America’s propaganda campaign has distorted America’s history to the point where it is unrecognizable when it is compared to the truth. When two courageous women, Kim Williams Crenshaw and Nicole Hannah Jones shared Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project, they were attacked for telling the truth as if they were enemies of the state.
When I began to learn about America’s history, I was taught that in the autumn of 1620, a group of Christians left England because they were being prosecuted for their faith. These Christians took a two-month trip on the Mayflower with the intent on establishing a perfect society where all people were free to worship as they wished. Some of the Mayflower’s passengers had other motives for leaving England. Those motives included but were not limited to, the poor, the unemployed, insolvent debtors, vagrants, and criminals fleeing justice. The freedom of religion would become one of the new nation’s founding principles and be included in the first amendment of the new nation’s constitution.
In the late 1800s, this new nation adopted a code of Indian Offenses to regulate the conduct of the Indians on reservations. This code prohibited the practice of traditional Indian religions and punished those practicing by withholding rations, imprisonment, and whipping. The new nation created a system of Indian boarding schools that forced the Indian children to attend Christian church services. This new nation was enforcing the same religious prohibitions that made them leave England.
The same propaganda campaign led me to believe America’s Civil War was the only war America fought where slavery was an issue. In the late 1700s, slavery existed on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The 1772 court case, in London, of Somerset v Stewart found that slavery was not compatible with English Common law. This case, effectively, dismissed the legitimacy of slavery on the British mainland and the king banned slavery in all British territories and colonies. This case ended slavery in England, and the colonies had a serious problem with ending slavery. According to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World between 1526 and 1886. So what would America do with millions of slaves that were making it millions of dollars? Although my teachers taught me the tax on tea was a major cause of the Revolutionary War, I have a hard time believing slavery wasn’t more important to the colonies.
The Mexican-American War occurred between 1846 and 1848, yet its roots can be traced to 1821 when Mexico gained its independence from Spain. At this time, Mexico invited Americans to settle in its Northern Territory on the condition that these settlers renounce slavery because slavery was against Mexican law. However, many of these settlers owned slaves and hoped eventually to secede from Mexico. In 1836 that is exactly what they did to form the Republic of Texas. In the decade that followed, Texas remained an independent republic. At the same time, there was a growing sense among Americans that the United States had a “manifest destiny” from God to extend its territory to the Pacific Ocean. Many justified this expansion by arguing that it would bring freedom and enlightenment to the Native Americans now living in these areas.
America’s propaganda campaign also led me to believe the Nazi government in Germany was the evilest government imaginable. There is no doubt that the 12 years the Nazis controlled Germany, they did things to the Jewish people that were unconscionable. In America, the Native Americans were subjected to genocide, and the African Americans were subjected to genocide and slavery for over 250 years. I am not saying one was worse, but one lasted over 200 years longer than the other.
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