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by likelynew 3309 days ago
Why the downvotes? How many british people know about Jallianwala Bagh massacre, shooting at a peaceful gathering killing hundreds, that was committed by them in India? How many americans care about the systematic racial genocide in their land? Most people don't care unless the event is very shocking at that time and place. And, if china is still poor, no one in west would have cared for their human rights violation.
4 comments

The majority of my US History classes in high school focused on things like the trail of tears, the pullman strikes, Jim crow laws, Vietnam war atrocities, Japanese internment, our policies towards European refugees during WWII, the watergate scandal, the US invasion of panama, the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima... I learned about all of these as part of a standard public school education, just like all my peers. Plus you'd be crazy if you thought US media was bullish about Guantanamo, the missing weapons of mass destruction, NSA civilian spying, drone assassinations...

Regardless wether people care about those things(a lot don't), it's part of our education and media. I think the claim is Chinese history classes in china and their media are a bit more rose colored than ours, which is why people don't know about tiananmen square.

I had about 12 years of school where at least 1/3rd of the time was devoted to the atrocities of American history, in the South no less.

What are you talking about? Americans definitely care about what in the past, but you can't change things that happen in the past. The country, unlike China, is very open about the cracks in its core. There's a huge monument to MLK on the mall in DC. Can you say as much about Tienanmen Square?

You are verging on whataboutism.

There's a big difference. In the US we've been educated about atrocities against natives since youth. We learned about the Trail of Tears. You know about the Jallianwala Bagh massacre if you've watched Gandhi, a piece of Western film and entertainment.

That's incredibly different from the state overwriting or hiding history.

Tiananmen Square was only less than 30 years ago.