Enslaved people were deliberately taught to fear knowledge and avert their gaze.

Evidence

I am not of a mind to prove what is plain as God’s speech through the white pines. The trees that day, amassed in their strange configurations, gave rest to the snake and crying insect alike. We couldn’t have been expected to know. Weren’t we taught to fear knowledge? But the ruddy apple of your face made me reach out— And I know the power of my own gaze. … Why else would those who seek to own me want me to cast my eyes down? — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 192

Categorization

• DEFINE: Frames the reframing in explicitly Edenic terms — the ‘apple’ of knowledge as the thing slave society forbade, which reframes slavery as a fall from an original state, tying the origin-story metaphor directly into the project’s thesis.
• XREF: Connects to the book’s recurring framing of American origins as a Garden/fall narrative; the ‘fear knowledge / gaze cast down’ motif echoes the broader chapter materials on how enslavers controlled sight and literacy.