Why we teach the facts of history

Parallels exist in two articles published in the July 22 Daily Herald.

On Page 1 was the story of seven women who were flown from South America to the United States by sex traffickers and who were freed by law enforcement in Kane County this week. Kane County First Assistant State's Attorney Christine Bayer stated: "This is the degradation of humans. They are not seen as people … They are looked at as a commodity. They were brought into the United States for the sole purposes of being victimized and exploited." This is essentially modern day slavery, regardless of race.

On Page 7 was an article about Vice President Kamala Harris speaking in Florida about that state's new education rules sanitizing and rewriting the history of slavery in America. The state's Board of Education has been ordered to teach students that slaves actually benefited from their captivity. VP Harris said extremists want to "replace history with lies. They dare to push propaganda to our children. How is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?"

The remarks by Bayer and Harris are almost interchangeable. American history has never told the whole truth about slavery, and that may be why human trafficking is still happening in the 21st Century. The first Africans were transported to our shores in 1619. The wealth of plantation owners was not measured in acres owned, but in human capital.

In contemporary slavery, had the women escaped, they might have blended into the community. In historical slavery, Black runaways were easily hunted down. Teaching the true, brutal history of slavery is not meant to cause children to feel guilty. It is to clearly warn them how history can be repeated.

Diane Niesman

Wheaton