Obviously we don’t learn about unions at all. But the one that strikes me the most is the omission of the Battle of Blair Mountain, where the US government sent the army after the coal miners. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
The Wilmington 1989 coup: After the Civil War, Wilmington North Carolina had a mostly black government. That didn’t sit right with the whites, so they staged and successfully completed a Coup & overthrew the government. Only officially successful Coup to occur in the USA. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/when-white-supremacists-overthrew-government/
9/11 - The much lesser known 9/11 occurs in Chili in on 9/11/1973. During a US sponsored coup, the revolutionaries smash an airplane into the capitol building. My not-so-conspiracy theory is there’s a reason the US event happened on 9/11 as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d’état
Union power!
In keeping with this month’s news, if you don’t know what the Japanese American Internment Camps are, or were rather, you might read up on them. I wasn’t taught about them at all.
Another thing that’s I think more niche but still ought to be taught is the history of censorship of anti-war protests. There were some terrible rulings about a hundred years ago that were later reversed, and that all made it possible for people to protest Vietnam the way they did.
Finally, one piece of history that’s missing from many high school civics classes is any discussion of how unions themselves led to the minimal labor laws that we have today, that union members were killed in large numbers in the process of pushing for said laws.
I learned quite a bit about the Japanese American internment camps in middle school and high school. This was when I was living near Seattle where there’s a large Japanese community, so that’s probably why.
Most of the people on the Mayflower were businessman. Very few were the legendary “Pilgrims” - who were less fleeing persecution and more the fact that they couldn’t persecute others anyway.
The entire narrative we teach in school is about the Pilgrims is bullshit.
Most US history educations are going to give you very sparse details about the brutality of the genocide of Native Americans. Smallpox blankets were real. Treaties were treated as suggestions rather than anything binding - we still don’t really honor them today.
A substantial cause of the Revolutionary War was that England wanted to reserve areas for Native Americans. Not even out of the goodness of their heart, but because it was fucking expensive to send and kit soldiers because colonists kept fucking with the tribes. All of those Intolerable Taxes and shit were kinda needed to fund the fact that colonists kept sticking their dick in a beehive and had to get epipen-ed by the Crown.
The Civil War was 100% about slavery. The “states rights” bullshit was fabricated in the decades after the war. There has been a full century of deliberate assaults on the real history of slavery and the Civil War in the United States. The unique character of its brutality (race based chattel slavery is not like what was practiced by other civilizations) is underplayed. (“B-b-b-but the first slave was an Irish guy owned by a Black man” or other bullshit - deliberately conflating things like indentured servitude with chattel slavery.)
The modern American police force is basically a direct descendent of slave patrols. The brutality against black men is also a long legacy - they made purses out of Nat Turner’s skin, and probably even ate parts of him.
Slavery didn’t really end. During reconstruction and afterwords, communities passed bullshit laws to re-enslave black people. It’s very easy to make an argument that the “war on drugs” in the US is a way of maintaining slavery, because the 14th amendment explicitly has a carve out that slavery is permitted if you are convicted of a crime.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident, which was used to justify the Vietnam War, was a false flag. The idea that soldiers returning from war were spat on or harassed was something very deliberately propagandized. Not that it didn’t happen, but not to the extent it was portrayed.
13th Amendment (mostly) abolished slavery. 14th establishes birthright citizenship and requirements to serve in public office.
Ah you’re right, got my wires switched.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Amazing how many states passed vagrancy laws in the decades after that…
As someone from the north, we were very explicitly taught that the civil war was about slavery.
As someone from the south; we were not. I was lucky enough to have a cousin with an anti-authority complex and internet access, but most of my classmates were not.
The “War of Northern Agression” started by Confederates shooting at an American fort.
I mean, such things can be false flags. It wouldn’t make sense, the Confederates were much weaker strategically and knew it.
Even PragerU admits it nowadays, to their rare credit. I flipped through some state standards, and even the usual suspects do agree now.
However, a quick scroll on news comment thread about confederate statues or a convo with a high school teacher in like fucking Durant or something will reveal that Lost Cause bullshit is still alive and well.
I’m not from there but I’ll say that The US doesn’t intervene overseas in order “to spread democracy” or “to protect the world from the evils of communism” but to protect its economic interests, to increase the profits of capitalists through industries such as weapons and oil, and to make sure that no socialism occurs that threatens the stranglehold of capitalism.
Some books to check:
- Major General Smedley D. Butler - War Is A Racket
- Tim Weiner - Legacy Of Ashes: The History Of The CIA
- William Blum - Killing Hope: US Military And CIA Interventions Since World War II
- Noam Chomsky - What Uncle Sam Really Wants
To quote a popular bumper sticker: Be nice to America or we’ll bring democracy to your country.
Yea I guess the only thing to add is that any time it appears its helping democracy tends to be a side affect rather than the primary mission. IE Iraq, Sadam was a colossal piece of shit and I’m glad he’s gone, but the whole Iraq war was an illegal war for oil.
This.
American history books have whole chapters dedicated to the lead-up and aftermath of WW1 and WW2. You won’t even get a paragraph about the lead up to the Vietnam war.
That’s a massive oversimplification. The US has always had active domestic politics and many competing factions driving it’s policy.
What money did Afghanistan have?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanistan
I’m sure there were other things/resources to extract/control there, but this is the one I know and remembered off the top of my head.
It’s also a good place to do a real life test of (actual) weapons of mass destruction. A showroom of violence for potential buyers across the world.
There’s some lapis lazuli I guess, but it’s mostly a subsistence, agrarian-type economy. You’d be hard-pressed to show the US profiting from the opium; they actually destroyed quite a lot of the crops they could get their hands on. Just because of the amount of area it covers there’s geological deposits of other things, but it’s undeveloped.
It’s an exceptionally poor, sparsely populated tract of dry steppe that’s famous for baiting in and devastating empires. The US invaded to get Bin Laden, and then stayed because a critical mass of their elite genuinely wanted to fix it before going.
It’s also a good place to do a real life test of (actual) weapons of mass destruction. A showroom of violence for potential buyers across the world.
That’s true of anywhere you want to blow up, so by that measure your goalpost is literally anything happening.
The Tulsa Race Massacre.
Fred Hampton’s story and assassination.
I grew up in Oklahoma and was not taught about it in high school. I believe they finally added it to the standards in the mid 2010’s. I’ve talked to many people who learned about it from the Watchman series of all things.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court shut down a request for reparations by survivors a few years ago.
American kids are not taught about those in school.
I believe that’s the OP question. Americans aren’t taught those in school,so they’re the “keeping it real” history.
The only parts of post reconstruction slavery told are that the blacks marched peacefully and we just decided to start being nice to them and integrating schools/bathrooms/neighborhoods.
Growing up in the US I was never taught about any violence the US government or society committed against its own people. That also excluded the Ludlow massacre and similar events where violence was used against workers instead of blacks.
Tulsa race massacre and black Wallstreet, the 1985 MOVE bombing, the Ludlow massacre, all our coups, totally absent from American history classes.
The question was about whitewashing, which implies that the topic was at least mentioned.
The whitewashing is “after slavery, everyone lived happily ever after”
Another lesser known black massacre was Wilmington. Here’s a great American Experience about it
I did not find out about the Tuskegee Syphilis Study until adulthood. Its the biggest thing I can think of.
I was in college when I found out about Tuskegee, as well as Operation Northwoods, Project MK Ultra, and the cover-up of Unit 731.
If you find Tuskegee shocking and horrifying, wait until you learn about the “Father of Gynecology.”
There’s still a huge problem in medicine where doctors and nurses believe that Black people have more natural pain tolerance. It was in textbooks up into the 80’s.
“black people are equal now”
Women are equal now!
no, women are still property
We’re doing sarcasm.
Another book to mention - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies_My_Teacher_Told_Me
I’ve only flipped through briefly, so I can’t elaborate on the points. But I’ve heard reccomendations for it, and it seems exactly along the lines of this discussion.
Have read it and can confirm that it ought to be taught in primary schools. That along with 1491 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.
Many already know Zinn, but posting it for some for whom this is new
https://archive.org/details/pdfy-otanUZGGGcnDgfr7/page/n1/mode/1up
Would be nice to learn about other countries too.
I grew up in Indonesia and would like to know how much of what we were taught regarding the Dutch and Japanese occupations were actually true. I believe we weren’t even taught about the fact that the Dutch attempted to retake control after Japan’s surrender after WW2. What I remember we were taught was just WW2 happened and we fought for independence.
I visited the Netherlands last year and talked to some locals who said their history lessons around that was quite different than what I learned (how long were we occupied, how bad the situation was, and the battles that followed WW2)
Can you rephrase the question? I’m not sure if you’re referring to the sanitized version we are taught, or the other side of history that is withheld.
I’m looking for the real history. Not the Pilgrims and the native Americans sang kumbaya
As has been mentioned before - Howard Zinn. His ‘A People’s History of the United States’ is jaw-dropping. This book literally changed my life.
I knew that book was solid when my father said it was too radical lol
Heheh…a very wise man once told me that ‘every truth begins as a heresy’. In the 30+ years since I was told this, I have found it to be completely accurate. :)
We have a classist system with heavy dash of racism and starting 40 years ago low class mobility
