Common culture: History usurped by thought police

Re: “White supremacist views lurk everywhere, even from a teacher,” (TNT, 3/17).

The thought police are watching you for signs of hidden white-supremacist ideation – subtle signs that you might not even be aware you’re harboring.

As columnist Matt Driscoll says: “... some who peddle white supremacist ideas do so unknowingly or unintentionally.”

What are some signs that you may harbor these despicable sentiments? Driscoll asks us to unpack what “common American culture” has really meant, so let’s do it:

The common heritage of the great writers and thinkers of the past, Plato, Aristotle, the Christian theologians Thomas Aquinas, Ignatius Loyola; the art of the renaissance; the philosophers of the enlightenment, Emerson and Thoreau. I could go on.

If you mention this history, it must be because you have nostalgia for a racist past.

What is Driscoll’s view of this common culture? Genocide, assimilation, forced indoctrination, slavery. God knows what will be added in the future.

There is a word that encompasses diversity and ethnic studies; it’s called history, which includes both the good and the bad, but is definitely not the self-flagellating viewpoint Driscoll represents.

What is wrong with teaching history?