I Almost Admire The Naïveté…

It’s going to take less time than I thought to raise a generation of Americans who are ignorant of their history. https://t.co/jyecXsrP9R

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) August 5, 2021

...that imagines this isn’t true already.

I was taught the Civil War was not about slavery; that Texas won independence from the tyrant Santa Anna, and that Manifest Destiny was a manifest good. The first time I realized the movies had lied to me was when I read Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.

We still haven’t acknowledged the injustice of How The West Was Won.

I mean, my public school curriculum never included this much about slavery:

Under new South Dakota history curriculum, the word term "slavery” does not appear until students are in the eighth grade history grade, where they “will investigate how the abolition of slavery affected the lives of Black Americans in the U.S.” https://t.co/n9IIjWbTuS

— David Freedlander (@freedlander) August 7, 2021

I learned that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War (as I mentioned). How it affected the descendants of slaves wasn't even raised as an historical issue.  Then again, until I entered high school, all my schools had been all-white.

So what generation of Americans has not been ignorant of our history?

Same as it ever was. You want to know what’s going on, you have to read the books they don’t make you read in school, or keep in the school library.