Lies My Teacher Told Me: What American History Textbooks Got Wrong

 I'm writing this from my computer originally but we'll see if that's a mistake or not because my computer is not friends with my wifi currently. 

I've heard the facts, the stories, the myths and rumors about our American Education System. The word that is usually followed is "trash". Quite a bit of it is. I knew it was flawed and very likely outdated, I knew good ol' George owned Slaves, I knew Columbus didn't actually discover shit - or at least anything good. And I knew what we did to the Native Americas. I also listen to Baliey's Dark History pretty frequently. I also know we're still illegally occupying Hawaii. My condolences to y'all. I hope y'all get your freedom back. Just enough to know on the surface we're trash. 

What I didn't quite get was just how deep it was. I thought this book would be the topics above and some fact here and there, I figured it would talk like Dark History does. This guy read through twelve U.S history textbooks so his words do come from legitimate knowledge. I knew we prolly did re-write history quite a few times but I didn't know the nitty gritty details. This book gave me just that. One fact which was truly shocking was that the U.S Military employed the Mafia to take out the leader of Cuba at one point. That fact will forever be with me. Columbus didn't just torture and almost wipe out the Native Americans, he's the reason slavery entered the U.S. He was the one to introduce shipping people from oversees. Yeah, it got that deep. Andrew Jackson was actually a really shitty person. It was another topic this book brought up. Textbooks like to say everything good about our founding fathers and nothing of the bad. Herofication. Right before our very eyes. Or, if we had to do something extremely bad, it was because "it was for the right reasons." I don't trust the textbooks anymore. There's a system for why, when people try to get the truth out, it's brought to some kind of board and if that board is say...in a red area, it won't go through. Shocker, right?

I had no idea just how much of our culture was stolen. Music? Stolen. Dances? Stolen. Food? Definitely stolen. We just took everything, put it one big pot and labeled it American Culture. Everything we have, came from something else. We were vicious. We came to be from not only stolen land, but also heritage, and likely everything we love. So, are we really learning about other people's culture, or just making them put on a show purely for entertainment? It really became that deep for me.

As I went through the chapters, I increasingly became more worried. Especially learning about how the KKK was almost all government people. I remember hearing a conspiracy theory about how Lincoln was shot from the inside. Like it was an inside job. After listening to this book, I completely agree with it. People were incredibly sneaky about killing African-American people. I only say that because white it was loudly done, it could never be identified officially. It went deeper than just segregation. America is really just a place of lies, bloodshed and deceit.

I always questioned it, don't get me wrong but after reading this book, I don't think I have ANY more pride about being from this heinous country. I talked about this will my Canadian friend just the other day about it, and she agreed with me and stated it's why visitors always put the Canadian flag on their stuff because people view their country very differently. I'm not sure if she was speaking about her country or ours. Either way she's right. It almost makes me ashamed, so much so, I think it's made me stop celebrating certain holidays. 

Granted, no group is without its' bloodshed. During the days of sailing and exploring, there were a lot of that. It wasn't just us. Especially if we're talking religious. Every group had their bloodshed. 

I hate to think I'm here currently because of how the past came to be. I genuinely can't imagine waving our country's flag around, knowing the evil we did to achieve it. This book brought almost all of that to light. 

The only thing he didn't quite touch as deeply is what it's like being in a low income household and seeing the privilege of people above the class. How it affects the education system. He did acknowledge not everyone had the same opportunities. Being poor or broke really does affect everyone on a deeper level. The system makes being broke expensive with no way out at times. it punishes us for being low income. And people in turn, punish those who are homeless without realizing just how it all connects together. Because in order to find a job, you need an interview. In order to have an interview, you need good clothes. In order to get that interview, you need an address. Homeless people don't always have that. Not to mention wifi - but oh, there's places that have wifi? Not if we condemn every single homeless person that dares to walk through an establishment. Not if we turn down basic bathrooms to the public so they can at least look presentable. Don't even get me started on hostile architecture. We don't just hate homeless people in society, we hate everyone.

And doesn't that go great with the history of this book? So, I ask myself is that our culture? Is hating everyone? People that use that forsaken statement of "Let's make America great again!" What do you mean by again? When women didn't have the right to vote? When we got to decide who should have basic human rights? Do you mean torturing people in the hopes of their culture being erased? If we didn't have those people, there would be no us. There would be nothing here. What makes us patriotic except for just hating on others? Loving a country that did all this? We were literally born from hate. 

That's what this book made me realize. American history either lies or doesn't tell you all the facts. And there's almost no escaping that any time soon because there are people that don't want us to know the facts. Does that make me Anti-American?

I want to hope we can turn this around by appreciating the culture of everyone WITHOUT condemning them for even having one. I want us to raise awareness to these issues, like Hawaii I just mentioned. I want us to gain more knowledge from other places besides America. Native American girls are being kidnapped and people also know nothing about this. If we do our due diligence and raise these kinds of issues, demand they be shown in schools, maybe we can truly be a country with a welcoming country full of diversity, instead of it being forced because we stole and killed for it. 

Again, I'm not trying to sway anyone. Just that this Book brought a lot of issues to light and it goes deeper than my original thinking did. 

Yes, it did send me into a crisis lol.

And this blog lives to see another day...

09/08/2026 1313