Watching all of these videos gave very interesting insight into a lot the issues we are currently seeing unfold in the United States and around the world. It is interesting to see how so many biases we find in our cultures and media can be traced back to economically driven cultural reeducation and passed along as our country was founded under the guise of a place of new promise for all. As a minority going through this training I did enjoy learning about the dark side of the Unites States history that we often gloss over in our schooling. Having more exposure to where so many of our policies and cultural norms surrounding race is a great start of educating people and shifting our culture to become more understanding and inclusive.
Thank you for posting this, Mike. I did not grow up in this country, so I was wondering how much of this was being taught in schools here. I learned so much from these videos and the training in general.
I think I'm feeling more angry than you, Mike. I'm upset that it took until college (an opportunity in itself not available to most) for me to even become aware of how biased my "very good" public school education was. We talked about slavery in my predominantly-white public school system in a historical, distanced way that made no critical exploration of clear racial power dynamics built the foundations of the American economy, and pervasive effects lingering for hundreds of years into the present. And positive highlights of contributions to science and history from non-white Americans were very scarce. The students in my school system learned about Indian "wars" but made no effort to examine the systematic extermination of indigenous peoples and their sovereign nations, whose land was stolen from them. I didn't learn of Japanese internment camps until at least late high school, and I don't recall ever being led to question whether these and other episodes in American history meant that not only was the United States not living up to the stated national ideals that we spent a lot of time touting, but that the country itself was founded on inequality--a hypocrisy. It has been several decades since I was in elementary school (I'm 36), and I sincerely hope there has been a lot of change, but suspect otherwise.
Chiming in to really agree and honor all the points you both made. I so appreciate getting a lot of information that was glossed over in my "very good" public school education as well - and am very much struck with how little my schooling was firmly able to connect the dots from events in history to where we are now. I remember discussions after we'd read a book or see a play and definitely use language of like "how is this still relevant today?" and discuss feelings, which I do think was a good starting point, but at the same time, that's usually where it ended, and what feels so clear upon re-examination and what was not discussed is how intertwined and connected the history of bias and persecution are to the world we are in now, the world we've been in.