Understanding the Truth

From the start, children are raised not to lie or change stories but to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. This is hard to do especially if they are not being told the right stories or being lied to. History is a hard subject to teach because you want to tell the right stories but not if it makes your country seem less patriotic or fair, right? Why would we include the awful deeds our country committed? Well because children are being taught lies. Telling false stories to support out famous quote, “America the home of the free and land of the brave.” The children of the United States of America are being misinformed on what really happened in our history.

During the eight years of school before high school one would think the textbooks or teachers would mention or give an idea of what really happened in our history but they don’t. In Re-examining the Revolution, Ray Raphael gives an example, “Not one of the elementary or middle school texts even mentions the genocidal Sullivan campaign, one of the largest military offensives of the war, which burned Iroquois villages and destroyed every orchard and farm in its path to deny food to Indians.” The only reason not to include these descriptions is that maybe the audience is too young? Or it is easier to omit? Or is this too graphically ugly? Maybe they want to protect the innocence of children but should it be at the expense of truth?

One of the big issues with the distortion of history is that plenty of people want to believe these ‘wonderful stories with happy endings.’ Re-examining the Revolution, by Ray Raphael also includes, “Not one current textbook chronicles the first overthrow of the British rule. How strange that the story of any revolution can be told without at least a mention of the initial overthrow of political and military authority. This is the damage of mythmaking-real history gets lost, much of it is very important.” To think that a history book could tell a story with out even mentioning basically the first win. Why? Because it is more important that we don’t talk about when we were defeated but when we triumphed.

People want heroes. Who doesn’t want somebody to look up to? It’s just a matter of who one looks up to and why. On page 36 of Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen claims, “For when textbook authors leave out the warts, the problems, the unfortunate character traits, and the mistaken ideas, they reduce heroes from dramatic men and women to melodramatic stick figures. The inner struggles disappear and they become goody-goody, not merely good.” People want real heroes, not somebody just made up to be one. People do make mistakes and this is a well known fact so why not include the details to what got them to their major victory? It isn’t always that the textbooks are portraying somebody for who they aren’t, it is that they are not including the details that pain everybody. If the stories were told to gain a greater understanding of how it happened not how great the person is, it would be more realistic.

History is an important topic. It is about our past and our ancestors, it is not something to be messed with. When textbooks are written, they should be written with a truthful narrative not a blind one. Mentioning the bad is for the greater good and understanding. These warming tales do not cut it and we need to stop spoon feeding the people of America the wrong information.

Crash.

Watching the film crash was VERY eye opening and I really enjoyed it because it focused on more than just one issue. It didn’t just define the problems between blacks and whites, it focused on many more races then just those. . I definitely had seen some movies like this and so this wasn’t completely news to me. Being somebody who has skipped around from town to town as a child I have had different insights on how people look up to people and how some look down on others. Especially living in El Paso, Texas on the border, anybody who was white seemed to have an attitude that they were the superior race because a lot of the people that were darker skinned had the lesser jobs.

Accessories I have noticed matter a lot on America. If you own nice clothes, nice jewelry or a nice car you feel better then the person who is wearing sweats. That is why owning these things matter so much to us. When I was coming home from Bolivia this summer I was wearing, an alpaca sweater, chacos and my Bolivian pants of many different colors. Walking through that Miami airport I felt like I had many eyes looking down upon me, judging me, all because of my clothes. While I was traveling this summer I learned a saying, “Aunque la mona se viste de ceda, mona se queda.” It means that you are what you are! We are who we are! It isn’t what we own or what we look like. You have just got to be yourself!

Racism is a smart thing to realize and better understand because it has been present for the longest time. It has gotten so much better and we still have so many improvements to make about it. Just being aware of how you look at somebody or how you are judging them in your heads is a start. If we are more conscious of how we treat other people and focus less on being the best of the best we could all work together and live together without feeling superiority towards anybody.

Who are our Heroes?

Christopher Columbus, a Spaniard had a lot of courage or as he would say, ‘cojones’ for traveling the seas and going to great lengths to discover the Americas. Because of this, he is portrayed to be a great hero. A hero is a man of distinguished courage, noble qualities and brave deeds. Every year on October 12th we celebrate the day he came upon an island in the Bahamas… The enormous feats of crossing unchartered waters to arrive to a new continent in Columbus’s case involved a massacre of the land and people. Are these the acts of a hero?

As the sailors on the Nina, La Pinta, y La Santa Maria approached the island the locals, the Arawak Indians greeted them. “The Arawak’s lived in village communes, had a developed agriculture of corn, yams, cassava. They had no iron, but they wore tiny gold ornaments in their ears.” This was not good enough for Columbus. He did not want their crops, he wanted gold. He took some of them as prisoners aboard ship and insisted that they show him where the gold was. On the way back to Spain they took Indians as prisoners but as the weather turned cold they began to die off. This was only the beginning of their disintegration. Columbus presented his conquered lands as a beautiful miracle with ‘great mines of gold’s and other metals.’ Columbus promised the King and Queen “as much gold as they needed and as many slaves as they asked.” He exaggerated greatly and because of this he received seventeen ships to return. “The aim was clear; slaves and gold.” Is this kind of greed and dishonesty part of being a noble crusader?

Columbus ordered the Arawak Indians that were only fourteen years old needed to find an amount of gold in a highly difficult deadline of three months. If they found the specific amount they were given a necklace to hang around their neck. Identifying them with a necklace made it easier for Columbus and his men to rule. If they were seen without a necklace, Columbus or his men would cut off one of their limbs and let them bleed to death. The Indians tried to put together an army but they had no chance against the Spaniards and their tools made of iron. “In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.” Columbus took advantage of his authority and weapons. Heroism and courage are not the slaughtering of people.

These are the acts of a villain yet Columbus is considered a great hero in our history. What if noble acts included an exchange of learning about weapons and agriculture between all cultures? What if distinguished courage meant going out of your way to respect differences? Perhaps as a nation we would be celebrating different accomplishments from other ‘heroes.’