You’re just a little bit younger than me, but before my family moved to Iowa, I attended junior high in Gadsden, Alabama, which I’m not exaggerating by calling one of the racism centers of the United States.

The city fathers, despite desegregation orders and so forth had somehow managed to keep schools effectively segregated anyway. Practically no black students attended my school. My peers routinely and reflexively called black people the N Word. Hell, the deacons in the church my father pastored did that. They did it around our dinner table, casually, while Dad spluttered objections and Mom turned red.

Can you guess how much instruction we received about racism in school? “Zilch” would be the correct answer. We received a rosey history of the United States that almost entirely left out racism, and that positioned leaders of the Confederacy as great American heroes.

Kids tend to believe what they’re taught. Many of those kids I went to school with grew up to be dyed in the wool racists. Those who did not, pretend racism doesn’t exist. Why should they see it if they never learned about it?

Clearly, plenty of conservatives are invested in keeping things that way.