Mom's Complaint Gets McGraw-Hill to Rewrite Textbook After White-Washing Slavery


Texas mom, Roni Dean-Burren, a PhD candidate, specializing in education curriculum, is calling out textbook publisher McGraw-Hill for whitewashing slavery in their textbooks. Her 9th grade son first saw the troubling statement that caught her attention in his 9th grade geography textbook, ABC-13 reports.


The textbook writes that the Atlantic slave trade brought millions of workers from Africa to the Americas. Dean-Burren posted the image of the textbook on Facebook with the caption"The Atlantic slave trade brought millions of workers...notice the nuanced language there. Workers implies wages...yes?" She then posted a video of the textbook that went viral and caught the attention of textbook publisher McGraw-Hill.
"We believe we can do better," McGraw-Hill posted on its Facebook page. "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."

While Dean-Burren is happy for the change, it is not enough and is only the beginning.

"A lot of schools don't use digital versions, and we know this textbook is going to sit in schools eight to ten years," she said.

"I want to see how they treat the history of native Americans, women's history," she said. "All of these stories, I'm really wondering how they're being told in history. This is the first step. What does the U.S. history book look like?"

Watch below.


Many of you asked about my son's textbook. Here it is. Erasure is real y'all!!! Teach your children the truth!!!#blacklivesmatter
Posted by Roni Dean-Burren on Thursday, October 1, 2015

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