Opinion: U.S. History Class: Glories vs Injustices
On March 18, 2018, Stephan Clark was shot to death in his grandmother’s backyard for holding a phone. On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor was unwarrantedly shot 8 times and killed by a police officer. On May 5, 2020, George Floyd was left breathless and died after being pinned to the ground by a police officer. These are three of the biggest names in the past few years. These are three of the biggest dates that sparked months of protesting. These are three of the most recent deaths amongst hundreds of other African Americans killed based on the color of their skin.
To this day, African Ameicans in the US continue to face the same oppression they were subjected to during the times of slavery. They are identified as differing from the rest of the population just because of their dark skin color, compelling children, teenagers, and adults of all colors across the country to persistently fight for African Americans’s right for freedom through the Black Lives Matter movement. In recent protests, just like many supporters of the movement, I also felt compelled to fully educate myself about African Americans’ struggles beginning decades ago.
But why do we need to further educate ourselves even after years of history lessons? Because the history we are taught glorifies our country but glosses over the most important lessons we need to learn, thus compelling us to repeat the mistakes of our past. By teaching us that our country has overcome racism by the end of the civil rights movement, our textbooks make it seem like America is victorious and without any shortcoming that should be left in the past.
But then how could our country still oppress African Amerians when we learn in our history classes that their fight for human rights ended with the civil rights movement in 1968? Because their fight never ended, but from the social studies classes in elementary school to the history classes in highschool, I remember briefly touching upon the fact that slavery has exisitied in the past and our country has abolished it. However, we are not educated about important days such as Junteeneth, when enslaved African Americans were completely emancipated. Instead we are forced to memorize dates such as October 12, 1492, when Chrisopher Columbus founded our “New World”. These emphasised dates prove how the curriculum of our history classes are built on the basis of America’s winning perspective. They elaborate the events that make the country seem prestigious and just briefly state the rest of the dates that fill our history’s timeline. Since these dates, including our past injustices, are not viewed as lessons showing their damage on our country, they continue to hurt our people and hold us back. Here we are 57 years after Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I have a Dream” speech and our country still has 41.4 million African Americans judged by the color of their skin and anxious for their death because of it.
If only in the previous years our classes emphasized the damage caused by segregation and preconceived stereotypes, we could be living in a country where everyone is treated equally and granted the human rights they were born with. In the future, I am hoping that what happened to Breona Taylor, George Floyd, Stephan Clark and many others are taught during history classes to show our future generations how our country continues its racial injustices, even after the civil rights movement ended decades ago. Instead of just teaching history as a class of important dates and events, we should also teach it with lessons we can learn from major movements and mistakes. I am hoping our country will finally be able to let Martin Luther King Jr’s dream come true and allow all Americans to be treated equally, whatever the color of their skin might be.