Confronting America’s racist history—and present—is the key to making healthy progress 

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I remember only a few times when I felt real anger toward one of my children. Our family enjoyed a certain balance and general civility that kept our interpersonal relationships on a relatively even keel. While I expressed frequent irritation about lights left on, a garage door that someone had failed to close, a bicycle left to rust in the nightly sprinkling cycle, or perfectly good food—neither eaten nor preserved—carelessly left to spoil, I think there was only one time when a child gave me a reason to feel livid outrage.

We had been to church, and we were about half a mile from our home. I can’t even remember what we were talking about, but my oldest daughter—maybe 15 at the time—responded angrily to something I said: “You’re a male chauvinist pig!”

A “pig!” No one had ever called me that before. I was so angry, I pulled the car to the side of the lane that led home, told her to get out and that she could walk home.

Sadly, when she arrived, there was a verbal altercation. Afterwards, I was able to see that there was at least some truth in what she’d said. Later, she and I would talk about it, and, from that discussion, we were both better able to understand why it was that I was a MCP and how and why she had been, perhaps justifiably, both disrespectful and rude.

Even better, over a period of time, I was able to cultivate healthier attitudes about my role and rights as the once-unchallenged, presumed head of the house.

It works for people. It's not really so different for a nation. While it always feels great to bask in our accomplishments, the key to recognizing and remediating our bad behaviors of the past must focus on a healthy dose of introspection.

Instead, many of America’s leaders seek to hide its mistakes and bury its past, choosing to protect our school kids from the facts of our history. The opposition to critical race theory (CRT) is very wrong. School kids have a right to know how the sins of racial prejudice have affected the development, laws, atrocities and achievements of our society.

While some of America’s most visible politicians are fighting against critical race theory in our schools, it is not just about history. It’s about the present, and racism is still responsible for discrimination, unremedied violence and even election abuses in our country today. Our children aren’t the ones responsible, but they need to understand the reality.

Sadly, CRT is not just about Black Americans. We should all cringe understanding that our land—the present-day United States of America—was once a lovely wilderness, inhabited by indigenous peoples who believed both culturally and religiously that the land belonged to no one and that its tribes—scattered throughout the mountains, valleys, plains and along its seacoasts—would be timeless.

Despite the conflicts that had often risen between the New World’s competing tribes, there was a general philosophy that it was up to every person to maintain a loving, reverent stewardship over the world’s resources. The world, along with everything in it, was believed to have an essence that went beyond physical existence.

But the arrival of white, European settlers was a tragic awakening. Like the conquerors of every land and region of our world, the “invaders” took little time in claiming the land for their own. Following the pattern that has accompanied all hostile colonization of vulnerable populations, the American Indians found themselves first decimated by disease, murder and dispersal, and then on the hit-list for systematic genocide.

No Indian had ever heard the term, “manifest destiny,” which suggested that God had given the white man the right to take the land, essentially enslave the locals and rule using discriminatory practices and laws.

The earliest accounts of the white invasion of North America included charming stories about how the settlers had celebrated a first Thanksgiving with the native inhabitants, but the real story is not nearly as benign. Not surprisingly, the Indigenous people felt more than a little hostility to the uninvited guests. Skirmishes arose, settlers and Indians died, and future U.S. leadership became convinced that the natives and white Europeans could not, no matter the original la-la-land fantasy, live in a peaceful, coexistent state.

White settlers were not the good guys. They could not, nor ever tried to, abandon the smug entitlement of white superiority and irrepressible greed.

Some of the Indigenous people learned the white man’s way and, at least for a while, those who had survived the European diseases and military clearances found ways to coexist. In their changed world certain tribes, like the Cherokees, had their share of individual successes. Their adaptability made some of them insanely wealthy. They mined gold discovered on their land, struck oil and lived like kings, raised plantations of profitable crops and wore the latest finery so popular with their pale-faced neighbors.

White greed ended it all. In the Southeast, the whites became jealous and petitioned their lawmakers to find ways to eliminate the dark people they considered unworthy of such success. Laws were passed prohibiting Indians from mining enterprises. It was made illegal for an Indian to testify against a white man in a court of law and, in the most extreme cases, local governments provided rewards for the severed ears or other evidence of a slain native.

Sadly, this is just one of several essential histories that can help our young to understand how our country was founded, the impediments to its progress and growth, the excesses that were employed in establishing a permanent, formidable dominance and the unimaginable suffering of those who were displaced by a white population that believed itself to be the superior-elect of a God who had little consideration for fairness and decency.

It’s time to allow our young the understanding that Americans aren’t perfect, that they’ve made plenty of collective mistakes—and continue to do so—and that their own awareness of a realistic and unsanitized history is the only key to change.

Provide them with the truth, and the young of today will find the solutions to the shames of our present and past.

The author is a retired novelist, columnist and former Vietnam-era Army assistant public information officer. He resides in Riverton with his wife, Carol, and the beloved ashes of their mongrel dog. comments@cityweekly.net