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Unlearning the Lies Our History Teachers Taught Us
I thought I knew the truth about the terrifying history of America. We were taught a history that never existed.
The Native Americans didn’t politely move to make room for colonizers from Europe.
Black slaves were not happy housekeepers and farm workers treated like part of the family.
Throughout our lives, the sugarcoated lies we’d been fed during our childhood in institutions of education would slowly unravel, mostly through accidental awareness instead of intention pursuit of knowledge. I am embarrassed to admit that I was in my late 20’s before I learned that Christopher Columbus was not some Indiana Jones of the high seas who had discovered a nearly empty continent that he claimed for the immigrants that would soon arrive from European Nations. What I did learn came in bits and pieces over years of listening to people often younger than myself or actual academics of history.
