Professor says modern history curriculum misrepresents colonialism, slave trade

A professor and author who wrote a book debunking much of how American history is taught in classrooms across the country told Fox News Digital that today’s curriculum deliberately presents Western culture in a negative light.

Wilfred Reilly is the author of “Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me” and an associate professor of political science at Kentucky State University. He said his book, “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong,” was a response to Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History” series and other left-wing curricula such as the 1619 Project.

“There are all these books that are actually trying to do two things,” Reilly said. “Someone [to] “He presents Western culture as possibly the worst culture in the history of the world, and the other takes a sneaky approach to it by saying ‘and I bet you didn’t know these truths, these hidden truths they didn’t tell you in school.'”

Reilly takes issue with what he sees as often oversimplified and decontextualized curricula on colonialism and slavery, among other topics.

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“So I actually responded to what we learned by looking at these guys, like the 1619 curriculum, and focusing on what they got wrong from the left,” Reilly said.

On the subject of slavery, Reilly noted that modern educators teach only a small part of the story.

“What we teach is to focus on the second part of the Atlantic slave trade, which is one of about 20 global slave trades,” he said. “And the reason we teach this is because it gives the pedagogue, the professor, or the teacher a chance to counter the modern oppression of Black people. That’s it. That’s why it’s the focus.”

Conservatives and critical historians have generally argued that the 1619 Project distorts the true history of the United States through many of Nikole Hannah-Jones’s claims, but mainstream media have largely ignored negative feedback. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

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According to Reilly, Native American history also lacks critical context.

“I think the current presentation of Native Americans would be that they were a peaceful, Gaia-worshiping people who were purposely exterminated by Europeans, and that is sorely wrong,” Reilly said.

“The natives were a people with their own motivations, incentives and drives, and often competed very successfully with the Europeans,” he continued. “They were also some of the greatest warriors in history, especially the Plains Indians, who were on par with the Mongols. The Indian Wars lasted 400 years. Today, 2% of the United States is native. I mean, this portrayal is completely factual.”.“

Colonialism is not unique to the United States, either, he said.

Blackfoot Native Americans dressed in ceremonial traditional dress on an annual stamp issue in Browning, Montana, around 1930. (Herbert C. Lanks/FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images)

“Most countries have engaged in international wars and seized territory from time to time,” he said. “This wasn’t just something White countries did.”

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According to Reilly, like the Mongol and Persian Empires, White Europeans conquered lands, and this was perfectly normal for most of history.

“Anyway, in that world, White colonialism, European colonialism, was just a variant of that, if you invite us as partners or if we win a war with you, we will take some land and impose foreign rule on that land. Nobody thought of the imposition of foreign rule as evil.”