We definitely have history. I'm sure there's some cool shit mixed in all the indigenous genocide.
It may seem morbid, but a part of the reason I read about history is to see: The humanity that persists under inhumanity, and the unexpected humanity from those who are expected to be inhumane. For me history is not just about seeing achievements, it's getting the philosophy, politics, culture and more of our ancestors (not just direct, but in all time periods and across the world), other cultures, and understanding how things came to be how they are.
Massachusetts has always been a weird as fuck state politically. It's been a pot that's released many horrifying ideologies, and yet it's also the state that outlawed slavery in every form first. It's a state that could only exist due to bloodshed of people who we invaded and pillaged, but it's also a state that nowadays is one of the most socially progressive.
I think it's understandable to take issue with me saying "cool history", I should've thought harder on that- interesting would have been a better word, but in general I think that the history we have here is something that everyone in America should know, and visitors should know, because it really gets at the heart of how America started beyond the myths, beyond the bullshit- We murdered our way into existence, no matter how it's ended up. I think if my first US History teacher in High School didn't grill into my head the history of the people we oppressed here and in early America (far before when the mainstream class structure teaches things, like feminism, ie. we were taught about the history of feminism in the 16th century when the mainstream curriculum only really does it in the suffrage movement), that we read far more accounts of slaves. We read about a slave owner who raped his slave, had a child, and sold the child, and how common that was, and other morbid things. Riots in Boston about Irish folk "taking the damn jobs!" and massacres, lynchings, Andrew Jackson. The Trail of Tears not just as a sad thing that happened, but one of the nails in the coffin after hundreds of years of bloodshed, and hatred for a people, viewing them as vermin. Religious extremists as a mean of fascism, as a means of control (there's good historical fiction books by Nathaniel Hawthorne about the period, usually with a feminist lens; The Scarlet Letter in particular). A history that was more focused on our actual history than the type of thing I got the next year, with a different US history teacher, where we went through the American presidents and what they did and maybe a few reforms here and there. And it helped me become more self-aware about humanity as a whole. It gave me a reference point to when I see modern injustices when I was young, and from there I became curious and read about other cultures, more history, other injustices, the rarer justices, the history of today.
I wish every American could get that teacher I had in US History 1, and how much it opened my eyes to American history. America wasn't just "We moved here, we went to war with Britain over taxes, we went to war over slavery, we did some colonialism in the 20th century and participated in WW1, we were a major part of WW2, we did nuke, Civil Rights happened we did the Cold War and then we are here today," as I'd been taught before, and would be taught in a similar way again.
And that isn't the bare minimum expectation in our society, unfortunately- we still use the people we genocided as puppets culturally, and we still demean them as caricature trophies, and we still present them often as subhuman in media; the more people that look into the history, I hope the more aware people can become. I think at the minimum, if more people learned of the history, the actual history and the actual people we attempted to wipe out, people would be more conscious.
Thanksgiving being a national holiday is pretty fucking gross, though.
I'm coming for the Canadians on this one, too, btw. From my understanding yall took Thanksgiving from us as a tradition, then tried to reinvent it into a thing for the British Royal Family? But also Canada is absolutely guilty of similar sins with native peoples.
Also, for anyone that actually visits for some reason, for the love of god do not visit Plymouth Rock it's basically not real, it's a made up tourist "attraction" (it's a rock why do people actually come visit it), also some of our historical locations are kinda not good at explaining the history. I remember in middle school we went to one of the towns from The Pilgrims (trademark) and the tour was basically "Wow these sure are old homes that are shitty," and the only history we learned was like. The stuff that sucked about living in that era. Boohoo for the invaders that were inconvenienced after the natives who tried to teach them local crops got fucking murdered (by them!)
I wrote this out and maybe it's too long, but this is actually the third rewrite because I wasn't entirely sure how to get all my points across. There's a lot of nuance to the politics of history, and as a history nerd I want it to be extremely clear how I think it is very important for people to understand this history. I didn't mean in the first place that what things happened in Massachusetts were "cool", really, at least in the positive sense.
