The not-so-distant past doesn't exist in the minds of children, because their world is full of new mysteries and opportunities arising everyday that learning about history seems like old news.
We learned about the trials and tribulations of visionaries before us as if their crusades took place centuries before our own births.
For instance, I remember being in elementary school and seeing pictures of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. The grainy black and white photos made me believe the end of segregation was ancient history. I always believed that everyone was treated equally in the United States for a long time, because of what Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders did.
The story of slavery and the civil rights movement they taught us throughout our public schooling was almost too simple for elementary schoolers, but we didn't question it.
Here’s the gist of it: Abraham Lincoln ends slavery, black people are still treated poorly, the civil rights movement happens and then everyone is equal.
This story is pretty believable when you live in a state that is almost entirely white, but it wasn't until I grew a little older that I realized the not-so-distant past can sometimes be part of the present.
There is so much more to the American story than what we are taught. Whether its Christopher Columbus slaughtering Native Americans or the history of race relations in the US; we are given a sugarcoated version of history that minimizes the cruelty and oppression faced by many individuals in the “Land of the Free.”
Isn’t that the history we should be learning about as patriotic Americans? The dark and painful side of history that hurts to talk about, but cannot be forgotten? Everybody knows the old saying about history repeating itself when people forget about it, but many people don't question the stories they grew up believing as fact.
Its easy to get caught up in the popular political movements of the moment, and to only see the world through your own lens. Just imagine if every American took a second to look at the world through the lens of a person of a different nationality.
It might change their outlook on what is really the not-so-distant past.
