Christopher Columbus introduced two phenomena that revolutionized race relations and transformed the modern world: the taking of land, wealth, and labor from indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere, leading to their near extermination, and the transatlantic slave trade, which created a racial underclass.

History is important. More than any other topic, it is about us. Whether one deems our present society wondrous or awful or both, history reveals how we got to this point.

What gets lost in the textbook is the overall narrative. It gets lost in all the boxes and all the photos and all the little stuff that's stuck in all the time.

Very few college professors want high school graduates in their history class who are simply "gung ho" and "rah-rah" with regard to everything the United States has ever done, have never thought critically in their life, don't know the meaning of the word "historiography" and have never heard of it. They think that history is something you're supposed to memorize and that's about it. That's not what high school, or what college history teachers want.

I don't think teachers read the textbooks. And I don't think adoption committees read the textbooks before they adopt them. I think they look at them.

Native Americans are not and must not be props in a sort of theme park of the past, where we go to have a good time and see exotic cultures. “What we have done to the peoples who were living in North America” is, according to anthropologist Sol Tax, “our Original Sin.

History can be a weapon, and it can be used against you.