In HB77’s current state, line 62 reads that a “historic version of a flag … that is temporarily displayed for educational purposes,” may be displayed in a K-12 classroom. Bill sponsor Rep. Trevor Lee clarified this in a hearing held Feb. 13 saying, “You may have a Nazi flag, you may have a Confederate flag, and so you are allowed to display those flags for the purpose of the lesson plans.”
After Lee’s statement was reported on by the Salt Lake Tribune, he commented, “There is a difference between displaying flags in curriculum when you’re teaching on them. You don’t censor history here.”
As a former middle school and high school history teacher, I am deeply concerned by Lee’s remarks. In my time as a history teacher, it never crossed my mind to display a Nazi or Confederate flag when teaching about World War II or the Civil War. The connotation of flying a flag is generally one of support — flying a Nazi or Confederate flag is inappropriate no matter the context.
This isn’t about censoring history, but for me it does highlight an issue with history education in Utah and in the nation: History has been censored in the United States, and that is a huge part of why we have so much division.
I used to do an activity with my students on the first day of school in which they had to play detective. We had a “school fight” scenario and provided evidence supporting both sides of the fight. While the evidence provided extra context, there was really no clear picture of what had actually happened. Students had to comb through the evidence, pay attention to what the evidence said, decide whether the evidence was reliable and take a stance on what happened.
Examining history is no different — we have to consider all the evidence.
For too long, history in the U.S. has been taught mainly from the white perspective. Perspectives from Black, Indigenous or other non-white people have been filtered out, along with perspectives that might show the U.S. in a bad light. It is absolutely uncomfortable and heartbreaking to study all the perspectives that have been excluded from the historical narrative in the U.S., but I believe it is one of the most patriotic things we can do.
Allowing ourselves to hear the often ignored perspectives in history allows us to recognize ways in which we can more fully embrace the ideals on which our country was founded. And just because those ideals of equality, liberty and justice for all are absolutely ideals that we should embrace, it doesn’t mean that our government was perfect from the get-go — or that it ever has been. Slavery was protected in the U.S. Constitution, and many of the founding fathers were slave holders. Colonists and settlers stole land from the First Peoples and often didn’t honor the treaties they made with them. And let’s not forget the violence inflicted on Black, Indigenous and non-white people.
Not wanting to hear those perspectives because it makes us feel bad does not make them less important. The voices of the marginalized communities need to be included in how we move our country closer to the founding principles of equality, liberty and justice for all.
The point of studying history is to understand what we don’t want to repeat, and to celebrate and highlight the things we do want to repeat. But if we are not willing to face the hard parts of history and the emotions that come up with them, we are missing massive pieces of the story. It’s impossible to steer ourselves, our state and our country down the path of not repeating things if we refuse to see the full picture of the harm that was inflicted.
Which brings me back to the flags: Censored history can make people — like Rep. Lee — feel comfortable saying that displaying a Nazi or a Confederate flag would be okay, as long as it is related to the curriculum. That’s because he likely hasn’t considered the perspectives of anyone directly affected by slavery or the Holocaust.
Students will undoubtedly see both of these flags in photos and videos used in lesson materials, and while it’s important to be able to identify them so we don’t unknowingly perpetuate them, the flags are not the point of the curriculum. It’s more important to understand how the Nazis legally dismantled Germany’s democracy in six months, or to understand what the camps were like from the Jewish perspective, or to understand that white southerners were fighting to protect slavery, or the reasons many Black southerners didn’t leave the south after they were freed. When we leave out the hard stuff to protect our feelings, we’re not studying history, we’re studying propaganda.
Ali Harris is an artist whose design studio focuses on outdoor-centric illustrations and repeat patterns, with an element of outdoor and human rights advocacy built into her brand.
Ali Harris has a bachelor’s degree in history from Southern Utah University. She spent three years as a high school and middle school history and U.S. Government teacher before leaving education to pursue an art career. Her design studio focuses on outdoor-centric illustrations and repeat patterns, with an element of outdoor and human rights advocacy built into her brand.
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