How History Gets Rewritten - And Who It Leaves Out
Jun 01, 2025I was born and raised in the Netherlands—in a white bubble.
A bubble where I learned history as it was written by the victor. I didn’t know to question it. The textbooks told clean stories of explorers and progress, and I memorized the facts that helped me pass the test.
But the deeper truth?
Those stories were carefully edited. Sanitized. Stripped of blood.
I Thought I Was “Worldly”
After all, I had traveled. I spoke multiple languages. I had an MBA. I had lived overseas. I knew how to talk about “diversity” in polite company.
But then I adopted my children.
Two beautiful, Black children.
And everything I thought I knew cracked open.
Because suddenly, I wasn’t reading about race or injustice in a book—I was watching it unfold in the grocery store. In schools. In police interactions. In the invisible rules that shaped their lives so differently from how mine had been shaped.
And then came the most humbling part:
I saw how much I didn’t know.
History Through Their Eyes
My children taught me that what I learned in school was only one side of the story.
Not the truth.
Not the whole truth.
But the narrative of the colonizer. The oppressor. The one holding the pen.
When I started to see the world through their eyes, I realized how much of my education—how much of my own understanding of the world—was built on falsehoods and omissions.
It’s a painful thing to admit:
That the story you trusted wasn’t the truth.
That the history you were handed was a tool of supremacy.
Whiteness as the Default Setting
Last month, I heard Trevor Noah say something in his podcast that stopped me in my tracks:
“In all my 40+ years of life in South Africa and traveling the world, I’ve never met a single person who said they supported apartheid.”
Let that sink in.
A system so brutal, so dehumanizing, that it shaped an entire country’s soul—
and now? Not a single supporter in sight.
Because history gets rewritten.
Because whiteness protects itself.
It’s almost funny—except it isn’t.
Apartheid, by the way, is a Dutch word.
My people named it.
From South Africa to the Americas
What Trevor said reminded me of another story:
European explorers arriving in the Americas and wiping out 90% of the Indigenous population through violence, slavery, and disease.
Or the more recent story:
A man accused of rape and convicted of fraud being re-elected as President of the country I now call home.
What do all these stories have in common?
Whiteness.
Whiteness that protects itself.
Whiteness that rewrites the narrative.
Whiteness that erases the people it harms—again and again.
The Painful Awakening
This is not an easy blog to write.
But this awakening has been the most powerful—and humbling—experience of my life.
I’m no longer trying to be the expert.
I’m trying to be the student.
I’m no longer trying to lead with certainty.
I’m trying to lead with love, humility, and a willingness to be undone.
And I write because I want other white parents of Black and brown children to know:
You’re not alone in this reckoning.
But if you’re not reckoning, you’re not loving them fully.
Let’s Unlearn Together
We were handed a script.
Our children are handing us the truth.
And if you’re ready to tear up the old version and start again—from love, from awareness, from radical humility—you’re in the right place.
This blog is not here to make us feel better.
It’s here to help us become better.
Resource Spotlight: Exterminate All the Brutes (HBO Max)
If you're ready to go deeper—uncomfortably deeper—I recommend watching the HBO series Exterminate All the Brutes by Raoul Peck. It's not an easy watch. In fact, it's designed to unsettle you. It unmasks the brutal legacy of colonialism, genocide, and white supremacy in ways that most of us were never taught.
If you're a white parent raising Black or brown children, I urge you to watch it. But not as a casual evening show. Watch it like your kids' future depends on it—because in many ways, it does.
And when your stomach turns—because it will—remember this:
Your children are likely to identify with the oppressed.
And you, like me, may recognize yourself—or your ancestors—in the role of the oppressor.
That senseless, egotistical, mentally ill villain.
It’s painful.
It’s sickening.
It’s real.
And you don’t need to defend yourself. You need to stay with the discomfort. Let it transform you.
Because turning toward the truth—however messy—is how we build trust with our children.
It’s how we begin to heal a history that still echoes in our homes.
And it’s how we stop repeating the same harm, wrapped in a different name.
Watch it. Sit with it. Cry if you need to.
Then let’s keep walking together through the fire.
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