We Will Not Let Oppressors Make or Take Our Histories

Witness history being made now because we know what oppressors will attempt later.

We know our history books have been manipulated, controlled, fabricated, and erased when it comes to Black enslavement and Indigenous genocide.

Most of us learned incorrect and incomplete history in our textbooks. The ones that are supposed to teach you intentionally. But what’s different now most people KNOW that we haven’t been taught the truth.

We know there are people who outright lie about the history of Indigenous genocide. I mean, how can you even be claiming you own land unless you are in incomplete denial? We also know there are holocaust deniers. That Japanese colonizers deny sexual enslavement of women across Asia. That Empires revise histories of colonization and religious wars to make them seem like benevolent missionaries, saving the “uncivilized.”

Oppressors will claim they were defending the people.

First they try to edit history. Then they deny it. Then they burn and ban books.

We will have those who silently change their stance. Then there will be those who get louder and say they always supported Palestine.

We know this because it has already happened. We know there are white people who, after the fact, switched their stories about marching in the civil rights movement.

Then messages of liberation will get co-opted. That this is the “land of the free” that was founded under “religious freedom” when in fact it is the land of the enslaved and oppressed founded through the persecution of anyone that is different, with our literal currency stamped with “In god we trust.”

They will hide behind the idea of “diversity” and the melting pot, which in reality espouses assimilation as the goal. No, the empire doesn’t want our differences and variation, it wants us to conform.

Then there will be those who will say it never happened.

And of course, history will be erased, rewritten, and adopted in the voice of the oppressor. As it always has.

But we can stop that. We each have our voices. We each have tools, including social media and organizing, we can each document, we can share, we can seek out news and truth ourselves. We can witness history ourselves now. We are witnessing it happening now.

They try to edit, deny, lie, change their stories, and co-opt our own.

But we will not let them ever again. We will not let oppressors make or take our histories. We the People who take down empires make history now.