B.G.M. Speaks on Texas Textbooks and Revisionist History

If we as a society are ever going to progress, we must address our past.  The State of Texas is taking a huge stepback in terms of progress by trying to eliminate slavery from the teaching of the Civil War. 

Next year, five million public school students in Texas will begin using social studies textbooks that will not mention the Ku Klux Klan(KKK), Jim Crow laws, or slavery as one of the primary factors in the Civil War.  Instead these books will suggest that slavery was a side issue and that the primary factor in the Civil War was the role of states’ rights vs. a centralized government.

However, historians have pointed out that the states rights debate and the issue of slavery are “inseparable.” Therefore, Texas is presenting a revisionist history that undermines the role and impact of slavery in the Civil War. 

If we do not bring attention to how slavery has impacted our country and society we are going to continue to see history and racism repeat itself. One of the examples that we are currently seeing is the Confederate Flag debate.  For some, people associate the Confederate flag with being a symbol of states rights “triumph” over centralized government, but as the Confederate Flag is also a symbol of racism and the enslavement of black people. Those two causes are inseparable, meaning they cannot be separated.

If we teach young children that slavery is a side issue, we are also teaching children that Black people are a side issue. If we teach young children that slavery is not equal in the eyes of history as other issues related to the Civil War, we are undermining the lives of Harriet Tubman and other abolitionists who gave their lives to end slavery and minimizing their contribution to history.

I am challenging everyone to end the revisionist history rhetoric and teaching and start addressing the central issues of racism and bigotry that have been pervasive throughout U.S. History. That starts by acknowledging slavery, racism, and bigotry in history class. Lets talk about these issues publicly and start the education at an early age. That way the next generation can grow and learn from the mistakes of our past and history can stop repeating itself. In 2015, we shouldn’t feel that it still 1955 or 1855.