White people are angry again.
According to The Huffington Post, an organization of Tennessee Tea Party groups wants to change the state’s educational curriculum — shocking, I know — to “compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government.”
This truth involves the removal of “made-up criticism about ... the Founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites.”
Fun fact: Intrusion is apparently now a synonym for genocide.
What exactly, pray tell, is “made-up” about the fact that certain people in our history — including the gods that were the old, elitist, land-owning white men who ran the country — oppressed and discriminated against other people? Did people not almost wipe out entire races of Native Americans? Were women not treated as less than human? Were African-Americans not enslaved and therefore treated as property? Our fourth-grade education has apparently brainwashed students into thinking so.
Essentially, these folks in Tennessee claim “no portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens.” Curse those oppressed minorities — always getting in the way of glorifying the white man and his never-ending gift of democracy to the world. We all know minorities don’t really count as American people when discussing our nation’s history, and therefore their experiences brought on by the majority are negligible.
All obvious facetiousness aside, there is no doubt the Founding Fathers were revolutionary. They paved the way for liberty and justice for all. But, like all humans, they were by no means perfect. It is mind-boggling that Tea Party organizations feel personally attacked and offended that history textbooks dare publish anything that would tarnish the Founders’ images, especially since no one today personally knows them. A majority of people’s ancestry today doesn’t even begin in America until the early 20th century. There is nothing shameful about admitting past mistakes, especially if they harmed innocent people.
You can’t just ignore centuries of history because it makes people look bad. Not only is that adding insult to persecuted injury, it’s stepping into some dangerous territory that may even doom history to be repeated. Equality in this country can never truly be reached if people insist on ignoring actual oppression that occurred and instead turning members of the majority, either in the past or present, into the victims.
God forbid the Tea Party still exists in the next 200 years, but maybe its members will one day look back at this point in history in shame and try to gloss over the fact that their precedents tried to obscure certain truths about our country and its people.
