History Nerd Way Too Concerned With “Canon”

Remember when it was just about Hitler?

(Boston, MA) - A local discussion at a Milly's Cup o'Joe got very heated when local history nerd, Brian Taylor, pointed out several historical flaws in a hypothetical counterpoint presented by an acquaintance, Sarah Long. The two had been discussing the 1619 Project, its ramifications, and their personal feelings about it. Taylor supports schools teaching the central place that slavery and its consequences had in terms of entrenched systems and systemic injustice that persist to this day. Long was in the process of pointing out that, as residents of Boston, there really wasn't any any need for kids to learn about slavery anyway. That was when Taylor interrupted.

"Oh my god, so Brian's just this total history nerd. Nobody else cares about the shit this guy talks about. Then, he goes on and on mansplaining the hell out of how slavery was legal in Mass until 1783. Who freakin' knows that shit? Like, really, who?" bemoaned Long. "He thinks just because the facts agree with him it makes other people bad for saying them wrong or something. It's like those Star Wars kids talking all their crap about Jar-Jar Binks."

Taylor apparently implied that Long's thinking on the issue was, itself, a product of misrepresentation by public school history curricula designed to, among other things, foster patriotism in children. He claimed passionately that until the United States public school systems teach history as it happened - rather than how we would like to remember it - issues like systemic poverty cannot be addressed because they cannot even be understood.

"Then he goes off on this tangent," continued Long, "that was, well, I don't like to say this, but it was really kind of racist. He said that if we don't know history, we'll look at minorities and think, 'oh, these people are just lazy.' Can you imagine? Minorities are lazy? Who says shit like that? Racists, that's who."

"That is what I said, but I was using it to point out why some people are racist - what pretexts they use to justify themselves. At no point did I say that that was an accurate assessment of what history or sociology show!" said Taylor. "How can anyone not see that? It's like she's willfully misinterpreting what I said about the issue just to be able to say something negative about the points I was making!"

It should be noted that Long failed both English I and American History in high school, having been the last student to speak to their teacher, Franklin Puck, before he quit teaching after twenty years. Her comment decried the fact that Orwell's 1984 "happened so long ago that no one can remember that."