Just Because You’re Hearing It for the First Time Doesn’t Mean It’s Indoctrination

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]I am always mind blown when I get people who have a real emotional response when they hear unpleasant historical information and they feel that it's coming at them a particular way because they're hearing it all the time or they feel like they're being punished or something like this for or they're feeling like maybe they're being indoctrinated. Couple of things I want you to be mindful of. So, just pull up a seat and relax. Couple things. First, nobody's saying this over and over again. It's kind of interesting because there's certain history that we hear all the time that nobody loses sleep over.

[00:00:30]We hear about the Civil War all the time. We hear about the Revolutionary War all the time. We hear about the Founding Fathers all the time. Nobody loses any sleep because we've been conditioned to hear that all the time.

[00:00:40]But, anytime somebody says some unpleasant history, all of a sudden people feel like, "Oh my gosh, you know, why are you sitting here over and over again repeating it?" Nobody's repeating it over and over again. You should be used to history coming at you over and over again. The fact that it's unpleasant is really more of a visceral response that you have, not a problem with the history. Which brings me to my second uh second point. Just because it's unpleasant doesn't mean anybody's going to punish you for it. When people act as if, you know, "Oh, you're trying to make us feel bad." Who's making you feel bad? You feeling bad is a you problem. That has nothing to do with history. And nobody is punishing you with history. They can't punish you with that. They can inform you about it. They can give you information about it. They can give you insight about it. But, it's not designed to punish. It's just history.

[00:01:25]And then the third and the most biggest point that I have to say to most people, just because you're hearing it for the first time doesn't mean you're being indoctrinated. So many times you'll hear people say, "You know, we have to give the right history." What are you talking about? What you're effectively saying is you want to be able to control the the history that you hear, where it's being told to you, and anything outside of that is considered indoctrination. Not because it's not not because it's not true. It's just because it may go contrary to what they want to present to you. Let's just be clear. Anytime somebody is sharing with you information you've never heard, that doesn't make it indoctrination. So, when I have people who post responses when I talk to them when I tell them about how my mother told me about how she had an incident where she sat in the front of the bus and the bus wouldn't move, or when she told me she can remember my hometown when desegregation came down and there were businesses that literally closed their doors as opposed to allow for an integrated and you know, environment in terms of customers. That's not me sitting here indoctrinating you saying, "Oh, you're trying to say that we're trying to, you know, spoil here. We're just the enemy." No, I'm telling you history. And history has context because with each time you find out something new, you view that history through a different lens. And so, I always tell people just because you're learning something new for the first time doesn't make it indoctrination just because you discovered it. Remember, history is evolving. It's designed to give you context. It's not designed to make you feel bad, punish you, and more importantly, indoctrinate you. It's just history.