Throughout United States history people are continuing to believe things that are not true. Not only are they not true, but they are disgusting and horrible. People who believe in stereotypes which are attitudes and beliefs, usually they are prejudiced which are ill feelings towards people. Which is also related to discrimination which is behaviors against people. These stereotypes are not true, they are racist. In the readings we learned that people who joke about stereotypes are more likely to continue these feelings and thoughts by keeping them alive in society. Categorizing people based on race, gender identity, sexuality and more is disgusting. Something that the United States needs to change that can help in the fight versus racism is changing the school systems and the social studies programs and curriculums to teach the actual truth about what happened in this country and how horrible it really was. After reading articles for this class I have heard some of the truth about what happened through real stories that I never learned in high school or my time before this class. It was said in one of the readings that social studies in the United States is a B tier subject and most textbooks would get a failing grade since they have very little of the true information. Something else I learned is that Abe Lincoln was racist, and he is known as a big American hero – if more people knew this then they would think differently about United States history and its racist foundation. If the United States wants to take a step in the right direction we need to educate our students and people better. In addition if someone hears something racist and even if they do not believe it, they need to stand up and fight against it, because not being racist is not enough, one needs to stand against racism. What can our school systems be doing better to teach the truth about United States history?
I think one thing the U.S. should emphasize in its teachings is that the U.S. is not all of America. I know this seems small but it would make a big difference. When you say America, people only think about the U.S. America is the continent. I think this would allow students from a younger age to stop centralizing the U.S. because by defining America as the U.S. we’ve created this othering of Latin American people who are also American. The U.S. has created a monopoly on the term America, and by including the full history of the Americas we could combat this monopoly and hopefully better educate people in the U.S. about all of American history.
We’re the only country that uses the word America in our name. It’s kind of hard to de-emphasize that in an honest way.