Letter to the editor: Teaching history will not divide us

Once again, one must point out that critical race theory is not being taught in any public school in the United States. Nor was it ever intended to be. The real attack is on the normal process of updating American history, something which every country engages in.

Beginning in the 1960s, historians began studying those who had been left out of our history: African Americans, immigrants, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans, workers and women, among others.

Was this really needed? Ask your kids what they know about unions. Or the Homestead Strike. Ask them when women finally won the right to vote. Ask them who Sitting Bull was or who built the Union Pacific railroad. Ask them about the contributions made to our country by immigrants (their grandparents and great-grandparents).

These history deniers claim they want to protect our children from feeling guilty about the horrors of slavery. No educator with any sense would teach that subject to make students feel guilty. The real lesson of the history of slavery is quite different: It is what happens when one group of people is given absolute power over another group.

And that is not strictly a white problem. It will happen on a slave plantation, Auschwitz, the Soviet gulag or, for that matter, the Westmoreland County Jail. Kids should learn that.

It is easy to claim that we have no social divisions by leaving people out of our history. But the people left out know better. Any honest account of our history will not divide people. Only politicians can do that.

Robert Supansic

McKeesport