I’d honestly argue—in 2026—it’s more important for Americans to understand black history today than the Vietnam war. The idiots who keep propelling Presidents into the Oval who repeat Vietnam’s mistakes in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Iran are folks with a terrible understanding of our racial history and way too much surface knowledge about big guns and materiel.

What currently constitutes these studies seems to be a mix of propaganda and bullshit. But that sort of underlines the point that we have an impoverished set of common facts.