Black Mom Gets Textbook Publisher To Properly Acknowledge Slavery

High school Social Studies books in Texas replaced the word "slaves" with "workers" and "immigrants".

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We salute Pearland, TX mother Roni Dean-Burren for taking a stand against the school systems that were incorrectly educating her son.

Dean-Burren noticed that her son’s 9^th grade social studies textbook failed to acknowledge slavery by replacing the word with “immigration”.

She mentioned the error in a post as well as a video on Facebook which went viral. In her video she reads an excerpt from the “Patterns of Immigration” section of the text which says, “The Atlantic slave trade between the 1500s and the 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.” She adds, “So (slavery) is now considered ‘immigration’.”

The concerned mother shared that the textbook merely referred to Africans during this time period as “workers” while negating the fact that they were forcefully brought to America and “worked” as “slaves”.

Dean-Burren’s video caught the attention of multiple news outlets including ABC7 Chicago and CNN. The textbook publishers, McGraw-Hill have since issued a statement about the situation.

“…We conducted a close review of the content and agree that our language in that caption did not adequately convey that Africans were both forced into migration and to labor against their will as slaves” said the company of their Facebook page.

Their comment went on to say, “We believe we can do better. To communicate these facts more clearly, we will update this caption to describe the arrival of African slaves in the U.S. as a forced migration and emphasize that their work was done as slave labor. These changes will be reflected in the digital version of the program immediately and will be included in the program’s next print run.”