To the editor:

On Feb. 20, your newspaper published a column titled “Ignoring important abstractions.”

As a college student, I agree with your idea that “Americans don’t know much about any kind of history.” What I do not appreciate about how history is taught is how they teach us only what they think we should know, which is not always the full truth.

For example, Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and even supposedly had children with one of the slaves, but the only thing most of us are taught is that he wrote the Declaration of Independence, in which he wrote, “all men are created equal.”

Also, Christopher Columbus in reality was an awful person, but we have a day that celebrates everything he “accomplished.”
I disagree, however, that “America is moving toward an egalitarian society.” I am not a pessimist, but I try to stay honest with myself. I don’t believe America is moving toward anything. America is still class-based and will remain that way as long as there is such a word as “class.”
The people in charge of this country are wealthy and are going to vouch for people similar to them. They want the poor to remain poor. That is why there are so many retired vets on the street now and homeless people in general.

Shouldn’t people who fought for our lives at least come back to some sort of dignity?

They do not care that much for lower-class people.
We, as in people like you and me, are striving toward a society of equal rights, but not everyone knows the struggle, not everyone can place himself in someone else’s shoes, not everyone knows about the big issues that are currently going on and how much it matters to people like us.

I wish I could say that America is striving, but it burdens me to say that it cannot be. There is too much hatred in this world, and it is very cruel if you do not have a good grip on life.

Thankfully it is not quite the same as the past. We have progressed, but the majority of us are still slaves to the system. We are just unaware of it.

Jasmine Boone

Suffolk