On the first day of Black History Month, Shaboozey won his first Grammy, declaring, “immigrants built this country, literally.” While immigrant labor has undeniably shaped the nation, the statement erases the reality that enslaved Black people and Indigenous nations built America’s infrastructure, wealth, and cultural foundation.
Shaboozey is not alone. In Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral inauguration speech, he similarly claimed that “New York was built by immigrants,” ignoring that Wall Street — the global symbol of American wealth — was built atop a slave auction site. These narratives obscure how power and wealth actually accumulated in the United States and reinforce the historical erasure Black History Month confronts.
This selective memory explains why Americans lament that “America has lost its civility” or that “this is the worst it’s ever been,” ignoring a basic truth: for nearly 250 years, the nation has been in constant struggle over who counts as fully human and entitled to rights.
Erasing Black History in Real Time
And it’s getting hard to teach it. Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center identified schools as the resurgent battleground amid the rise of extremist groups. Similar to the 1954 Brown Vs. Board Supreme Court Case, access to education has become a proxy war over democracy itself. The attacks on Critical Race Theory and book bans expose the fragile state of education, and therefore, democracy.
I witnessed this while serving on the Louisiana Department of Education’s Social Studies Revision Committee. Our goal: improve Louisiana’s national ranking — then 49th — and ensure students graduate informed, empowered, and civically prepared. The committee believed access to diverse primary and secondary sources achieved our goals.Implementing these changes in my own classroom produced record-breaking gains in Social Studies and English Language Arts.
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The backlash was swift and hostile. During a State Board meeting, police were called to manage protestors who labeled our work “white erasure” and “woke propaganda.” They claimed the curriculum would damage students’ self-esteem and lower academic performance. The results tell a different story: Louisiana now ranks 37th nationally, and high school students perform better on AP exams.
Attacks on diverse perspectives are not about self-esteem; they are attempts to sever connections between historical patterns and present-day events. As a SPLC Learning for Justice fellow, I studied the link between historical illiteracy and democratic decline. The familiar warning — “those who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it” — is not rhetorical.
Most Americans do not understand history, civics, or democracy. Last year, reports showed that almost 40% of Americans could not pass a basic civics test, and fewer than one-third of college students demonstrated knowledge of foundational documents and civic principles. This civic illiteracy explains the widespread confusion about our current political moment.
A Civically Illiterate Nation Is Easy to Manipulate
When the Constitution was written and government institutions established, white, land-owning men were the sole beneficiaries, which is why countless amendments were required to expand the meaning of “We, the People” and provide this new definition of people with their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Of the 77.3 million people who voted for the 47th president, only an estimated 20 to 25 million would have qualified as voters under the founders’ original standards. This is the America the Trump Administration is referring to when they say Make America Great Again. Unbeknownst to the other 50 million, the slogan is a promise to return to an era when rights were restricted by race, gender, and property.
And the large numbers of civically illiterate Americans incorrectly believed Project 2025 would be constrained by the judicial and legislative branches. Rights are not permanent simply because they are codified. As Black History Month marks its 100th anniversary, Americans can find numerous examples.
Voting rights offer a clear example. Although the 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870, it took another 104 years — and the 24th Amendment — to abolish poll taxes after a century of discriminatory practices. Today, renewed efforts to dilute Black voting power through legislative gerrymandering, judicial court challenges, and executive orders, following historical precedent.
Birthright citizenship is also under renewed judicial threat. Rooted in the 14th Amendment, it emerged from the struggles of newly freed enslaved Black people — who were formerly property valued as three fifths of a person — not a whole person. It’s not coincidental that the resurgence of these ideas coincides with Trump’s Administration attempts to legalize ICE arrests and murders. If you are not a citizen, then you are not owed the rights of one.
Illiteracy makes injustice easier to repeat — and a nation that forgets how power was built will struggle to recognize how it’s being used today.
This weekend, the arrests of American journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort echoed America’s Red Scare — a period when state-sanctioned punishment was used to silence government dissent. Black activists were disproportionately targeted then, as they are now. Lemon and Fort join the list of media who’ve been targeted by this administration, including Joy-Ann Reid, April Ryan, Abby Philip, and Yamiche Alcindor. Sustained verbal attacks against these journalists have fueled harassment and, in some cases, professional consequences.
Shaboozey’s words at the Grammys, Zohran Mamdani’s remarks, and the internet comments are symptoms of a civically and historically illiterate country. Illiteracy makes injustice easier to repeat. American History is inextricably linked to Black History, and for all Americans to understand what’s happening to us now, they must understand how the government was used then. Otherwise, we will continue in the cycle of misinformation, illiteracy, confusion, and panic.
Julienne Louis-Anderson is a historian, public school advocate, and a fellow of The OpEd Project in partnership with the National Black Child Development Institute.