The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture is the only museum in the United States devoted to the African American Experience, and it is under attack.  America has always tried to hide the many scars its policies have left on human history, and Slavery is just one of them. This is not new. Since 2021, over 40 states have proposed or passed laws to restrict how race, slavery, and systemic racism can be taught in our schools. They have called pretty much any teaching of Black history or the Black experience in America as teaching Critical Race Theory. Local school systems have banned books about slavery and the Black voice to silence the truth. In Florida, where I live, the state has outlawed the teaching of anything critical about race relations in America. One could say that the State of Florida has been whitewashing American History. Now the Trump Administration wants the Smithsonian to do the same.

The Black experience actually starts not in America, but in Africa. It begins with the “Capture Raids,” where they were taken against their will to be transported to the Americas. During the raids, some estimates suggest that millions died during the violent raids and the forced marches to the ships that would take them to America. The trip to America was called the Middle Passage. About 12.5 million were loaded into the cavities of these slave ships to be forcibly sold in the Americas. Around 1.8 million died during the Middle Passage alone, mostly because of the unsanitary conditions that they had to endure. Once in America, they had a very high mortality rate from overwork, starvation, and disease. Slaves were property and treated less than human. They had no legal protection, so they could easily be disposed of after they were all used up or became too unruly. We all remember Kristi Noem writing about how she had a dog that wouldn’t hunt, so she shot it. That was what it was like for many slaves. Slaves were treated like Kristi Noem treated dogs that wouldn’t hunt and were just shot and buried in an unmarked grave. Slavery was one of the many events that could be called genocide by this country. Could that be why White America works so hard to censor the truth about slavery? Is that the reason why White America seems to treat other people as inferior?

Nazi Germany was responsible for the killing of many Jews and other minorities during the 1930s and 1940s. There is the Holocaust  Museum in Washington, where the truth of that time in history hits you right in the face. It was very disturbing to me when I toured it, which is the effect that I think the museum wants. I wonder if White America wants to censor that, too, because it will make people uncomfortable like it did me. How did Germany deal with the aftermath of the Holocaust? They, as a country, have taken full responsibility for what happened and are committed to the remembrance and responsibility. Books about the Holocaust are not banned because they may make some people uncomfortable. Holocaust education is one of the core requirements in the German school curriculum.  Part of the mandatory curriculum is: 1. The rise of the Nazi Party and its Ideology,  2. The persecution and systematic murder of six million Jews, 3. The broader context of World War II and human rights violations. The Teachers use a mix of approaches so the students understand what happened. Historical documents and survivor testimonies have been used. They visit the death camps like Dachau and Auschwitz. They may even use role-play to explore the moral choices and the civic responsibilities.

What they are trying to accomplish in the German schools isn’t just to teach facts but also to expand critical thinking, empathy, and historical awareness. They may discuss how so many ordinary people became so complacent. They will show the dangers of propaganda and authoritarianism. They will also learn how the lessons transform into today's modern issues like racism and antisemitism. Holocaust Education leaves a lasting impression. Does it make the German people hate Germany after confronting their past? I have not read that. From what I read, it is about people who are proud that they have confronted their past and are working hard so that it never happens again.

The United States has committed its own fair share of atrocities. What I see as the difference between Germany and the United States is that we ignore our atrocities because they just interfere with what we consider is American exceptionalism. How can a country be exceptional if it acknowledges all of its sins? I will say that how can we be exceptional if we don’t, because we will continue to keep repeating those sins? Slavery is one of those sins, and people should be uncomfortable about it. Instead, we have people who want to teach “Patriotic Education” that pushes national pride and ignores the historical accountability, instead of facing it head-on like Germany did. The goal is not to teach the truth but to recast history to avoid the discomfort of race, systematic inequality, and White supremacy. All this accomplishes is the whitewashing of American history and undermines the education that has turned Germany into the proud country that it is now. The whitewashing of our education just hides the truths with lies, and a liar is not exceptional.

The suppression of the truth in our education has just widened the division that is growing in America. I fear it will lead to us committing the sins of the past because we are not being taught about those past sins. When I was in school, I was taught how the Civil War ended slavery in America, but we were really not taught the horrors of slavery. We were also not taught that our expansion westward, our Manifest Destiny, led directly to the genocide of our Native American population. If you listen to how Trump talks about how he will just take Greenland, and Canada shows he has not learned a thing about the death and destruction that we are responsible for. We still think that our exceptionalism justifies the means.

America and its version of capitalism are creating great poverty in this nation that is growing.  I was once at dinner at a friend's house, and he made the point rather loudly that “Billionaires Own Us”. In a way, he is right. Poverty entraps people. Have our benefits paid by our employers entrap us. Policies that entrap people are only for the benefit of the rich. More and more of us are becoming serfs to the rich and powerful, which does not enhance our freedoms. Slavery today may look different from what it did 200 years ago, but when you are stuck at dead ends and our creativity is suppressed, that can be considered slavery. When we are taught lies that benefit the wealthy, we are just being taught propaganda instead of the truth. All of this is to make us slaves to a system that doesn’t lift people up but suppresses them for the benefit of those Billionaires.