Politesse
Lux Aeterna
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2018
- Messages
- 17,948
- Location
- Tauhalamme/Laquisimas
- Gender
- nonbinary
- Basic Beliefs
- Jedi Wayseeker
I would hesitate to characterize all my countrymen with the same brush on this. Education varies a lot by state, and with it, so does willingness to face the past. Not many Americans are as comfortable acknowledging our internments, captivities, and mass murders as are most Germans, though, that's for sure. Denialism reaches some absurd heights, as you see readily in this thread, and the alt-right movement has supplied a lot of people with false narratives to pull out when they feel guilty or threatened. All Californians are supposed to learn in school about the state's complicated history with enslavement, but you see the result of that. Teachers will refuse to teach what they themselves would rather not know...
In the whole, I have found that both Aussies and Americans have a tendency to overestimate their knowledge of the past. Like, they know "very bad things happened in history", but are often rather vague on the details, especially where their local situation is concerned.