History has been written by different people throughout the years and with these writing we learn what went on during these times. A lot of people don’t realize that not everything is written down but instead the information is lost for no one to know. That or history is written from the winning side and a lot of the time not the losing side. There are many examples of history not giving communities or people the justice they deserve. Not everything written in History is as it happened or quit like it seems.
One example of this is a moment that so many know as The Age of Colonization, specifically Jamestown. Historians would say it was a successful way for Europeans to escape British’s heavy rule over them. Most would say that it was a great way to escape and later earn their independence. Though they forget who was there before. There were people who were living and thriving in their homes when strangers came in and decided they would take and destroy their homes. Those people couldn’t do much about it though, because History was written in a language they had to learn and it was written from the winners.
Another example is what we all know as the vikings. Vikings were always taught as being ruthless killers and always mad when actually yes some vikings or Norsemen were killers, not all of them were. Most of the Norsemen were farmers and saw the lands they sailed upon as wonderful opportunities for farming. Those Norsemen who did kill, killed monks and those monks were the only ones who knew how to read and write so when they wrote the Norsemen down in their books they wrote them violent untamed people who in reality just had a different culture then them and they didn’t know what was being recorded about them until it was too long gone.
One last example is talked about in a book called Citizen an american lyric by Claudia Rankine. This is a book that brings to light how just because someone has a different skin tone than the authorities they feel they have to fear for their life of being shot just because the authorities say they felt nervous or someone made a call exaggerating a story about an event. This causes the authorities feeling scared for their life wondering if they’ll be able to go home that night, not taking into account that maybe the person their nervous about is also wondering if they’ll live long enough to say goodbye to their family and friends and maybe wonder if someone will be around to tell their side of the story.
In conclusion, History is always written by the winners or those who know how to write it down and there are so many stories that were never written and are now lost for all time. There are so many points of view that aren’t taught in schools because History is usually taught from the winnings and not always the losses. This has gone on for years and we still don’t seem to see where we make the mistakes. In our world today, there are people who make and inspire changes to be made so that these problems will hopefully never happen again but just because they are solved doesn’t mean they should be forgotten.
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