Ross: Censoring our history of racism won’t make it go away

According to a White House memo, the president wants to cancel what he’s called “divisive” training sessions on race, including those where white employees are required to say they “benefit from racism.”

I admit, that would make anyone feel pretty awkward.

But these sessions don’t stop there – they also urge you read more deeply about civil rights history. And when you start reading quotes from 150 years ago, it really gets awkward:

“Everybody was a white supremacist so they said exactly what they thought and exactly what they meant,” said Jeffrey Robinson with the ACLU.

I did a podcast last year with Robinson, who says it’s time to teach about documents like Texas’ Declaration of Secession. I’d read it to you, but it’s pretty offensive. Just Google the phrase “established exclusively by the white race” and you can read it yourself.

“I understand why many white Americans are saying ‘the Civil War ended 154 years ago, why are you still complaining about it?'” Robinson said. “I understand that because based on the history we’ve been taught, that’s a perfectly legitimate question.”

It was also just last year that Texas schools started teaching slavery’s true role as the main cause for the Civil War.

So, maybe these awkward training sessions work, maybe they don’t. But the bigger problem here is that major chunks of American history have been censored from our textbooks. And censoring something doesn’t make it go away.

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