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Authorities, whether in academia, libraries, or museums, try to fight for up-to-date research and interpretation. Political teams are chosen, and the media both fuels and thrives on the contestation. The combatants then employ a kind of existential rhetoric, with all sides declaring surrender unacceptable. The disputes quickly invoke curricula, creeping into school boards and state legislatures with increasing stakes. The subjects at their core usually carry visceral meaning for large swaths of the public. This is especially true as we limp, wounded, from the battlefields of the Trump era, when facts were nearly rendered irrelevant. In April, the Department of Education called for a renewed stress, in the classroom, on the “unbearable human costs of systemic racism” and the “consequences of slavery.” In response, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a formal letter, demanding more “patriotism” in history and calling the Democrats’ plan “divisive nonsense.” Like all great questions of national memory, the latest history war has to play out in politics, whether we like it or not.
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Once again, Americans find themselves at war over their history-what it is, who owns it, how it should be interpreted and taught. But old feuds remind us that history is continually revised, driven by new evidence and present-day imperatives. A new battle is being waged over how we teach our country’s past.