Katherine Kersten's July 12 Commentary ("What better time to review U.S. History?") caught my attention in part because of my shared concern for the deficit of historical knowledge among today's youth. She expressed concern that young college students don't know important details of American history such as the Gettysburg Address and Revolutionary War. Kersten further bemoaned the prevalence of required courses in diversity awareness and lack of required courses in American history. I believe she is missing a key point.
Knowledge of our revolutionary roots and founding fathers are indeed important, but diversity ought not to be so quickly dismissed. As a sturdy and prosperous nation, we have done plenty of celebrating of our triumphs. We need now to examine the history of the weakest among us.
Every American should know of our nation's history of exploitation, imperialism, needless violence and oppression. Americans, it can be hoped, know of our history of slavery. But does every American know of the painful ramifications that persist today? Does every American know how the missed opportunities to accumulate savings perpetuate the poverty of today? How FDR's New Deal policies were deliberately aimed to aid white Americans over black Americans?
Perhaps if they did, our country's racial and economic policies would be different. Most of us acknowledge that Native Americans have suffered at the hands of our forefathers. How many recognize the heritage of poverty and illiteracy rooted in those events? Many Americans are clueless as to the year of women's suffrage -- 1920 -- and are equally ignorant as to how a perpetuating history of objectification keeps young women starving themselves to death.
Most Americans agree that we should have stayed out of Vietnam, but how many know of the U.S. military brothels, where young Vietnamese girls earned two dollars a trick? Or the number of rapes committed by U.S. troops in Korea?
Excuse my generation, please, if we don't place our hands over our hearts on July 4th and indulge in an orgy of patriotism. Some of us know of Jefferson's illegitimate children with slaves, and recognize the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A few of us even know of the starvation of thousands of children daily under U.N./U.S. economic sanctions on Iraq. And not a few of us recognize the dangers of nationalism, with its inherent undertone of superiority and history of fascism.
We need to learn of historical heroes like nurse Lillian Wald, angel of the Lower East Side, and the efforts of Sojourner Truth and Cesar Chavez. We need to do more than smile at the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s crusade against segregation; we need to know of his radical protest statement, "I am a man," and his crusade for the rights of impoverished and abused sanitation workers. We need to do more than love this nation, exemplified through picnics and fireworks. We need to love the potential of this nation and all it could become, as demonstrated through concern for the poor, the hungry, the illiterate, the immigrant and refugee, the desperately lonely elderly, the addicted and dying.
Perhaps then "all men are created equal" will not ring hollow and hypocritical, but full of hope and promise.
Lila Savage, St. Louis Park. College student.
© Copyright 2000 Star Tribune
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