Photo Credit: Taraji P. Henson/Instagram
Taraji P. Henson has long had a committment to mental health as she launched her Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation back in 2018. Named after her father, a Vietnam vet who lived for years with a mental health condition without receiving treatment. Her latest initiative is The Unspoken Curriculum, a 6 week program she created that’s designed to help Black children identify racial bias at school and speak openly about mental health.
For Mental Health Awareness Month, she told People Magazine, “We’re in a state of emergency right now,” referring to the events of the last 16 months. “But it takes us to change it… we can’t hide the ugly, you’ve got to deal with the good and the bad if we want to see change,” she added.
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As a former substitute teacher, she says she has first hand knowledge of the subject saying, “I taught a special education class, but all of the students were Black boys who had all of their mental and physical capabilities. These children came from traumatic home situations, and the school labeled them ‘special ed.’”
“These students were only in the fourth grade and they would grab my hand and say, ‘Ms. Henson! Ms. Henson! There was a shootout nearby last night, look at the bullet holes in the wall,’ and laugh,” she added. “That’s trauma — that’s not something to celebrate or normalize.”
“We need more professionals in education to recognize children dealing with trauma and help them, not criminalize them,” Henson said.
I contemplated whether to cover this given how contentious topics like this are and I’ve had enough racist remarks in my social media Mentions for a day. But to understand this as an issue is to understand the communities these children she’s speaking about exist in. A lack of culturally competent teachers leads to an increase in suspensions and expulsions of black students. Those from the communities students live in or that have a general competency regarding their communities would be able to identify problems before they begin and to prevent heavy handed punishment.
Given the poor manner in which history is stolen, there are people who go through life believing a lot of false tropes… such as that blacks are inherently angry, violent, etc. And if this is your belief system, you’ll believe that the only way to deal with black students is punishment. You can compare this to the real world. The same way you can’t incarcerate your way into a safe society, you’re not going to suspend everyone to change student behavior. It ignores the root cause of their actions. That is what Taraji P. Henson ultimately is trying to get at and not just teaching that the country is racist and irredeemable as many try to claim.
To learn more about Henson’s new program, you can find out about it here.
