When Did Discomfort Become a Veto on History?

Africana StudiesEducation & Civic PowerHistory, Memory & Institutions
Written By Nathaniel Steele

A book in my hand, a changing Florida bookshelf, and what memory, power, and structural analysis teach us about the freedom to know

The Book in My Hand

The conversation started with a book.

I was carrying Susan Williams’s White Malice, and my wife wondered whether the title might make some white people uncomfortable.

She had a reasonable point. We all encounter words, symbols, books, and opinions that bother us. I can see a political shirt I dislike and feel something about it. Someone can see the title of my book and feel something too.

But consider the distinction:

When does respecting another person’s discomfort become surrendering our own freedom to know?

That is our first lesson.

Discomfort is a feeling. Harm is a consequence. Disagreement is a relationship between ideas. They are not automatically the same thing.

So before reacting to something uncomfortable, ask: What exactly happened? What am I feeling? What harm occurred? Who is asking whom to change?

Those questions move us from reaction to analysis.

Follow the Institution

Now take the same question and enlarge it.

Suppose the issue is no longer the book in my hand. Suppose it is a book in a school.

Who decides whether it stays?

A teacher? Principal? Parent? Librarian? School board? Legislature?

Notice what happened. We moved from an event—someone objects to a book—to an institutional structure.

That is one of the habits I want Freedom School Academy learners to develop:

When something happens, ask what carries it.

Florida provides a useful case. The state still requires instruction in African American history, including African peoples before slavery, enslavement, abolition, and contributions of the African diaspora (Florida Department of Education).

Yet disputes over access to books are also substantial. PEN America, an advocacy organization using a broader definition than Florida’s final-removal reporting, counted 2,304 instances in which access to books was restricted or diminished in Florida schools during 2024–25 (PEN America).

Critical question: Can both things be true?

Can an institution preserve required historical facts while simultaneously narrowing some of the materials or interpretive pathways through which people explore them?

That question is more useful than a slogan.

Facts Are Not Yet Understanding

Imagine a student learns:

Slavery happened.

That is historical knowledge.

Now ask different questions.

How did slavery interact with property law? Who accumulated wealth? What institutions enforced racial classifications? What happened to wealth after emancipation? Which consequences traveled across generations?

Now we are doing something different.

We are moving:

Event → Pattern → Institution → Mechanism → Power → Consequence.

This sequence helps us examine how an event becomes a pattern, how institutions sustain that pattern, what mechanisms make it possible, who benefits, and who bears the consequences.

And it produces another question:

If I teach you that something happened but discourage you from asking how the system worked, how much history have I actually taught you?

Facts can survive while understanding shrinks.

Africa Through Which Door?

The same problem appears in how Africa is taught.

Where does your African history begin?

With slavery?

European arrival?

Colonialism?

Poverty?

Extraction?

Conflict?

If so, stop.

What existed before the interruption?

People. Place. Memory. Trade. Governance. Knowledge. Spiritual systems. Political institutions. Agriculture. Technology. Civilizations.

African Ways of Knowing gives us another teaching structure:

People → Place → Memory → Institution → Power → Responsibility → Future.

Try using it.

Instead of asking only, What did colonialism do to Africa?, ask:

What African institutions existed before colonialism? What knowledge did they carry? What was disrupted? What survived? Who benefited from the new arrangement? What remains visible today?

The starting point changes the story because framing itself carries power.

Why White Malice Matters

That brings me back to the book in my hand.

The value of White Malice is not whether its title makes someone comfortable. My Carr work with the book examines colonial authority, Cold War intervention, African sovereignty, intelligence systems, Western institutions, and historical memory.

Here is another exercise:

Don’t ask first, “Do I like this book?”

Ask:

What is its claim? What evidence supports it? What institutions appear repeatedly? What connections is the author asking me to see? What evidence might challenge the argument?

That is intellectual discipline.

Sometimes the controversial part of history is not the event.

It is the connection.

Institutions Speak Twice

In April 2026, Florida’s State Board of Education removed sociology courses from the Florida College System’s general-education course lists. State officials said sociology had moved away from objective instruction toward ideological viewpoints (Florida Department of Education).

You do not have to begin by deciding whether that decision was right or wrong.

Begin structurally.

What is the institution’s stated mission? What behavior followed? What explanation was given? Is the standard applied consistently? What consequences follow?

An institution can be examined by comparing its stated commitments with its actual conduct. We can ask whether its behavior is drifting from its stated mission, whether its standards are applied coherently across similar cases, and whether its rules are flexible enough to protect legitimate inquiry or so elastic that they can be used selectively.

Critical question: If an institution claims to protect objectivity, how should we determine whether that standard is being applied consistently?

Institutions speak twice: through what they say they value and through what they actually do.

The Quiet Danger

There is one final problem.

We may someday discover that removing books was not the only danger.

What if people simply stop reading them?

A 400-page argument becomes a headline. Then a clip. Then a label: “woke,” “racist,” “anti-American,” “divisive.”

Ask yourself:

Who benefits when you react to the label without examining the source?

That is narrative power.

Someone else has compressed the evidence, selected the frame, and perhaps reached your conclusion for you.

Freedom School asks you to do something harder.

Read the book.

Read its critics.

Check the evidence.

Follow the institution.

Find the mechanism.

Ask who holds power and who experiences the consequence.

Then make up your own mind.

That is intellectual sovereignty.

And yes, I will keep carrying White Malice.

If the title makes somebody uncomfortable, perhaps that discomfort can become the beginning rather than the end of the conversation.

Because the better question was never simply, “Does this make me uncomfortable?”

It is:

“What might my discomfort be asking me to learn?”

Three Critical Questions

  1. When does discomfort represent a legitimate concern about harm, and when does it become a demand to avoid difficult knowledge?

  2. Can a school or government claim to support historical education while limiting the books, questions, or interpretations students may use to understand that history?

  3. What evidence would help you determine whether an institution is applying its stated standards consistently or selectively?

Homework Assignment: Trace the Structure

Choose one disputed book, curriculum decision, public controversy, or institutional policy.

Write a two-page analysis that answers the following:

  1. Event: What happened? Describe the event without exaggeration or loaded language.

  2. Pattern: Has something similar happened before? Identify at least one related example.

  3. Institution: Which institutions, officials, policies, or procedures carried the decision?

  4. Mechanism: How did the decision produce its effect? Identify the rule, process, funding structure, classification, or form of authority involved.

  5. Power: Who had the authority to decide? Who had the ability to challenge the decision?

  6. Consequence: Who benefited, who was burdened, and what knowledge or opportunity was expanded or restricted?

  7. Evidence: Use at least three credible sources, including one primary source and one source that presents a different interpretation.

  8. Reflection: What initially made you uncomfortable, and what did your research teach you that your first reaction did not?

End your assignment with this sentence:

“The most important connection I discovered was…”

Sources

Nathaniel Steele
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