We are enough: Writing, teaching and owning our history

As a child, I was naturally curious, always asking, “Why?” and “How?” I think back to my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Gregory, at Winton Terrace, who taught me to seek answers through the five W’s and H: who, what, when, where, why and how. But my first real lesson in curiosity came from my mother, Alice, who often said, “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.” That lesson came after one of my famous foot stomps and whispered rebellions: “I can’t wait until I’m grown and move out.”One day, a door-to-door salesman knocked on our door, selling encyclopedias. I begged my mother to buy a set. Eventually, after much pleading, she did. Those books became my first portal to the world. I spent hours flipping through pages, absorbing stories and histories — but even then, I knew there were gaps.Fast forward to today, and my journey for knowledge continues — from encyclopedias to modern tools like Statista for data analysis and AI tools like ChatGPT. As technology evolves, I have grown increasingly curious about how AI handles historical information, especially Black cultural narratives, and what I have discovered is concerning.There’s a problem with AI and history. Recently,...