Biden commemorates ‘Bloody Sunday’, admits ‘the bad’ in US history
"Bloody Sunday" only galvanized support for Black rights, leading to the passing of the Voting Rights Act, federal legislation that prohibits racial discrimination in voting, a few months later.
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President Joe Biden speaks near the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., on Sunday to commemorate the 58th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday”. (AP)
US President Joe Biden emphasized the necessity of understanding the entirety of US history, both "the good" and "the bad", as he commemorated the horrific suppression of a civil rights march in Selma, Alabama, 58 years ago.
"History matters", the President stated during a speech at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where a march of hundreds of peaceful activists was brutally suppressed by police on March 7, 1965.
"Bloody Sunday" only galvanized support for Black rights, leading to the passing of the Voting Rights Act, federal legislation that prohibits racial discrimination in voting, a few months later.
The marchers "forced the country to confront the hard truth," Biden added, blaming today's Republican opposition for trying to "hide the truth" of history.
"No matter how hard some people try, we can't just choose to learn what we want to know and not what we should know," he said, as the dispute over how US history is taught in America's schools rages on.
"We should learn everything. The good, the bad, the truth of who we are as a nation, and everyone should know the truth of Selma."
Since 2020, some conservative states have implemented legislation prohibiting the teaching of critical race theory, an academic field that investigates structural racism in American society.
Republican Florida Governor Ron de Santis, a candidate for his party's presidential nomination in 2024, recently defended a high school African American studies course ban, calling it "indoctrination" that promotes "social justice" topics like "queer theory".
Not surprising, if the governor's history is taken into consideration.
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In his speech, Biden stated that the country must be vigilant in safeguarding voting rights, claiming that the Voting Rights Act had been undermined by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court and that dozens of voting reform measures approved by conservative-led states posed a threat to voting rights. Opponents argue that these modifications make it more difficult for Black and other minority voters to vote.
Today, the US is plagued with modern racism with many people pushing so-called values of nationalism, white supremacy, and restoring America's past.
The 2020 murder of a black US citizen, George Floyd, by police in Minneapolis shed the light on modern racism in America.
At the time, Floyd's murder sparked nationwide demonstrations demanding social justice and racial equality as it was part of a series of infringements on Black Americans at the hands of the police.
The protests went on to become a global phenomenon, where tens of millions gathered demanding equality and chanting "Black Lives Matter."
Read next: Discrimination in US schools increases with 19,000 filed complaints
