In the aspects of culture, to separate a white canon and a black canon seems to be impossible to me. Our histories are intertwined, like a tree. The trunk itself is twisting with all the literature we share that branches off into individual sections. Still, the branch is connected to the tree, and therefore, is a part of everything that the tree is.
Gates is right when he says that education needs “to account for the comparable eloquence of the African, the Asian, and the Middle Eastern traditions” (125). Teachers need to stand before their students and inform them about cultures throughout the world and how they are all related. Traditions and beliefs are sacred to each culture, some even cross over between two different cultures, and these are what we need to be taught. By learning these aspects of other nations, we gain a sense of how to relate to people who seem different than us. Literature is one means of connecting everyone—to teach them about the past in order to understand the present. Every culture has its own history, but at the same time, these histories are intertwined.
Remove the idea of white canon, black canon, etc, in order to understand that we are all one people. How we believe and how we are raised depends on these background and these histories. No history is less important than another, which is why we need to understand and relate to other cultures. Literature is the best approach to understanding if one cannot personally experience a situation.
Taking away the idea that each history is individualized based on a culture makes viewing the human race as one a much easier picture. In a classroom, literature should vary in culture to make the students more adept in understanding the past and present of other worlds. People live differently in comparison to others depending on many factors. It is the education system's job to teach its students that each way of belief is not wrong and that each culture is connected to ours in some way or another.
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