Last week, the Trump administration ordered government agencies to cancel spending on “un-American propaganda training sessions." According to the memo that outlined the order, these un-American trainings can be identified by their inclusion of “critical race theory” or “white privilege,” or if they teach that “the United States is an inherently racist or evil country."
 
This Orwellian order was followed up the next day by the president (once again) tweeting angrily about The 1619 Project — this time because he got word that schools are incorporating the New York Times’ project into course curricula. 
 
The struggle to define the past — and specifically the history of white supremacy in the United States — is not new. In his groundbreaking Black Reconstruction, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote of the “propaganda of history,” where truth was sacrificed to “the defense of white men” and to “buttress a lie.” The stakes, wrote Du Bois, could not be higher: “to establish Truth, on which Right in the future may be built.”
 
We are in the midst of an ongoing rebellion against white supremacy, a pandemic that disproportionately hurts people of color, and devastating weather events caused by the elites’ unchecked exploitation of the Earth (including its peoples). Now is no time to back down from teaching the truth. As Du Bois wrote, our future depends on it. 
 
Learn more about the Zinn Education Project campaigns to bring people’s history — not state propaganda — to young people across the country.