American racism is dangerous. Why? Eugenics, for one, the fake science of racial purity. It spread across America as a public health policy. Adopted as fact, it leads to numerous human rights abuses and offers inspiration to Nazism’s “final solution.”
We have white washed our history – recasting racist leaders like Robert E. Lee as heroes when history shows him as a true villain. The Atlantic recently pointed this out.
Recasting history, putting out bogus ideas and lies simply casts shadows in plain sight. In these shadows hatred, ignorance and falsehoods can flourish.
We hold our nation up as shining tower, a city on hill – and for years we have strived for that image.
Yet, we have failed to teach history, we have failed to erase lies reinvented as fact and marketed falsehoods in our textbooks. The result has been generations being disenfranchised from our past, and uncomfortable truths being forgotten. James Loewen has pointed that out in the most direct of ways.
Allowing racism to creep in the mainstream is dangerous to our democracy, our world and our future. We need to come to terms with the fact that the best defense for our future is not spending billions on missiles and guns, but investing in education, media literacy for the next generation, and teaching the real past. That way the next time some idiot tries to glorify a monster in our past, our reaction will not be violence, but laughter.