One of the cries I hear quite often, mostly from conservatives, is that we're erasing history by renaming buildings and school because a person owned slaves, or something unsavory was discovered thus we're canceling that person. That there is this war by the so called "woke" crowd on American history in general.
However, that's not how this works. For starters, we've never truly taught history in this country. From the time you're in elementary school and through your graduation from public schools, your mainly taught myth. A combination of myth, lies and a little bit of truth sprinkled in, just for balance. I would estimate that around 95% percent of what you're told during these formative years is later rebuked by the facts. There is plenty of reluctance to acknowledge our history.
Let's take for example life in America post our emancipation from England. The history books make it sound like Americans were joyous about being free, no longer shackled by a leader who lived across the ocean. Granted, many people were happy, that is true, but that's not where the story ends. While General George Washington was hailed a conquering hero, some of that support eroded when the country began to have issues with the economy, exporting and importing. Not to mention pesky squabbles with the Native Americans, the Whiskey Rebellion and like Donald Trump, George Washington despised the press, calling them providers of falsehoods, and even spent part of his farewell address blasting the idea of a free press. After the panic of 1792, there were some in the new nation that pondered if the challenge before them was too great and perhaps they could reconcile with England.
You don't learn about that in school because it would destroy the narrative of the myth, that life post emancipation from England was perfect, that is until the war of 1812. In most text, which inspire many books and films later in American life, it was re-written how we acquired much of the land for this nation. Typically, what we couldn't take through buying off the natives with cheap trinkets and low ball offers, we took by force. And not shockingly, when they fought back, we painted them as savages, uneducated, brutal with no care who they killed in their attacks.
The Civil War remains one of the most complex periods of American history, one we often boil down to simplistic descriptions. Upon the removal of General Robert E. Lee statute, I saw that someone had commented that it was a great day for the statue's removal, since Lee fought for the Confederacy. To be honest, Lee did and did not fight for the Confederacy. If you're confused, let me explain, but I have to circle back to when this country was first born. It was Gouvenor Morris who posed a very important question. "Have we created thirteen united colonies as on nation, or have we created thirteen new nations?"
As bizarre as it may seem to us modern people, during the colonial era and essentially before the 1880's, American's tending to be loyal to their home state as opposed to the country as a whole. When one reads Lee's own letters, he speaks in glowing terms of his old Virginia, and little is written about the Confederacy as a whole. Such pledges were commonplace at the time, as each state had their own flag and their own anthems, both of which were always on proud display.
Towards the end of his term in office, Donald Trump established the "1776 Commission" which was in response to the removal of Confederate statues and re-naming of buildings, something Trump, never shy about using fear to advance his own agenda, said the commission was to fight against the erasing of U.S. History. The report that was the product of the Commission was a laughable document in which politics supplanted facts and was full of errors. The report, had it been handed in by a middle school student as a project, surely would have been graded with an 'F', though a new grade, F minus, would have to be established considering the report did not contain footnotes or cite any historical text. Instead, it was a wet dream of what conservatives wished America had been, instead of what reality presented it to be.
Ill-conceived notions such of the 1776 Commission will continue plague us, until we find the balance. Accepting that what was taught for decades as history was flawed and incorrect. This isn't about being woke. This is about being open and frank and accepting our nation's history for its beauties and its flaws. After all, that's how a true patriot would reflect upon the history of the nation they hold so dear.
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