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John Oliver: US schools must avoid 'impulse to downplay the horrors of slavery'

John Oliver has criticised the limiting way history has been and continues to be taught in many American classrooms.

Related: John Oliver explains China's 'appalling' treatment of Uighurs

The Last Week Tonight host talked about how tragic events this year have ignited difficult conversations about race. “George Floyd’s murder has forced a hard national conversation about this country’s present which is impossible to do effectively without re-examining its past and unfortunately that’s not a conversation many Americans are equipped to have,” he said.

Oliver spoke about Donald Trump’s ill-advised initial decision to host a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Juneteenth, a day that commemorates the end of slavery, one that 48% of Americans were either not at all aware of not very aware of, “one of many gaps in knowledge” when it comes to a history of race in the US.

He said that rather than fixing these gaps, “seeking out misleadingly comforting versions of history is a pattern we’ve seen again and again this year”, bringing up the renewed popularity of The Help on Netflix recently.

In schools, there are no national standards on what topics should be covered in history and so seven states don’t directly mention slavery at all while only two cover white supremacy. He brought up previous attempts to rewrite history by racist groups who insisted textbooks would “accord full justice to the south”.

He added: “That impulse to downplay the horrors of slavery has marked how schoolchildren have learnt about it ever since.”

Oliver used a recent example of a textbook that referred to slave labour as chores, “a euphemism par with calling Hitler a bestselling author with a side hustle”.

While many teachers can help correct these errors, “others can make it even worse” said Oliver who then used an example of a slavery-themed Monopoly style game used in one school. “Just imagine what if would feel like to be a black kid in that classroom,” he said.

He continued: “It’s not just the history that hurts here, it’s how you’re being made to feel while you learn it,” In US public schools, 79% of teachers are white and the incomplete education being given to many children is “doing real harm”.

Oliver criticised the lack of education surrounding the history of white supremacy. He said that the constitution should be seen as something “infused with and inextricably linked to slavery and a legacy of racial inequality”.

He said it “doesn’t mean it’s cancelled” but kids “should be taught to see it as an imperfect document with imperfect authors”.

Oliver continued: “If kids are taught an incomplete history, they’ll either never get the full story or when they do, they don’t have the framework to understand how the pieces go together.”

Another major problem is how a history of race is reduced down to progress and “a smooth steady upward arc” without accounting for “white hostility and ugly backsliding”.

“The civil rights movement was longer, messier, more radical and crucially was thwarted in more of its aims than many of us were taught in schools,” he said.

Classroom history also doesn’t “connect the dots to the present” showing the “effects and not causes” of racism in America today.

He mentioned how Trump’s behaviour “fits into a systemic racism that’s been baked into this country from the beginning” but “if kids aren’t taught this then what chance do they have to understand what’s happening now”.

He continued: “Ignoring the history that you don’t like is not a victimless act and a history of America that ignores white supremacy is a white supremacist’s history of America.”