My schools and textbooks weren’t shy about the acts of evil that were committed, but somehow found ways to speak highly of those involved in said acts
Comment on History is written by the victors
PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 2 months ago
I don’t know what history books y’all read but the one I got wasn’t shy about the shit we’ve got on our heads, even if some previously lesser known atrocities weren’t part of the material
DrSteveBrule@mander.xyz 2 months ago
aidan@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Because people can do good things and horrible things in their life. Essentially no one is universally evil in everything they do.
DrSteveBrule@mander.xyz 2 months ago
I agree with that 100%! I still think it’s weird that we national holidays to celebrate slave owners, regardless of what good things they did that have no relation to their owning of slaves.
aidan@lemmy.world 2 months ago
To ignore slave owner and slavery apologists we’d have to get rid of all abrahamic religious holidays leaving… Juneteenth, Labor Day, MLK Day, and Veterans Day. Those are fine holidays- but not exactly the most festive/family fun.
I think the British(under Churchill) made starvation of hundreds of thousands of colonial subjects was horrible, those same people can still be celebrated for fighting Hitler though.
roguetrick@lemmy.world 2 months ago
If it ain’t a retelling that it’s all shit ala Howard Zinn it really tends to be rose colored glasses trying to explain how the true nationalistic spirit of freedom loving America always strives to win out in the end. But it’s really a rotten foundation leading to a rotten house.
duderium2@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Zinn still begins his book by complaining about Stalin, who, last time I checked, never set foot in the United States. A People’s History is still a liberal text, one that insists that the USA is flawed but good. We read it in my APUSH class, and even today the teacher is a hardcore Biden supporter who thinks that communism is evil and that workers should allow capitalists to drain their blood. People who are actually interested in american history should read Gerald Horne.
balderdash9@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
To be fair, I hear US history education varies wildly by state. Thanks states rights!
kamenlady@lemmy.world 2 months ago
So, there’s a chance to meet someone from another state that may really have been taught a different history at school. How different depends on the state’s political majority?
Tyfud@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That is correct. That’s what it’s like living here every day. Though largely it’s just two categories.
The people your meet are either ignorant religious nut jobs, or they’re not from the south.
aidan@lemmy.world 2 months ago
What state portrays US history as utopian in the past 20 years? I grew up in Kentucky and definitely got a lot of stuff about slavery, Native American genocide, civil rights, Mexican American war, Hawaiian colonization, the only reason they didn’t cover the Vietnam war or Filipino is because they ran out of time from assigning pointless art projects.