Hint 1: It's called the statue of *liberty*. Not the statue of immigration or statue of independence.

Hint 2: Broken chains on the feet.

Hint 3: Idea for the statue started in 1865. What else happened in 1865?

Hint 4: What the sculptor said it's for? OK that's not really a hint!

An abolitionist designed the statue. A group of abolitionists paid for the statue. There's a plaque at the feet telling everyone what it's for. They named it the Statue of Liberty. It's arguably the largest anti-racism monument in the US, and the most recognizable anti-racism monument in the world...

Except people don't even know it's an anti-racism monument. They think it celebrates the huge influx of white immigrants from Europe that came to the US.

People that got "As" in AP history, that didn't know this, are running to their favorite search engine right now to try and fact check this. Let's wait for them... ⏳

Why do US people not know their own history?

Before folks ask, "Why was I not taught this in school?!" Look at what DeSantis is doing to AP history in Florida. You know exactly why you weren't taught this in school. Because it's easier to get you to accept mistreatment of Black people, if you don't know white American history.

🧔🏿Is the confederate flag racist? Why did the civil war happen? Where were you born?

🧔🏻Not racist! States' rights. Alabama!

🧔🏻Super racist! Slavery, murder of Black folk. NYC

Can you be mad at Alabama dude when their history textbook (from the same publisher!) lies about this?

The same publisher prints two different versions of the same highschool textbook about the causes of the civil war: one closer to the truth, used in Northern states, and one that lies about the cause, taught in the South🤡

I don't want to talk about Black history yet. I want to talk about why if you grew up in the North or West, your high school history book likely talked about the "Articles of Secession,"

but if you grew up in the South, those parts are removed and lied about.🙂🙃

Disinformation.

You can literally go and read the "Declaration of Causes of Seceding States," primary documents written by confederates themselves, on why they are Seceding.

https://web.archive.org/web/19980128034930/http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html

Some schools refuse to teach this.

I used to live in Texas. I would get so mad at dudes I knew that downplayed the confederate flag, until I realized that their textbooks literally lied about the reasons for the civil war!

Showing them the articles of secession blew their mind. Some stopped rocking the flag. 👍🏿

Imagine how much less racist the US would feel if 10% of all confederate flags just disappeared. Disappeared!

Folks don't even know the reasons of the civil war or that the flag designer said "Let this be the flag of white supremacy!"

I bet 50% of them would drop it on learning.

NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Sr removed confederate flags from his car after learning about its true origins from a Black friend. His son, Dale Earnhardt Jr. vocally supported NASCAR banning the confederate flag. 👍🏿

Yes, some racists still like the flag after learning about it. But there are way fewer of them.

@andrewhinton @mekkaokereke @kerileighmerritt
This whole discussion seems a bit weird from the outside (Australia). We don't study too much US history in highschool other than the big wars, but the explanation given for the Civil War is straight up "because slavery".

We get the Tulsa bombing too but not redlining or related things like putting freeways through prosperous black suburbs.

@andrewhinton @mekkaokereke @kerileighmerritt
Of course there is approx nothing in the Australian school curriculum about slavery and genocide conducted in Australia, of which there has been plenty, we just used a different word (blackbirding).

We've had a very coordinated effort from right wing politicians for about 15 years now to whitewash our history nationally, similar to TX & FL, the explicit pretext being "don't make the white kids feel bad".