Americans: To High School Students Who Are Deprived of Knowing America's Real History

Donald Trump — and those who continue to defend his vision of America — would do well to confront an uncomfortable part of the nation's history: the United States did not emerge from an uncomplicated story of virtue, civilization, and individual merit. Its history also includes conquest, colonization, Indigenous dispossession, slavery, racial hierarchy, and the systematic exclusion of entire populations from the rights and opportunities promised by the nation's founding ideals. The Library of Congress documents the central role of slavery in colonial and American society, while the Smithsonian records the wars, forced removals, land seizures, and other forms of dispossession experienced by Native peoples.

That history should not be reduced to the proposition that every European immigrant or every white American was — or is — a criminal, exploiter, or supremacist. Such a characterization would be historically inaccurate and would simply replace one form of collective stereotyping with another. Europeans came to North America for many different reasons, including religious conviction, economic opportunity, political refuge, family migration, and the pursuit of land and status. Some participated in systems of conquest and exploitation; others opposed them. Likewise, the descendants of those populations inherited vastly different histories and circumstances.

What can — and should — be confronted without equivocation is the historical reality of the institutions themselves. European empires pursued territory, wealth, and power in the Americas. Indigenous peoples suffered catastrophic population losses, warfare, forced removal, and the destruction or suppression of communities and ways of life. Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic and subjected to hereditary slavery, while colonial and later American laws constructed racial distinctions that helped sustain these systems.

The significance of this history is not merely academic. A society cannot fully understand its present without examining the structures and assumptions inherited from its past. Historical memory matters because ideas about race, citizenship, national identity, property, belonging, and political power did not emerge in a vacuum. Nor did the consequences of earlier policies simply disappear when those policies were formally abolished.

A Personal Reckoning

For me, this question is also deeply personal.

I am a PhD, a naturalized American citizen, and a proud Copt whose sense of identity reaches back to one of the world's ancient civilizations while also encompassing a family heritage that includes modern nobility. I do not invoke that heritage to claim that one ancestry makes a person inherently superior to another. Civilization is not a racial possession, and dignity is not an inherited monopoly. Rather, I invoke it to emphasize that immigrants arrive in America carrying histories, cultures, intellectual traditions, values, and experiences of their own.

For more than forty-five years, I have devoted my life to educating, guiding, and serving people in this country. I have worked, taught, contributed, and participated in American society across decades — long before many of the younger ideological figures now surrounding contemporary political movements had entered public life. My American identity was not handed to me by ancestry. I chose this country, became its citizen, and spent much of my life contributing to it.

That experience has shaped my understanding of what American belonging ought to mean.

What American Identity Should Mean

American identity should not be reduced to race, birthplace, ancestry, political allegiance, or inherited privilege. It should be measured by citizenship, participation, responsibility, contribution, and commitment to the principles that the nation professes to uphold.

The more meaningful question, therefore, is not who possesses the "right" ancestry. It is what each of us does with the history we inherit.

An immigrant who teaches, builds, serves, contributes, and embraces the responsibilities of citizenship is no less American than someone whose family has lived here for generations. And a person whose ancestors arrived centuries ago does not become more American merely by virtue of that ancestry.

America is not an inheritance reserved for one ethnic group. It is a continuing civic project — one whose ideals have repeatedly fallen short of its conduct, but whose ideals have also inspired generations of Americans to demand something better.

Why Historical Honesty Matters

That is why historical honesty matters. Reckoning with the past is not an act of hatred toward one's ancestors. It is an act of responsibility toward one's descendants.

We should be capable of honoring what is worthy in American history while refusing to romanticize what was unjust. We should be capable of acknowledging the achievements of European civilization without denying the violence of European colonialism. We should be capable of celebrating American freedom while remembering those who were denied it. And we should be capable of demanding accountability from contemporary political leaders without turning ancestry itself into a measure of human worth.

The ultimate test of American identity is therefore not where one's ancestors came from, how long one's family has lived here, or what privileges one inherited.

It is what one chooses to contribute to the country — and whether one is willing to confront its history honestly enough to help build a more just future.