When I was in school, I didn’t learn how we forced Native Americans into reservations after trying to annihilate them. I grew up in the Southwest where we had a large Native American population in our schools. They were the ones who taught us that part of our history.
I didn’t learn that we put Japanese Americans in internment camps for fear they’d all be willing to turn traitor to the country they loved. We didn’t round up Germans.
I didn’t learn about Juneteenth in school or about the contributions of Martin Luther King Jr.
I didn’t learn there’s a controversy about Columbus being the one who discovered America.
As a Jew I learned more about the Holocaust through family and friends than I did in school. There I mostly heard how Americans stormed the beaches of Normandy and freed prisoners from death camps. Not that it took the bombing of our borders to stop isolationist attitudes that believed the war would remain across the ocean.
I never learned how “The Red Scare” in the 1940’s and 1950’s was used as a means to destroy countless lives with legal doctrines and Senate hearings rooting out communist sympathizers. Not just demanding fealty to those in charge, but damning others to the same plight when they were forced to name names.
I never learned about rampant lynchings or bodies left to rot as a means to keep those of color frightened into submission.
I never learned about the Tulsa Oklahoma Massacre in 1921 that killed hundreds of Black people over a two-day period because they had become too prosperous.
My education was clearly directed by those wanting to put us in the best light.
Like all pasts we have the good, the bad and the ugly.
Whitewashing it won’t deny, diminish or change that fact.
That’s where that phrase came from. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines whitewashing as, “[altering] something in such a way that it favors, features, or caters to white people. To portray the past in a way that increases the prominence, relevance or impact of white people and minimizes or misrepresents those of nonwhites.”
Most of us ultimately learn that ignoring our mistakes by becoming the victim and condemning others for our own inadequacies only leads to repeating them over and over with no chance for growth or improvement.
But, as they say, “To the victor go the spoils.”
The victorious always have the opportunity, and apparent right, to determine what is documented for posterity. The other side doesn’t get a say. In most cases they aren’t even heard. Banished into exile with no hope for reprieve unless their survivors someday speak up.
I’d never heard the term “woke” until recently. I was fascinated to learn it’s defined by the Merriam-Webster Webster dictionary as, “Being aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues, especially issues of race and social justice.”
How is this a bad thing?
How is airing our true history, with all sides represented wrong?
That’s how we evolve as a nation. Understanding why others have a different perception of freedom and justice in order to make the changes that help us improve, grow and embrace everyone equally.
It’s how we see through their eyes and begin to understand their skepticism, anger and fears.
Yes, it can be painful.
Yes, it can be uncomfortable.
Seeing ourselves as anything but perfect usually is. But that’s humanity’s most amazing attribute.
To feel.
To think.
To process information so we can see the truth regardless of how it’s packaged.
To open wounds that have festered far too long.
Then cleansed, they are finally allowed to heal.
That’s the only way we can finally move forward, unshackled by the past.
Pretending it doesn’t exist won’t change the facts or acknowledge the seething emotions bubbling just under the surface.
Without an honest, all-encompassing assessment of history we will always repeat it.
Doomed to make the same mistakes in a never-ending cycle.
After realizing the skewed perspectives of my education, I made it an important part of my life to research and learn all viewpoints and aspects of how history and cultural beliefs are presented.
