Nobody Can Deny That History Is Racist, So Why Do We Teach It In Schools?

Today, Oklahoma’s state legislature is under fire after the introduction House Bill 1380, a piece of legislation that would effectively dismantle AP U.S. History courses by withdrawing state funding. A common criticism of the measure is that it’s an indirect (but effective) effort to whitewash America’s history and remove, as Rep. Dan Fischer puts it, “what’s bad about America.”

Fisher, the author of HB 1380, is also a member of the ominously titled Black Robe Society, which is most certainly an evil group of white men who wear an even spookier version of the Klan outfit when they meet up to stop people from hating America.

While it is critically important to prevent Republicans, and especially white Christian Republicans, from having any kind of say whatsoever in the public education of America’s children, you have to admit, Representative Fisher and his cohort of racist Darth Vaders kind of have a point.

I mean personally, as a liberal, I don’t know why we’re fighting their position. There is a lot of stuff in history that makes America look bad. Mainly because it’s all a bunch of racist shit that we did.

As Louis CK famously stated in his joke about time travel, there’s literally no reason for black people to ever use a time machine. No matter how far or how short of a distance they travel backwards in time, it’s just going to be worse for them than it is now. The joke is funny when it’s not written out and explained by a shitty blogger, but quoting it is a great tool for developing a sophistic argument. Louis CK has been approved as Universally Funny by consensus, therefore he is not only right but right in the best, most succinct way possible, and I’ll defer my argumentation to his time travel bit.

The point is, History, meaning everything that has come before – all of humanity’s crimes and circumstances, folded up and conceptualized as a thing separate from ourselves (and therefore subject to entirely objective criticism) – is a racist thing. We, meaning us right here in the present, are either not racist or working on it. We are good, but History is bad. History is racist.

And that’s all of History. Even the recent past. This very second right now is less racist than 15 seconds ago. Scroll back to the first paragraph – did I use the n-word in there? I might have, who knows? It was a different time back then. I didn’t know any better. That’s the best we can offer for history – a flaccid apology, like you would excuse an elderly grandmother for saying “coloreds” in public with a shoulder shrug and a grimace. Searching the offended party for some kind of understanding. Look, you say with your eyes, she’s old. She’ll be dead soon. Like grandma, it’s too late to make History any better. History is racist.

And just like you wouldn’t want Grandma’s Shitty Opinions taught in schools, you shouldn’t want History being taught either. Why would you want children learning about History? You wouldn’t teach a class on a besotted Mel Gibson rant about the Jews, why would you teach a class on literally anything that has ever happened in American History? Why expend critical thought on an academic discipline that is synonymous with racism, when instead children could be fucking loving science? History is bad folks. We need to get rid of it.

I’m not calling for a book burning here, I’m pretty sure we can just recycle them, but just as much as I don’t want prayer in schools, I don’t want racism in there either, and the only way to eliminate that is by removing History entirely.