Tuesday, March 28, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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In a campaign ad, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis stands in front of a group of all white youths with a sign in front of him that reads "Freedom From Indoctrination," promoting his war against the teaching of history.
I’m a retired attorney and as a history major through my junior year at UNLV, I was never taught about the 1921 Tulsa race massacre or the extent of the vile treatment of Japanese Americans in America during World War II. Hundreds of African Americans were killed by white Americans right outside of Tulsa and they burned more than 1,250 homes resulting in $1.8 million ($27 million in today’s dollars) in property claims simply to erase Black success in the Black community of Greenwood.
So who’s indoctrinating who? Indoctrination is the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically (without consideration whether something is right or wrong).
History is history and should not be whitewashed by anyone. To do so is to mislead, misguide, obfuscate and conceal. B.R. Ambedhar, an Indian jurist and social reformer who served as a Law and Justice minister in India, said, "A historian ought to be exact, sincere and impartial ... and faithful to the truth, which is the mother of history ... the witness of the past, the director of the future."
