Learning history becomes a very predictable cycle of events when you're Black:
- You discover a pivotal moment in history and the perspective from which you should view it.
- You realize that Black people were involved in the incident and got omitted in a conscious effort to reframe the moment from a Eurocentric perspective.
- You learn that almost everyone knows about the deliberate alteration of the event in question but resists changing it for…reasons.
As a society, we've gotten a lot better about acknowledging the achievements of formerly unsung Black heroes in history, but there is a load of work to be done. Take the case of Black British soldiers in World War One, for example. Whenever WWI gets a spotlight in media, we rarely ever see any Black soldiers on the British end despite their significant involvement in the conflict.
The Imperial War Museum's YouTube channel explains how Britain consciously excised Black soldiers from history in the video linked above.
