“I think we have an opportunity to think more deeply about the relationship of our past and historical memory and the capacity of this nation to learn from that past and chart a different future,” Khalil Muhammad told Upper School students in a lecture this February on antiracism and democracy.

 

Muhammad, a professor of history, race and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, delivered the 2018 Mary Frosch Lecture for Equity and Justice, which honors the former Spence teacher. Head of School Bodie Brizendine described Frosch, who attended the lecture, as someone who “believed then, as she believes now, in the hope of every young scholar and their collective power of potential to change the world.”

 

Muhammad was born in Chicago and attended the University of Pennsylvania, earning a B.A. in economics. After graduating, he worked as a staff accountant at Deloitte & Touche L.L.P., and obtained his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in U.S. history. Muhammad has been featured in publications like The New York Times and New Yorker, and he also appeared in the documentaries “Slavery by Another Name” and “13th.”

 

In his talk, Muhammad explored how racial progress is often met with racist backlash. He cited Ibram X. Kendi’s New York Times Opinion piece, “Racial Progress Is Real. But So Is Racist Progress.” In this article, Kendi writes that there are potentially “two historical forces at work: a dual and dueling history of racial progress and the simultaneous progression of racism.”

 

For each step forward, such as efforts to remove Confederate flags and monuments, there are reactions ranging from racist-driven shootings to protests like the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. These in-tandem movements are part of a larger history, Muhammad further argued. He noted that the reaction to the Black Power movement in the 1960s and ’70s was President Richard Nixon’s war on drugs, which targeted African-Americans and led to unprecedented growth in incarceration. And in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, some public school systems shuttered and segregation academies emerged.

 

“Rather than the opening of a new door for the incorporation of a better vision of America, of all God’s children, we saw tremendous resistance and backlash,” Muhammad said.

 

Muhammad maintained that color blindness is not a solution; to pretend not to see race is to erase an important history and deny diversity. More work should be done to understand and combat implicit biases, as well; Muhammad cited studies showing that preschool teachers treat children differently based on their race. However, Muhammad argued that we have the capacity to change, to learn from the past and use that knowledge as a foundation.

 

“When I think about history and when I think about what really matters, I think that racial progress and social justice movements have always been met with backlash, just as Kendi described,” Muhammad said. “The way forward is to recognize the pattern, to teach and learn from history.”

 

Muhammad’s speech was met with a standing ovation, followed by a Q&A session and lively reception in the Drawing Room. One student asked the speaker to comment on diversity in institutions; Muhammad replied by saying that diversity was insufficient to dismantling racism and that institutional change was necessary as well.

 

“We’ve got to do better by demanding institutional transformation,” Muhammad said. “Diversity is one possibility for that. I would argue that Mary Frosch is a white woman who has dedicated her work to transforming the status quo here. We have to be careful what we ask for. We want it to be a ‘both/and,’ not just one or the other,” he said.