Recognizing The Past For A Better Future

Walking around Germany you are bound to see remnants of their tumultuous past almost everywhere you go. Germany doesn't deny their rocky history and uses it as a lesson to create a better future. Seeing the Berlin Wall and visiting Dachau made me realize how far Germany has come as a country in such a short time, but it also made me ashamed of how our country, unlike Germany, pretends that the errors of the past don't exist. America has mistreated multiple ethic groups over its few hundred years as a nation and instead of taking after Germany and making it a big deal to keep history from repeating itself we hide our past and are often insensitive to the groups we've hurt. Multiple times in my life I've heard people speak about how black people should get over slavery or native Americans don't have it so bad and the Japanese-American internment camps are lightly mentioned in US history classes as if it never happened. Our country needs to respect the ancestors of its population and would benefit from sensitivity lessons from Germany in order to create a stronger and more united nation. We have a holocaust museum in Washington DC, yet there is nothing recognizing the 100 years we were a nation with human beings being treated as property. Forgetting the past hasn't done us well, it's become a big green monster always in our minds but certainly not in our hearts and I believe that we can be better.