Dr. Courtney Rivard and William Gattis - On glossing over history (clip)
Interviewed on March 26, 2025
Courtney Rivard (CR): The point about glossing over is about teaching the students how to write a little more, with more intention. So, this is very helpful to hear especially Sara is getting ready to teach. I think that it might be useful to hear this and play it for your students in class. It’s a learning experience for me too. A lot of people criticize Wikipedia for glossing and a lot of people are now talking about these kind of AI- generated things that are occurring and the same gloss. So, it makes me think about how we can write on this page that does justice to what you have just said Mr. Gattis and the fights that we are likely going to have to have with the Wiki community.
William Gattis (WG): Well part of it is and to your point, people are doing it in a kind of innocent way but you can take a Negro spiritual and have the best voices, say Irish voices, and they can give you the best rendition of it, for example, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” but because–and it’s perfect, picture perfect, sung perfect–but because they lack the experience they don’t have that feeling for what it means. So, what we try to do as teachers and educators is, if I can get you close to the experience, perhaps you can understand, and this doesn’t just work in the Black experience but the White experience. Any kid who is going through an issue that I’m not familiar with, how can I be close enough to what you are telling me, so I can understand what you’ve going through, so from my experience, I can help you grow, you see. So, it’s a … I would say, I don’t always look upon it as a person of color thing because we are all affected by it, but as a nation, as a group, as a people, it affects all of us because we have to be able to understand in order to grow ourselves. Can I stand in your place? Even President Kennedy one time said “If you think the experience of Black people is so good, which one among you would take his or her place?” And, living in this time, with all of the benefits and blessings that we have, I may be the hope and dream of a slave and their potential but I wouldn’t want to go back to that experience, you see? Too painful for me to even think about it. Let alone to live it, you see?
