It's gotten better, at least. My school had modern textbooks when I was growing up, but I remember one of my middle school history teachers, who was old enough to have taught a Black school during segregation (and was, naturally, scathing about the cruelty and hypocrisy of segregation despite being a white guy), talking about the kind of things textbooks used to peddle as recently as the 90s.
He was a cool guy.
Can confirm, went to elementary school in the 90s, and the lunch room had a mural of the Land Rush in it. The Land Rush was the day the government went “sike” and fucked over the Trail of Tears victims even more.
We even had a special day every year where they gave us bag lunches and we went out to the playground to larp stealing land from the natives.
talking about the kind of things textbooks used to peddle as recently as the 90s.
As recently as the '90s? Or as recently as last year.
The Florida State Board of Education’s new standards [as of 2023] includes controversial language about how “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit”
More like:
vs.
The Nazi’s looked at US segregation laws to figure out how to remove civil rights from certain groups. Hitler bad, but at that period of time talking to a white woman was a lynching for a black man in Amurica.
That didn’t stop until 1981.
Yeah people who didn’t live through it often don’t realize we (USA) didn’t invade Germany to end the Holocaust; we did it because they declared war on us and we wanted to stop them from killing more Americans.
If Germany had minded their own genocide of minorities and borders, the US (and many other countries) probably never would have intervened.
If Germany had minded their own genocide of minorities and borders, the US (and many other countries) probably never would have intervened.
Horrific, isn't it?
we did it because they declared war on us and we wanted to stop them from killing more Americans.
uh, no. Americans only got interested in WW2 after US investments in England were being threatened.
But I had a black student refuse to drive in a car to a retreat in NC because the other occupants were white girls. That was 2000. That was the camel’s back moment that told me it was time to leave the USA.
Yep. Always keep in mind where the American system of police comes from.
Hint: It’s coming from hunting runaway slaves.
And the worst part is that the vast majority of our population actually has no idea, and if you try to teach it, they’ll run you out of town for disturbing the mythology that’s been implanted in their heads.
I’m in my forties and still learning new awful things about our country’s history. No one ever taught me about Sand Creek or Blair Mountain, or Tulsa, or the Knights of Labor and the violent railway strikes.
There are also awful little details that are left out, like how one of the landmarks Paul Revere used on his famous ride (hiding the awful part under a spoiler tag)
spoilerwas a mummified slave in a gibbet, whose tarred body was just left out for decades as a public spectacle to dissuade rebellion.
It also reflects in who is perceived as the ‘villains’ and ‘innocents’.
The books depict greedy villains and helpless vulnerable victims
Reality those ‘helpless vulnerable victims’ are rich tycoons and the ‘villains’ are everyone else.
Been like this for thousands of years. Next time you read a story about a great character in history, know that they may have in fact been an ancient Elon Musk or ancient Trump, just inflating their own deeds and surrounded by people more than willing to carve their names into stone.
Reality is far more banal and irritating than we want it to be, that’s why so many of us spin up wild narratives and live in that world of drama and suspense instead of doing more to take care of the reality we share and live in.
Homelander, from the comic then Amazon Prime series The Boys. He’s basically Superman, if Superman were raised in a lab by a literal Nazi super-soldier program, then used as the face of a giant corporation with massive influence in the media, biotech and social media spaces, to start with and buy up contracts with the highest profile superhumans (and also on the sly are responsible for creating them). Then just think what the realities of that would look like. And yes, he is at least as horrible as you think.
The eponymous Boys are a group of normies trying to take down superhumans, with the main POV character’s inciting incident being when A-Train (think the Flash) runs through his girlfriend directly in front of him.
American history in American textbooks*
It’s just impossible for 'Muricans to think about the rest of the world and understand it’s different to their experience.
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