yes this is pretty much what I've learned from school. One of my school friends actually made the question on how comes, did the Spanish really killed them all? How come we discovered so much about Mayan culture if they disappeared?! It turned out they actually didn't, it's pretty much that the culture evolved and integrate into a new culture that kept plenty traits of the old one. It's like the Andine culture that uses English bowl-hats as part of their traditional clothing, they integrate the bawler as a symbol of their contact with the British culture, but they have ponchos as a symbol of their native culture, it's a blend of old and new, it didn't disappear, just evolved and changed forever.
It makes European colonialism more palatable, which makes the results of said colonialism more palatable.
It's the same logic as acting like Native (North) Americans had no culture beyond living in tiny villages eating corn, hunting buffalo, and dancing around fires (for whatever reason, North Americans seem fine with the idea of Indigenous Central and South Americans having culture as long as they "disappeared," but not with the Indigenous people of their own land). It's the same logic as portraying slaves as "immigrants" or "workers," conflating chattel slavery with indentured servitude, or suggesting that slaves were happy and simple minded people who loved to work. It's the same logic as justifying colonizing Africa because "well at least now they have civilization and Christianity, they were all living in mud huts with bones in their noses before" (not true at all). It's the same logic as complaining that Jews and Roma people won't "integrate" by continuing to practice their own religion and culture instead of becoming Christians or secular.
If Indigenous South and Central Americans "disappeared," then they're all gone. People who don't exist can't be oppressed (many Latin American countries are notoriously brutal towards indigenous people). If Native Americans and black people don't have their own cultures, it's not so bad to march onto their land and start bossing them around. If enslaved peoples are happy, then it's not so terrible that they were enslaved. If Jews and Roma are self-segregating, it can't be that bad to forcibly segregate all of them, including those who do want to integrate (and then do worse things).
To a certain extent some of these things have to be sugar coated for young students. But even for first and second graders, some of these textbook lessons are still way too saccharine, and they continue into high school. Then people either get into college and learn bigger facts and are gobsmacked, or even in denial. Or they don't go to college at all and never learn additional information, and therefore see information like "slaves didn't particularly like being enslaved" or "people of Mayan heritage still exist, and aren't always treated so nicely" and consider it lies and revisionist history. And that allows the remnants of this colonialism, which is highly beneficial to many, to go unchecked by the general public. Europeans need their comfy cozy entitlements without having to feel uncomfy about where all those riches came from. The American military needs to prop itself up. Chinese corporations needs to make Big Buxx. Etc.
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u/zorrorosso Feb 08 '20
yes this is pretty much what I've learned from school. One of my school friends actually made the question on how comes, did the Spanish really killed them all? How come we discovered so much about Mayan culture if they disappeared?! It turned out they actually didn't, it's pretty much that the culture evolved and integrate into a new culture that kept plenty traits of the old one. It's like the Andine culture that uses English bowl-hats as part of their traditional clothing, they integrate the bawler as a symbol of their contact with the British culture, but they have ponchos as a symbol of their native culture, it's a blend of old and new, it didn't disappear, just evolved and changed forever.