History is the study of events that took place in the past. Historiography is the study of how history is written. The current crusade against teaching certain historical topics blurs the distinction between history and historiography and treats the past as something that is up for debate.
American slavery actually happened, as did the Native American genocide. Asians have always faced racial prejudice in the United States. We know that slaves built the White House. We have documents and photographic evidence to prove the veracity of these claims. Prohibiting discussions of race in K-12 classrooms distorts the facts and conceals the legacy of white supremacy that continues to hamper the members of most non-white communities in the United States. Denying that it happened doesn’t make it so, and not admitting it to kids confuses or alienates them from in-depth historical study. Imagine Chinese exchange students who only learn of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre after they have arrived in a country that does not censor its news as China does. How do they react to learning that their education has omitted such an important event?
American students should not have to experience such dislocation. One of our nation’s founding pillars is a free press, and neither politicians nor parents have the right to deny children knowledge about our country’s history of racial discrimination because that information is freely accessible to the rest of the world. Denying them that knowledge is like teaching them that the stork delivers babies when everyone else gets to study the biological processes of ovulation, insemination, and conception. Their reaction, when they discover they’ve been misled or outright lied to, is going to be to distrust authority figures and despair at ever being able to tell fact from fiction. What are students in places like Florida and Texas going to think when they leave home to live in other parts of the country where politicians aren’t censoring school curricula and substituting fiction for historical fact?
If we want to heal the culture war divisions in our society, a good first step would be to agree that facts matter. Historiographers can debate how those facts should be written about, but we at least need to agree that the events in question actually occurred. That would mean agreeing that slavery occurred, that it was terrible and brutal, and that the descendants of the enslaved are still encumbered by inherited trauma and racist policies. Trying to deny such a set of well-documented facts is a fool’s errand; it would make more sense for white people to look at why they are invested in denying reality. That approach didn’t make the Catholic Church right when it declared Galileo a heretic for agreeing with Copernicus that the Earth orbits the sun. belie the Church’s belief that the Earth is the center of the universe did not make it true.
Censorship is a short-sighted policy that arises from truths that those in power would prefer not to acknowledge. In the long run, however, the truth will out, and those who promoted “alternate facts” will end up, once again, on the wrong side of history.
Elizabeth Breau, Ph.D. (she/her), is an award-winning writing coach and private English tutor. Her book, History According to SAT: A Content Guide to SAT Reading and Writing, won a silver medal in the teen category from the Nonfiction Authors Association. You can reach her at www.elizabethbreau.net.
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