TFA means well, but it's just disingenuous to end it at the 13th Amendment. Even setting aside the glaring loopholes in the 13th Amendment, the story of slavery doesn't end when the slavery does.
A generation of slaves continued to live in the US, surrounded by their former slave-owners. You have to tell the story of what happened to them.
Nor does it end when that generation died. Slavery remained a huge part of the American experience, including an enormous effort to pretend it was never so bad.
As written, we give students the impression that all wrongs were righted and everything was fine. This is pervasive in the way we teach American history: "We're great, and even when we're not so great, we eventually right all the wrongs". That's just not true, and it discourages critical thinking of who we are now.
A generation of slaves continued to live in the US, surrounded by their former slave-owners. You have to tell the story of what happened to them.
Nor does it end when that generation died. Slavery remained a huge part of the American experience, including an enormous effort to pretend it was never so bad.
As written, we give students the impression that all wrongs were righted and everything was fine. This is pervasive in the way we teach American history: "We're great, and even when we're not so great, we eventually right all the wrongs". That's just not true, and it discourages critical thinking of who we are now.
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