Your's Mine, and Our Story

I hear it all the time.  Depends on the holiday or the anniversary.  Well meaning, intelligent people say that our kids don't know history.  They tell their interviewers that students today don't know anything about the Civil War, World War II, or even the Holocaust.
That's hard to believe.  I say this not because as a former history teacher, I've taught these topics, or because I know firsthand that every one of them featured prominently in the curriculum that my department developed and used.  I say this because I'm dumbfounded how any student with a U.S. or World History course could avoid such huge content areas.
So, maybe the subjects came up in some classrooms but there was no retention of knowledge.  That's still hard to believe, given this culture's fascination with war, action films, and historical dramas.
In my Forty plus years in and out of classrooms I've seen many lessons focused on the history of the Holocaust.  The graphic novel Maus, by Art Spigelman, is extremely popular and quite engaging for many students disenchanted with reading textbooks.  Yet, the narrative persists, "Kids no nothing of major historical themes and events."
Not true.  But then I get that it's easy to generalize about a generation when one has witnessed or heard an adolescent who is unclear about something most people are familiar with.  Because there are people who know very little about their own history.  So what's behind that?
My guess is that they've been betrayed about the truth by a narrative designed to blurr and downplay certain realities and conditions.
One effect of that might be an inability to understand or carve out an opinion on some crucial subjects.  Take reparations, for example.  The subject of compensating African-Americans for the evils of slavery has long been discussed.  Nothing has ever come to fruition.  Some suggest that until a formalized form of reconciliation takes place, this country will never progress in the area of racial and social justice.  The U.S. is sadly deficient.  Just look at the example that Bishop Tutu's  reconciliation work post apartheid provides  Now a case can be made about distributing money to the descendants of those held in bondage.  But reparations needn't be monetary.  In fact, admission and tuition for higher education would go a long way to help.  Since ex-slaves never had a chance at land ownership, it figures that any meaningful part of a solution should include assistance in property ownership.
So, who would argue against this? I submit that only those who know very little about "the peculiar institution" would try.

There are various ways that the evils and cruelty of American slavery has been downplayed.  One history text even goes so far as to label plantation slaves as "workers."  Only a trip to a museum might convince some that the term "worker" is dubious, at best.
The artifacts and scarce photos from the enslavement of African Americans will tell a story that can be seen today.  Look at the chains and bizarre devices used to shackle the "workers."  See the pictures of people with their limbs hacked off so that they can't run.  If that's too much maybe just listen to the music produced from these realities.  It's no accident that the blues  was planted in this rich earth.