When I was set to go to Germany for an exchange trip as a ninth grader, one of the first things my German teacher told me was that Germans are much more open about their history, specifically the Holocaust. Unlike Americans, she said Germans were willing to discuss difficult topics.
My experience reflected that. Whether it was in museums or conversations with my exchange partner, no one shied away from their history. Even when I read “Maus” that year in English, my exchange partner didn’t seem meek or chastened. Instead, he insisted on reading the chapters with me. While Germany definitely still has a long way to go in terms of continuing to acknowledge their history, the culture felt palpably more open and accepting than the United States.
Yet with the future of Venezuela uncertain after a regime change forced by the United States, now more than ever we should acknowledge our past, our present and think about how this will shape our future. There’s power in acknowledging the truth, and as U.S. citizens, it’s time to acknowledge that the United States was and remains a colonial power.
With the Spanish-American War ending in 1898, the United States took the Philippines and ruled it during U.S. “insular” rule. Now, the country still holds the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa and other territories, which are still only represented through nonvoting representatives to Congress, despite having been a part of the United States for more than 125 years.
A lot of U.S. schools ignore this hard history. This has been my experience as a student at Lab, where this history of colonialism was either glossed over or teachers failed to mention regions such as Guam or the Philippines. As a U.S. citizen, it’s frightening to me that we are not being taught a comprehensive and critical analysis of our own history, and challenging the conventional notion that the United States is a bastion of liberty, freedom and anti-colonialism.
As both a ninth grader and a junior, I was confronted with the quote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” by the Spanish philosopher George Santayana, painted on a classroom wall. With the actions President Donald Trump recently took in Venezuela, and with his threats toward Greenland, this quote has begun to assume a greater meaning to me.
It’s time to take steps to educate ourselves, both inside school and out, on U.S. colonial history and be open to what that entails. As a school, we can begin to require more education in these regions during middle school U.S. history. As a country, we can begin the process of bridging the gaps between the Pacific and Caribbean regions and the United States by offering them increased representation and begin including their colonial history in nationwide curriculums. The more we are taught to acknowledge colonialism, the more we will be able to separate ourselves from its systemic effects.
