got Here, The History They Don’t Want You To Know, and How We Fight Back. Now, let’s get one thing out of the way. When one hears the name Colin Kaepernick, one might think, “Oh, is that the guy who knelt at the NFL games to protest the oppression of black people?”

Yes, it is that man, and some people will have certain opinions about him. One must set aside their feelings about Kaepernick while reading the preface to this book. It’s the only time in which he writes about something. In it, he summarizes the entire premise of the book with a calm and steady tone while expressing anger at what Florida has been doing to suppress black history in schools. A book about taking action to educate people on black history needs someone like Kaepernick, who has consistently fought for equity in that area. 

That preface sets up Part 1. It contains articles by Robin D.G. Kelley and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor that explain the politics behind “forbidding” people from learning Black Studies since the late 1960s. This includes misinterpretations of critical race theory and attacking antiracism. Reading this section started off slow, but it packs in a lot of history within 20 pages. It effectively establishes how Black Studies became so “controversial.”

Part 2 encompasses the majority of the book. Some of the readings are by people that a general audience will more than likely know, while others are probably unknown. The editors selected a wide range of work to show the history that mainstream America doesn’t want people to know written by black people from all walks of life, including the LGBTQIA community. These essays act as a starter kit for those who are interested in learning more about Black Studies because they are powerful pieces that need to be read. “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” excerpt by Frederick Douglass lays down the frustration of many black people as to why they didn’t feel free on Independence Day, and he delivered that speech in 1852. Reading it made me realize why many still express similar sentiments over 170 years later, especially with the line, “There is not a nation on this very earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour”(p. 30).

Another eye-opening passage was “The Propaganda of History” excerpt from Black Reconstruction in America by W.E.B. Du Bois. In it, Du Bois argues that the teaching and learning of history are often used as a tool to defend the status quo. To prove this, he used the work of a woman named Helen Broadman. She studied school textbooks at the time and noted three dominant themes: all black people were ignorant; all were lazy, dishonest, and extravagant; and they were responsible for bad government during Reconstruction (p.44-47). To anyone who actually studied that period in history, none of those assertions are true. This rightfully riled me up.

Other readings that stood out were Octavia Butler’s essay, “The Lost Races of Science Fiction” (1980) and Sami Schalk’s “Introduction: Black Health Matters” from the book Black Disability Politics (2022). The former touches on why marginalized characters are mostly absent in a literary genre that allows authors to use their imagination as to what the future would look like. In fact, Butler asks readers this question, “Are minority characters – black characters in this case – so disruptive a force that the mere presence of one alters a story, focuses it on race rather than whatever the author had in mind?” (p. 81).

The answer is simply yes “if the creators of those characters are too restricted in their thinking to visualize blacks in any other context” (p. 81). In other words, Butler asserts that authors need to expand their mindsets in order to represent marginalized characters in non-stereotypical ways.

The latter discusses Black disability studies, specifically black disabled people’s relationship with race and ability as well as how impairment has been understood in black communities. For example, Schalk discusses the notion that African-American folks have distanced themselves from the concept of disability and identifying as such. She cites Douglas Baynton’s article “Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History” to show that minority groups had disability discourses thrusted upon them “as justification for their exclusion from full rights and citizenship.” As a result, Baynton argues, “these groups distanced themselves from disability as a means of accessing certain rights and freedoms” and passively accepted that “disability is a justifiable rationale for discrimination and exclusion” (p. 150). 

Even though how black people interact with disability has evolved, especially when considering the black disability studies framework, it makes sense with how being disabled would’ve been seen as another whammy for a community already struggling to obtain representation and respect. On a personal note, I was teased and bullied by some of the black kids at school because of how socially awkward I was, including one that outright said, “I don’t get along with disabled people.”

That and other readings helped me to open my eyes to the struggles of teaching Black Studies.

Finally, Part 3 offers solutions that involve some form of communal and direct action. In her essay, “When Black Studies is Contraband, We Must Be Outlaws,” Brea Baker encourages readers to engage in civil disobedience like organizing rallies, school walk-outs, and teach-ins; reading banned books; and calling out the system that’s designed to keep marginalized groups in their place in order to bring about a more just future (p. 155-158). Marlon Williams-Clark, author of the article, “History Is a Beautiful, Ugly Story, and We Must Teach It” proclaims that to teach Black history accurately, “we must be honest about ourselves and talk about values; values shape what one thinks is important to preserve” (p. 161).

This even means accepting different perspectives of American history, no matter how ugly and horrible it can get. Solutions like these are realistic given today’s circumstances. 

Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies edited by Colin Kaepernick, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is a highly important anthology aimed at readers who want to understand the urgency to teach that subject. While it’s basically a starter kit, it contains some of the most important essays that effectively drive home the point for the need to educate people in Black studies and history as well as to take action. I would highly recommend it to history and social studies teachers as well as to those interested in learning more about these topics. Books like this one definitely take people, who are looking to get more involved in black activism, into the right direction.

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