Exploring the Controversial: Who owns the narrative of genocide education?

by Dr. Tracy Castro-Gill, WAESN Executive Director

The 2024 legislative session saw a controversy that many people didn’t see coming. Senate Bill 5851 and House Bill 2037 sought to mandate, “Holocaust and other genocide education.” As the Executive Director of a nonprofit organization whose goal is to eradicate all forms of oppression, I support this mandate. I cannot, however, support the legislation that would have provided 100% of the funding to create and implement the curriculum on genocide to one organization, The Holocaust Center for Humanity (HCH). 

I testified against this bill, initially, because I subscribe to the ideal of, “Nothing about us without us.” Supposedly, our state Legislature agrees and passed HB1541 which requires all state task forces, work groups, and advisory committees to be comprised of persons whose identities will be impacted by decisions made by these groups. It’s odd, then, that Senator Wellman decided to kill the genocide legislation rather than allow survivors of genocide to own and tell our own stories. My organization, Washington Ethnic Studies Now (WAESN) was joined by survivors of genocide like the Rwandan Community Association of Washington and the Coalition of Immigrants, Refugees, and Communities of Color in demanding the right and the funding to tell our own stories through the lens of Ethnic Studies. The proposed legislation, however, would have provided the right to tell our stories to the HCH and only the HCH.

Our demands fell on hostile ears, because the HCH convinced some lawmakers that Ethnic Studies is not the appropriate vehicle to teach about genocide. Emily Alhadeff, owner of the blog, The Cholent, interviewed Dee Simon of the HCH. Emily quoted Simon as saying, “Without this bill, how are the other genocides going to get into the schools? Ethnic Studies has no expertise in the area.” This statement demonstrates a gross misunderstanding of what Ethnic Studies is.

The entire foundation of Ethnic Studies is exploring and dismantling settler colonialism and its effects on indigenous people globally. Settler colonialism cannot exist without genocide in its various forms. Yes, there are many ways to commit genocide. Genocide is not simply the destruction of peoples’ bodies. Settler colonialism results in land theft, physical genocide, cultural genocide, linguistic genocide, epistemicide (the destruction of funds of knowledge), land degradation, mass forced extinction of indigenous plants and animals, and so much more. Millions of indigenous people on the American continents continue to experience genocide on all of these levels, but these actions aren’t legally recognized as genocide. Ethnic Studies not only includes, “expertise in the area,” but goes deeper and covers more literal ground than Holocaust education and the legal definition of genocide. 

An argument was made during public testimony in the House Education Committee that the Holocaust should take center stage in genocide education because it’s the most well-documented genocide in history. The reality is this statement is close to the truth for several reasons:

• the legal definition of genocide is limited to the destruction of human bodies;
• more attention is given to crimes against humanity when the crimes are committed against white bodies;
• there is a historical lack of investment in the curation of materials about the histories of communities of color.

The coalition built by WAESN was asking the state to fix these issues, not to take anything away from survivors of the Holocaust. It was a “yes, and” demand. 

I believe that the HCH and other Jewish-led organizations should absolutely own and share their stories of oppression, resistance, and survival. I do not believe that Jewish-led organizations should have exclusive state-sanctioned and funded license to own and tell all stories of genocide, because they are not all equal. Our coalition continues to call on state lawmakers to follow their own advice and let nothing about us be without us.