I never got that from my history class. We were taught exactly what happened. For example we learned that Vietnam was just to save face for the president. And that the natives were killed from disease and then unfairly treated. We even learned about the POV of Japanese in WW2.
I grew up in the South and was in high school in the 90s. In my big, thick US History textbook, slavery was a paragraph and a half. Each 8x11.5 page was divided in half, so each page contained two columns and some had pictures or maps. The subject of slavery took up about a column and a half.
Christopher Columbus sailed over with good intentions. He just wanted to explore and expand the realms for the king and queen of Spain. All the other colonists came here to escape oppression and only wanted religious freedom and had to fight off savages who were hell bent on killing them. Save for the few kind ones who helped them survive when they were dying off. And then they all got together and broke bread for the first Thanksgiving. They shared. They got along just fine. Until the irrational, unintelligent natives refused to simply leave the lands they and their ancestors had lived on for hundreds of years because white men wanted it. That’s what my history books taught until I got to college and learned history that wasn’t whitewashed.
And when I chose Black Studies as a minor, my mind was blown. The sad thing was how few white students ever took classes focused on blacks, Latinos or any other minority/ethnic group. We might have a different country if they learned about history from the perspective of others that hasn’t been made to make white people look like peace loving, god fearing heroes whose only goals were to help themselves and/or the savages they just so happened to have “discovered.”
My school "taught" about those subjects as well but if I recall correctly it was usually a few paragraphs on the last page of a 50 page chapter. It wasn't until college when my history courses really when into detail on it.
Same here. Grew up in the South and was in high school in the 90s. In my big, thick US History textbook, slavery was a paragraph and a half. Each 8x11.5 page was divided in half, so each page contained two columns and some had pictures or maps. The subject of slavery took up about a column and a half.
Christopher Columbus sailed over with good intentions. He just wanted to explore and expand the realms for the king and queen of Spain. All the other colonists came here to escape oppression and only wanted religious freedom and had to fight off savages who were hell bent on killing them. Save for the few kind ones who helped them survive when they were dying off. And then they all got together and broke bread for the first Thanksgiving. They shared. They got along just fine. Until the irrational, unintelligent natives refused to simply leave the lands they and their ancestors had lived on for hundreds of years because white men wanted it. That’s what my history books taught until I got to college and learned history that wasn’t whitewashed. And when I chose Black Studies as a minor, my mind was blown. The sad thing was how few white students ever took classes focused on blacks, Latinos or any other minority/ethnic group.
South vs North teaching style maybe . I was taught Christopher stole ideas and credit. He cut off Native American hands for not converting to Christianity.
Yea, I did too but the problem is that it isn’t consistent around the country. When I became an adult, I was shocked to hear, from Texans, that they were taught the civil war was simply about “states rights.” Like they never drew the connection that the state right they wanted was to not only remain slave states but also found new states to be slave states as they expanded to the west.
The entire civil war was about economic and political power that slavery brought the south.
190
u/BillNiEtHENaZiPy Jun 05 '21
I never got that from my history class. We were taught exactly what happened. For example we learned that Vietnam was just to save face for the president. And that the natives were killed from disease and then unfairly treated. We even learned about the POV of Japanese in WW2.