by Woke up to seventeen emails about our upcoming issue. The theme? America’s relationship with its own past, which apparently is now classified as “it’s complicated” on Facebook. I’ve been assigned three pieces this week alone, all centered on how this country has developed historical amnesia at an alarming rate.
First up: History Lite, my working title for a piece about how American education has watered down historical facts until they’re basically flavored waterall the appearance of substance with none of the actual nutrition. I interviewed a high school teacher in Brooklyn yesterday who told me her students genuinely believe the Civil War was about “states’ rights to have barbecues.” I couldn’t tell if she was joking. She wasn’t.
Then there’s my investigation into the great American history retreat, which documents how curriculum boards across the country are systematically removing uncomfortable truths from textbooks. One school district in Texas apparently refers to slavery as “involuntary relocation.” I called my cousin in Benin City to share this gem, and she laughed so hard she dropped her phone. “Americans are mad,” she said in pidgin English. She’s not wrong.
The real kicker came this afternoon when I started drafting lessons from the past. The premise is simple: what happens when a nation refuses to learn from its history? The answer is apparently “you elect the same problematic leaders twice and act surprised when they do problematic things.” But I can’t write that exactlyour legal team has strong feelings about defamation suits.
My research for the Avengers-Lincoln story (students think Abraham Lincoln was in the Avengers) led me down a rabbit hole of American historical misconceptions. Did you know 41% of Americans under 25 believe Hamilton was a fictional character created for Broadway? I wish I was making this up. I really, really wish I was.
During lunch, Marcus pitched an idea about Gavin Newsom recalling his hard childhood, and I nearly choked on my jollof rice. The man grew up in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights. His idea of hardship was probably when the private school ran out of organic kale one day. But that’s tomorrow’s problem.
Tonight I’m reading through primary sources for all three history pieces, cross-referencing facts that apparently need to be fact-checked now because truth is subjective in 2025. My West African education taught me to respect history, to learn from it, to understand that forgetting the past is how you repeat it. America seems determined to prove that thesis correct.
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