Recently, as a response to widespread use of The 1619 Project, a New York Times Magazine feature exploring the often untold realities of America’s long history of policies and practices endorsing and even promoting enslaving fellow humans, President Trump announced the establishment of the 1776 Commission, a federal focus on “patriotic education” which, it seems, will not address the negative or troubling realities of our country’s past.

I am not afraid to show my bias against this commission. I’ve read some of the criticism of The 1619 Project. Some is valid, some is overwrought. None is sufficient to warrant our country’s ignoring of the fact of enslavement and the observable, measurable, identifiable historical ripple effect it had right up to this very second.

A good history (or literature) teacher will encourage students to interrogate what isn’t being said, whose side isn’t being shared, whose voice isn’t being elevated. What is absent is telling, always. What we choose not to teach is as political a choice as what we choose to teach. And to take it further, the deliberate omission of the truth is a much a lie as is the truth’s deliberate revision.