Today’s class was largely focused on the inaccuracy of white-washed history textbooks. This is not an unfamiliar concept to me as I have discovered a multitude of truths regarding U.S. history that I was deprived of learning throughout my public school education years since entering college almost five years ago. It’s amazing what harmful lies we were taught and expected to believe to be reality, and I find it insulting as whoever the authors of these textbooks and those who teach them believe we’ll accept this fabricated information and not question anything. They are sadly mistaken, however, as many of us are angry and not willing to shrug off the deceitful “education” we received. We have a right to know our country’s violent, unmistakably racist past that public school students often have to find out about on their own, probably later in life in college where the knowledge disseminated is less likely to be filtered. I didn’t know much about slavery’s harrowing presence in the U.S. until college because the topic and its importance was desperately ignored in the past. I was disturbed upon learning about this claim that blacks fought in the confederacy in order to undermine the argument that slavery was egregious treatment towards dark-skinned humans who were viewed as possessing less value than their lighter-skinned counterparts. Although there may be truth to blacks fighting in the confederacy, the motive behind featuring this in textbooks and inflation of it being involved is sickening but I’m not surprised because this is a country that refuses to see ownership of other humans among other inhumane acts as part of its identity. It’s hard enough for it to be accepted as part of its past.