Politically Correct History - Television Tropes & Idioms

"Win and you get to change the rules to where it was fair retroactively."

Unnamed Sensei, Thousand Shinji

Politically Correct History is when shows set in the past change that past to fit the cultural norms of the time in which the show is filmed - or the prejudices of those currently in power. Originally, this manifested itself through making the main characters surprisingly "enlightened" (and thus more sympathetic to a modern audience). A more recent development is extras being cast without regard to race, even in historical situations where it doesn't make sense.

Conversely, people may judge the entire past by one particular era. Many people assume that all of history until The Sixties was as straitlaced as the Victorian era, which causes them to assume that historically accurate characters and situations are Politically Correct History. For example, black cowboys in recent depictions of the Old West are not a Race Lift, as many freedmen went west; it's their absence from 1930s-50s cowboy movies that was politically correct for that era.

This is Older Than Dirt. Even the Romans indulged in Politically Correct History, to the point that (given the dearth of primary sources) nobody can be completely sure if any of the Roman historians we know told the truth about anything.

Naturally, historical accuracy should not be expected for works that clearly take place in The Theme Park Version of their genre: if your story already concerns King Arthur and Robin Hood teaming up to fight Humongous Mecha, it may be to the story's detriment to depict realistic social and race relations. Racism and sexism are heavy-thinking topics, and would likely just get in the way of the entertainment goals of the production. The true litmus test is how seriously the work appears to take itself. The more so, the less excuse there is for whitewashing.

Note that political correctness has not always been merely an accusation levelled against the political left by the political right. The term may be used to describe something "corrected" to any political dogma. One of the most extreme historical examples is found in a parenting book written in 1913. The writer claimed that the Puritan gentlewoman Grace Mildmay advocated beating children black and blue to cure them of lying and other faults; he even quoted her on the subject at length. But he made it all up; not only is the quote not found in her papers, she was a strong opponent of physical discipline. Yet readers lapped the fake quote up because it supported their view of childraising. Even now this manufactured quote can be found in modern books promoting harsh physical discipline of children.

Examples:

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Comic Books

Film

Nearly all historical films about Greek history gloss over the widely accepted homosexuality, bisexuality, and pederasty that was socially expected in Greek culture. Male couples will be turned into cousins or best buddies and will introduce minor slave girls or women married out of a necessity to further the family line as full-fledged romantic love interests so the audience is assured that these heroic historical figures were 100% heterosexual.
- At one point in 300, one of the Spartans describes Athenians as "boy-lovers" or something like that, and they keep pointing out the fact that Spartans are free and Persians take slaves. As part of their Historical Hero Upgrade, the fact that Spartan society was based almost entirely on two things (slavery and child-rapin') is entirely omitted.
  - In 300's defense, Frank Miller did say that the comment about the Athenians being 'boy lovers' was an attempt to portray the Spartans as hypocrites, rather than gloss over the fact that they enforced pedophile homosexuality.
  - This justification would only work if the movie at least hinted at the fact that the Spartans were "boy lovers" and slavers.
  - Is is so bad for an author to expect that the audience know some historical context?
  - Apparently the entire movie was also supposed to be a case of Unreliable Narrator (being told by the Spartan at the end), so it would make sense that the story would dump on the Athenians while trying to make the Spartans look better.
  - Truth In Television kind of reversed. Athenian playwrights made fun of Spartan homosexual relationships (pretty much like Leonidas does here) although Spartans tended to be more tame in their pederasty than Athenians.
- Also, the line in the comic: "It's just an eye. The gods saw fit to grace me with a spare" was changed to "God saw fit to grace me with a spare". Is that just a mistake, a reference to a particular Greek god, or were they just trying to appeal to the Christians?
  - The word for god in Greek and Latin didn't refer to the Christian God until coined by the writers of the New Testament and Septuagint in the first century. The usage here refers to an arbitrary god, usually Zeus/Jupiter.
Kingdom Of Heaven is essentially the tale of a bunch of 12th-century secular Humanists fighting for peace and tolerance, opposed by Templars both literal and figurative. Appropriately enough, one historical figure's name was changed from "Barisan" to "Godfrey", a homonym for his anachronistic stance on religion. Near the end of the film, Bloom's character gives a speech to the defenders of Jerusalem, in which he argues that the Christians have no special claim to the city above the claims of the Jews and Muslims. The population is shockingly open-minded about this statement.
- Oddly enough, in mediaeval times, the Knights Templar were suspected of being too tolerant of Muslims, especially after long service in Palestine.
  - Nothing odd. Templars didn't want their endless "war on" Muslims being ended by a third force, even on Christian side. So they preferred mamluks (Muslim) to Mongol army (there were good reasons why Hulagu and Dokuz were likened to Constantine and Helena). Hence the accusation of treachery.
For a less obvious form, compare the amount of smoking that goes on in shows and movies made in The Fifties with the amount in those which are just set in the Fifties. A notable exception would be an episode of Deep Space 9 and the film Good Night and Good Luck, in which all of the characters seem to be chain smokers. The latter film included a now-unbelievable period cigarette commercial to play up how things have changed; the DVD commentary mentions how many of those people died of lung cancer (Andy Rooney, who never smoked, is one of the few survivors of Murrow-era CBS News). And even into the 1960s. The first season of Mission Impossible (from 1966) seems to consist of them lighting up constantly. Perhaps even more noticeable is that characters constantly offer another characters a smoke and no one ever rejects it. Somewhat averted in the 2004 film Ike: Countdown To D-Day. Nonsmoker Tom Selleck couldn't quite match Eisenhower's smoking habit, but he did his best.
The 1972 musical 1776 originally featured a musical number in which the "conservatives" of the Continental Congress express their unwillingness to jeopardize their personal positions and wealth by supporting American independence. Though the song was historically accurate, producer Jack Warner's good friend President Richard Nixon objected to the scene on the basis that it depicted "conservatives" in a negative light in spite of the difference in meaning between the term then and now. In an instance of Chief Executive Meddling, Warner had the sequence removed from the film at Nixon's behest, though a surviving copy can be found on the DVD.
Mel Gibson's The Patriot was guilty of exaggerating British atrocities during the American Revolutionary War whilst downplaying similar actions from the American side to non-existence. The original inspiration for the main character, notably, was in the habit of raping native American women, torturing loyalist civilians (speaking of which, you never see this near-third of the population of the Thirteen Colonies in American media on the revolution ever), and stringing up British prisoners with their hands and feet cut off. This is hardly even handed.
The 2005 movie Casanova (set in 18th century Venice) features an emancipated female scientist, who writes books and, as it seems, invented the hot-air balloon. (Though although the character is fictional, Emilie du Chatelet, Voltaire's mistress, is an example of a real person like this, whose writings included the definitive French translation of Newton's Principia).
Even if anti-fur groups were around at the time The Road To Wellville took place, did they really act like rabid PETA members?
Parodied in Thank You For Smoking, when Senator Finistre tries to have cigarettes in old movies digitally replaced with candy canes, etc.
Averted, surprisingly, in The Haunted Mansion. The hauntings are started when the butler kills the head of the family's bride-to-be the night before the wedding, to prevent the intolerable scandal of a mixed wedding. Very appropriate and realistic for the Reconstruction-era South, but astonishing to see in a Disney film. You might notice, though, that they carefully avoided mentioning her race as a factor. The only thing the butler explicitly said was that it was a scandal because he was marrying beneath his station, as he would have if she were just a white servant.
Also averted in the book and film of Holes- one (Caucasian) character in the back story, Catherine Barlow, goes from demure schoolmarm to the bandit "Kissing Kate Barlow" after a Freak Out when the love of her life, who is black, is lynched.
Although A Knights Tale features a heaping helping of Anachronism Stew, the female armorer is not a part of it. Wives of tradesmen often helped their husbands work the family business, and widows were allowed to carry on their husband's business themselves. The alternative was often starvation. In the film, the woman mentions that she is the widow of an armorer.
Inverted in Mulan, of all the surprising places. In the original Chinese folktale, Mulan is an almost all-powerful figure who gets away with practically everything, despite being a woman—this in a time where being a girl was not so very much fun. In the Disney version, the simple repercussions of her merely being female are treated more seriously. For example, in the original story, when she reveals herself to be a woman, everyone in the army is totally cool with it. In the Disney Animated Canon version? She is automatically declared a traitor, is only spared death because the army captain Owes Her His Life, and is abandoned in the mountains to meet whatever fate may come to her despite the fact that she's injured. Mulan 2, however, plays it straight when Mulan goes on a crusade against arranged marriage. Well, she was by then a famed war hero. Granted, traditions and societies are very resistant to change, especially in a country as all-fired huge as China.
Some viewers mistakenly accuse Hollywoodland of this trope, due to the presence of black patrons in an upper-class Hollywood restaurant in the 1950s. On the commentary, however, the director defends this, saying that in the 50s these restaurants were not segregated, and a number of popular Jazz musicians did frequent them.
A weird in-universe example occurs in the movie CSA Confederate States Of America, where the South won the American Civil War. After the war ends there's a strong effort to repaint the North as misguided, with the issue of slavery swept under the rug. As the announcer put it, "The Civil War became civil".
Nearly all films set in any time in history prior to the 20th century depict the (noble) characters with far better hygiene than they realistically would have had. You never see greasy hair on anyone, and only peasants/poor people are noticeably dirty. This is particularly egregious among movies set it the Renaissance, possibly one of the dirtiest periods in all of history, even more so than the Middle Ages. Hair is always clean and shiny, complexions very rarely blemished unless part of a character's backstory involves a bout with smallpox (and even then the pockmarks are downplayed, and not nearly as disfiguring as they often were in reality. And nearly all of them have perfect teeth, because Beauty Equals Goodness; in general only evil characters will have bad teeth, or a select few poor people chosen to be Hollywood Homely.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was incredibly progresive for his time, advocating interracial marriages and the women's suffrage, in a time when both were borderline illegal and even talking about them with out showing signs of repulse would very likely lead to social suicide, but similar to Uncle Toms Cabin, A Scandal in Bohemia has been misinterpreted now a days by stupid and easily offended people as being denigrating towards woman, because it shows the Woman who is able to outwit a man as someone remarkable (never mind that man was Sherlock Freaking Holmes). So for the 2009 movie Irene Adler went from the only woman able to outwit Holmes (four unnamed men are also mentioned in the books) to the only Person to be able to outwit Holmes.

Literature

As a genre, historical mysteries (and to an extent historical fiction in general) often has some amount of this in order to keep the character sympathetic. There is definitely a continuum of this though. On one end, the title character of Cadfael is one of the most kind and humane characters imaginable and in one book/episode reacts tolerantly toward a couple who had sex in a church. On the other end, Judge Dee is a polygamist who in keeping with the justice system of the time uses beatings and torture in interrogation and sentences people to horrific forms of death. However, he is notably pragmatic about using these methods and the author likely understood that any more descriptions of torture would lose the Judge the reader's sympathy. In all fairness medieval secular mores were rather more relaxed then those preached by the church, and Cadfael came late to his vocation. And Judge Dee hates having to watch the executions, which makes it simple to avoid too much description.
Kristina: The Girl King- It is about Queen Christina of Sweden, written as if it were her diary. While it does mention the fact that she was more boyish than most and rejected the female stereotypes of the time, it neglects to acknowledge her quite probable lesbianism, occasional transvesticism to impress her father, who wanted a son, or the speculation that she was intersex by her contemporaries.
Parodied in Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States. A couple pages into Chapter Four: The Colonies Develop A Life-style, the Lemony Narrators interrupt the action to notify the readers that "a review committee... has determined that, so far, this history book is not making enough of an effort to include the contributions of women and minority groups. Unless some effort is undertaken to correct this situation, this book will not be approved for purchase by public school systems in absolutely vast quantities." Whereupon the narrators/authors "just now remembered... that during the colonial era women and minority groups were making many contributions, which we are certain that they will continue to do at regularly spaced intervals throughout the course of this book." Spoiler: They do... whenever the narrative remembers to mention it, anyway.
In the young adult book After, the school slowly starts to try to brainwash the students. One of the protagonist's friends points out that the documentary playing on the bus that day is on World War II, and was stating that the atom bombs were dropped on Japanese wilderness areas. He says something along the lines of, "Even I know that's not right."

Live Action TV

Hercules, as portrayed in Hercules The Legendary Journeys, expresses a belief in freedom of the press some 3000 years before the concept arose in the Western world, part of the show's unashamed Anachronism Stew.
Hogan's Heroes showed anachronistic ethnic equality views by characters. The only time it's even referenced is when Carter innocently asks why Sgt. Kinchloe can't disguise himself as a German officer—as answer, Kinch simply points at his (black) face and rolls his eyes. This may be excused by the idea that being in prison together forces them to ignore such issues to fight the larger enemy, and that the group has very strong unity. No excuse for most German characters not thinking much of Kinchloe's ethnicity, though.
- In Happy Days, Fonzie— an Italian-thug stereotype— is naturally friends with an African-American teen as a drummer for Richie's band, as Fonzie reveals himself to be so "cool" that he's color-blind. This was an obvious Aesop to show the intolerance of the 1950's Milwaukee WASP community, as nobody comes to Richie's party because they have a black drummer. In reality, however, there was typically much greater tension between minority groups than between white people and minorities; and so Fonzie would have probably been even more intolerant than the rest.
- Likewise, Howard Cunningham is revealed to be "old army-buddies" with an African-American, in order to spark even more 1950's WASP-black conflict when an African-American is not only present, but also a house-guest to the Cunninghams as an Aesop; supposedly, wise Howard Cunningham is also color-blind "from his association in the army—" despite that he was an army cook in WWII, throughout which segregation remained official army-policy.
Brought up in-universe in one episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Sisko doesn't like Vic's casino program because it's set in a Politically Correct History version of 1961, and that making it as such is an insult to the those oppressed in the era it is set. He points out that at that time African-Americans could be janitors or entertainers for the casino, never customers. Another character simply points out to Sisko that whatever the faults of an actual 1961 casino might have been, the holocharacter Vic and his program/joint don't deserve to suffer.
- This may have been a minor Lampshade Hanging; Vic's casino program wasn't the first sanitized holodeck period piece in Trek, nor the last.
- Rather brutally subverted in "Far Beyond The Stars", which attempts to deal rather accurately with race issues in the 1950's—bringing up the Negro Leagues, how a sci-fi magazine doesn't let readers know a black man and a woman write for them, and includes the only usage of the word "nigger" in the entire Trek mythos.
The CBC Mockumentary Jimmy MacDonald's Canada, despite being about a 1960s-era conservative pundit with pseudo-fascist views on children's hockey, never has him make any ethnic slurs, beyond a dismissive reference to Italians. The character probably is a monstrous racist, but it wouldn't be very funny to present.
Flashbacks in the second episode of New Amsterdam portray a white man and a black woman having an affair in the early 1940s. To its credit, the show does acknowledge that this would have been viewed unfavorably in that time and they are very careful about keeping it quiet.
Sometimes-averted-sometimes-not in M*A*S*H. Black people are referred to by the historically-correct term "negroes" on the show, even by the good guys. However, later episodes gave Major Houlihan second-wave feminist views, even though the show is set over ten years before The Feminine Mystique was first published. You could chalk this up to Houlihan being ahead of her time, except the episode "Inga", written by Alan Alda as a love letter to the feminist movement, seems to have all the characters acting as though the 1970s womens' movement already happened, breaking any illusion that the show is really set in the early 1950s. (That episode won an Emmy, of course.) There's also the black Dr. Jones, who was Brother Chucked halfway through the first season when the producers found out no black doctors served in the Korean War. However, it was played as a joke that he was nicknamed "Spearchucker" thanks to his football skills. He was nicknamed "Spearchucker" because he threw the javelin in college. Of course, it was also tongue in cheek, in that everyone knew it also had racial connotations. In another episode, Hawkeye permanently turns down imminent sex with a beautiful woman, because she complains about "those gooks (Koreans) marrying our (white) people." He gives her a speech as well. In another episode, Hawkeye "schools" a redneck soldier who complains about getting a transfusion of "black blood," by painting him brown and claiming that he ordered watermelon for dinner etc.
The BBC's Robin Hood. Tuck is black, and isn't a Friar.
Borderline exception: Jeeves And Wooster, set in The Roaring Twenties, has a fairly inoffensive plot involving blackface minstrels, as Jeeves observes that the tradition "started on American plantations, where the slaves would supposedly play music to express joy at their lot. An unlikely contingency."
- While in New York, most black people encountered are, however, either poorly paid elevator operators or jazz musicians. The world is still somewhat racist, but none of the characters express any prejudice on the subject, mostly because that wouldn't be funny. It also, alas, features Wooster 'blacked up' to impersonate an African tribal chief, complete with pidgin English. Of course, when the actual chief shows up, he speaks perfect English and went to an English public school (which is what the English call their private schools) - as was fairly common at the time (indeed, Gandhi was a London-trained lawyer).
  - Not sure where the 'alas' comes in, since that sounds like a great Take That at racial stereotyping. Maybe from Bertie's assumption that it had to be pidgin English. Of course, as Jeeves said once about Bertie, "Mentally he is negligible - quite negligible."

Table Top RPG

Theater

Video Games

Much of the background story of the first Gabriel Knight game involves American pilgrims raiding an African village for slaves. This is hardly what happened in those times; in most cases, slaves were bought from African slavers, who had them on sale as spoils of tribal strife.
- The Marvel Storm miniseries also has a White Slaver character, probably believing that White Men Are Bad is an acceptable substitute for the more complex history of African slavery. See: Viewers Are Morons.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater introduces The Boss, a female World War II combat vet who personally led her own unit, the Cobras. But considering the fact she was the child of a member of the Ancient Conspiracy...
- Granted, her unit does consist of a dude who's COVERED IN BEES (sorry), a dude who thinks he's a lizard so much he has somehow gotten lizard powers, a hundred-year-old photosynthetic sniper using a rifle modified to fire tranquilizer darts, and a pyromaniac cosmonaut. The Boss is the most normal person in the group, at least besides the extreme badassness.
- There's also an in-world example in the first game, where Master Miller (who's really Liquid Snake) identifies Naomi Hunter as a fraud because of her family's inconsistent history: Naomi claims her Japanese-born uncle was a member of the FBI in the fifties, but Miller later points out that Edgar Hoover, a well-known racist and head of the FBI at the time, wouldn't have allowed him in the bureau.
- This troper knew something was up when she said her Japanese uncle was undercover in the (Italian) New York Mafia.
- It was averted when Naked Snake talked to Sigint and found out that despite the fact that Sigint's a genius, only Zero would hire him because he was black.
In Operation Darkness, K Company, 1st Platoon, or the "Wolf Pack", allows women into front line roles — something that isn't allowed even in the modern British Army, and which would be wildly anachronistic for the World War II setting of the game. Somewhat justified by the unusual nature of K Company, 1st Platoon — the British Army doesn't traditionally allow werewolves or Mad Scientists to act in front line roles, either — and Lampshaded when Jude assumes that because he's being transferred to a unit containing a woman, he's thus being moved off the front lines.
- Also note the regulations are that women can't serve in roles that involve them "engage and close with enemy" - ergo they cannot serve as infantry, cavalry or armour (the combat arm units). However, this does not stop them serving with said units in other capacity (e.g. medics, intelligence, logistics, support). Interestingly, as Special Forces falls out of the traditional hierarchy and are not covered by this rule. Although the SAS, SBS, and SFSG don't allow women, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, which engages in Special Forces intelligence operations, does. Ergo, if the unit was considered Special Forces, there would be nothing in the main army regulations stopping them admitting women.
Pirates Of The Burning Sea provides equal male and female options for all factions. There's absolutely no way a woman would have been able to openly serve in the French, British, or Spanish navies of the time — women have long been considered unlucky to have aboard ships, and would have been considered too timid, flighty, and incompetent to serve in the military. Pirates were less traditionalist, and there were indeed some female pirates known to history... but they tended to try to pass as male — in addition to the issue with "women are bad luck", female clothes of the period were highly impractical, and it was generally not a good idea to be visibly the only woman in a crew full of rowdy sailors who have been on the sea too long.
One can't forget Sid Meier's Colonization with no mention of slavery, on which much of the New World was founded, whatsoever.
- The remake averts, although it is only gameplay significant when it comes the constitution's choices: the only difference between slavery and freedom is whether one takes increased natural resource gathering or new population respectively.

Western Animation

Subverted in the 90s X-men cartoon, where a time traveling Storm is told she is not welcome in the restaurant. At first, she thinks its because she is a mutant, then she says that discrimination by race is almost quaint.
An episode of Justice League Unlimited featured Batman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern chasing a Mad Scientist back to the Wild West, where they disguised themselves as law enforcers. Nobody they met saw anything odd about a woman or a black man as a lawperson.
- However, the only people they tried that 'we're lawmen from Back East' story on were so desperate for help that they'd have pretended to accept damn near anything. Also, Jonah Hex had prior experience with time travelers. Besides, you'd think that seeing Green Lantern's power ring in action, or Wonder Woman's flight and strength, would have been odder sights for Old West gunslingers than their race or gender.
- An earlier episode, "Legends," before the series changed names, had the League follow a villain inside an in-show comic book and pair up with equivalents of the Justice Society Of America, who were of course still in the Golden Age of comics mentally. The Chick invites Hawkgirl to help cook. And when Green Lantern's childhood hero complimented him with "You're a credit to your people, son!", Green Lantern could only reply, "Uh... yeah." It was an incredibly subtle bit of animation where you could see John's thoughts written all over his face... he obviously knew that the other man wasn't trying to be insulting, he just came from an era where statements like that probably were the equivalent of being racially sensitive. (The fact that the present day Green Lantern did not meet an actual Golden Age DC superhero but the equivalent enabled the script to get away with more. Actually, an earlier draft of the script had just that scenario, but you tend to think that DC Comics might have a problem with any incarnation of one of their superheroes portrayed as a racist.)
- A more subtle example comes from the three-parter "Savage Time", where a depowered Green Lantern meets up with a crack army squad and joins up with them on the strength of his Marine training. Except that back then, Blacks weren't allowed to join the Marines—something the soldiers might have noticed or cared about if they weren't so busy fighting ridiculous futuristic war wheels. There's also the fact that when he actually met them, he was still wearing his Green Lantern uniform. It's highly doubtful they actually thought he was just some stranded Marine, but were just a very practical lot who didn't care as long as he could keep up and shoot a rifle. The Allied forces also have been witnessing and cooperating with the Justice League for the entire time since the team entered the time period. The platoon leader even mentions that he'd seen GL fighting the giant-ass wheel tanks with his super-powered ring. This troper recalls Sgt. Rock being decidedly skeptical when GL claims to having been a Marine.
- It's probably worth mentioning that historically there were black lawmen, at least from 1875. They just tend to get left out of Hollywood History. There were also a lot of black cowboys (some historians reckon 15 per cent of the total on average and as high as 25% in some states), who also tend not to show up on screen.
  - A pretty wide portion of cowboys were black or Hispanic — most historians put it at 30% of the total number of cowboys out there. Given that it was a very poor-paying and risky job usually devoted to the lower social classes, this could be a bit of Politically Correct History of its own. Female cattlehands were rare, but weren't unknown or odd enough to garner strange looks. The Old West tended to care a lot less about race and gender than the rest of the continent, although it was still a matter of Values Dissonance compared to today.
- Oh, and a female field deputy marshall by 1898, with office deputies pretty common before then.
Sabrina: The Animated Series, "Witchery Science Theater": Your contributor found it interesting to say the least that no one in the B-grade movie that Sabrina and friends find themselves trapped in found Sabrina's Afro-American Secret Keeper best friend the least unusual. Then again, it's a kids' show...
Captain Planet, a time travel episode to World War II features Caucasian, Asian and African American soldiers all in the same company.
- It also features a handlebar mustached fuhrer, who while clearly intended to be Hitler, isn't. Strangest. Censorship. Ever.
The cartoon Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat has the Magistrate having three daughters and NO sons, and everyone not saying anything..in real life he would be pressured to keep trying for a son or take another wife...the Kingdom could NOT be passed down to girls! Also, in real life, no matter how dumb the Magistrate is, his wife wouldn't dare talk to him like she did (in a henpecking, almost bulling mother-like way) or she would be beheaded!
The 90s Fantastic Four cartoon had a Time Travel episode where the heroes are transported to ancient Greece during the battle of Marathon. The Thing asks whose side they're on and Reed Richards responds "the Persians were brutal tyrants while the Athenians invented democracy." While neither side was a bastion of liberty by today's standards, participation in Athenian democracy was denied to women, foreigners, and slaves (i.e., over two-thirds of the population) and the Athenians would demonstrate their imperial ambitions in the decades following the Greco-Persian War. Meanwhile, while the Persians were conquerors and slavers (as was much of the whole world at the time), they were conspicuous for how they tolerated the customs and institutions of the peoples they conquered, including helping the Jews rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, such that their cosmopolitan multiculturalism was greatly admired by Alexander the Great.

Real Life

Franklin D. Roosevelt went to sometimes-great lengths to hide his disability during his presidency; due to pressure from disability-rights groups one of the statues at the FDR Memorial depicts him in a wheelchair (modeled after one he actually used).
- Not as bad however as the movie Pearl Harbor that has him standing up out of his wheelchair in front of the press corps.
Helen Keller's childhood story is usually used as An Aesop embodying the American belief that anyone can do anything if they try. It's far more rare for these stories to acknowledge her outspoken socialist beliefs as an adult.
When history textbooks in American public schools discuss Dr. Martin Luther King, they only go up until his "I Have a Dream" speech, and then skip ahead several years to his assassination. In the years following the Civil Rights Act, King turned his attention to more "socialist" ideals. In fact, King's politics were so left-wing, J. Edgar Hoover was convinced that he was a communist, and was determined to discredit him both personally and professionally. The reason he was in Memphis in 1968 was to mediate a sanitation strike. The history books invariably mention only briefly that he was in Memphis "...to give a speech."
- Yeah, because being left wing was the only reason Hoover tried to ruin MLK. Not like like Hoover was a racist or anything.
- By the same token, people tend to forget Malcolm X's shift toward the right toward the end of his life. He began to take a more moderate viewpoint and separated himself from the Nation of Islam, something that many people believe got him killed.
  - Define "shift towards the right". After leaving the Nation of Islam, Malcolm had taken some time traveling around Asia, Africa and Europe. Reportedly returning with a more global perspective on racism and human rights problems. The following is among the 1965 phrases attributed to him prior to his assassination.: "[L]istening to leaders like Nasser, Ben Bella, and Nkrumah awakened me to the dangers of racism. I realized racism isn't just a black and white problem. It's brought bloodbaths to about every nation on earth at one time or another. Brother, remember the time that white college girl came into the restaurant—the one who wanted to help the [Black] Muslims and the whites get together—and I told her there wasn't a ghost of a chance and she went away crying? Well, I've lived to regret that incident. In many parts of the African continent I saw white students helping black people. Something like this kills a lot of argument. I did many things as a [Black] Muslim that I'm sorry for now. I was a zombie then—like all [Black] Muslims—I was hypnotized, pointed in a certain direction and told to march. Well, I guess a man's entitled to make a fool of himself if he's ready to pay the cost. It cost me 12 years. That was a bad scene, brother. The sickness and madness of those days—I'm glad to be free of them".
- One of King's mentors was Bayard Rustin (1912 - 1987). Rustin was raised a Quaker, became a Communist in 1936-1941 and an anti-Communist Socialist in the 1940s. During World War II, Rustin protested against racial discrimination in the armed forces and protected the property rights of Japanese Americans held in internment camps.He was among the founding members of the Congress of Racial Equality in 1942, "a pacifist organization based on the writings of Henry David Thoreau and modeled after Mohandas Gandhi's non-violent resistance". He spend time in 1944-1946 as a jailbird for organizing "protests against segregated dining facilities". Started the Journey of Reconciliation in 1947, a precursor of the 1960s Freedom Rides. Outed as a homosexual in the 1950s, he had to withdraw from the spotlight. He served as King's advisor from 1956 to 1960, advocating Gandhian tactics. He was fired because his known Communist past and open homosexuality put a question on King's morals. Returned to the spotlight in 1963 for helping organize the "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom". Only for Strom Thurmond, a senator, to publicly denounce him as a Communist, draft-dodger, and homosexual. Also implying that the man was King's lover. The latter allegation vehemently denied by both King and Rustin. In later years Rustin was a labor activist, anti-Vietnam War activist and gay rights activist. With such a mentor, King's socialist leanings were hardly a surprise.
In an attempt to justify what happened at Abu Ghraib, Bill O'Reilly actually said that at Malmédy, a group of US soldiers slaughtered their Nazi POWs (it was actually the other way around). When the angry letters came in, Fox doctored the transcript to change Malmédy to Normandy.
- Which is STILL wrong. The killing of some German POWs (specifically SS) was done by British and Canadians after the complete destruction of a Canadian unit.
While a majority of French citizens admit that colonial empires were not a good idea to begin with, some nostalgics of the colonial era still try to act as if the "positive aspects" outweighed the crimes, corruption, and abuses committed during this period. One French member of the National Assembly tried to change a law so that French schools would have to present history in a more "positive" light: it started a very big controversy and the law was eventually scrapped. Yet to this day, you can still find in France people who will claim with a straight face that the French army did not torture during the war of Algeria (even if French soldiers and officers admitted to have done so), that there was no raping of local women by French soldiers and officials during the colonial years (keep in mind that during the 19th century, state propaganda used "it's easy to have sex with the locals" as an argument to convince people to work for the colonial administration) and that the French colonial empire was nothing more than "the Care Bears go to Africa". Of course, if you keep in mind than more than 10% of the French citizenry comes from the former colonies, you can easily imagine that such claims are not well accepted by everyone.
Humorously, this can happen to individuals if they live long enough. Bertrand Russell, for instance. Though always a progressive in outlook, he several times had to disavow earlier political beliefs.
- There's the old anonymous statement, "Whoever reaches 20 without being a liberal has no heart; and whoever reaches 30 without being a conservative, has no brain." Russell just went in the opposite direction.
All of the editorial cartoons after Obama's election that depicted Abraham Lincoln congratulating him or crying with joy fall into this trope. Despite being anti-slavery, Lincoln would not be thrilled to have a black president. For example, he once said this:
"There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."
- He was also against interracial marriage, and "qualifying (African-Americans) to hold office".
- The jury is out on whether he actually believed this, or was merely stating it to appease. Bear in mind, Lincoln's goal was to save the union, not make progressive statements.
  - However, Lincoln also confessed that, if it would save the union, he would happily leave blacks bound in slavery.
- Reportedly, Lincoln changed his tune about African-Americans when he met Fredrick Douglass, who Lincoln sought advice from.
Depending on which Finn you ask, the war of 1918 was either an independence war to keep Finland from getting reannexed to Russia (which was being transformed into the Soviet Union due to their own civil war) or class warfare between rich land- and factory owners and poor workers. The mortality rate of the prisoners of war is also a sore spot.
- Also, the Winter War in 1939 and the Continuation War in 1941 was either caused by a False Flag Operation to secure Soviet Union's holdings (as defined by the Molotov-Ribbentrop deal) or an unprovoked attack by the fascist Finland. Officially the matter has been settled with Finland taking the blame according to the Paris Peace Treaty and President Yeltsin acknowledging that the Winter War was a war of aggression. However, nationalists on both sides still try to fan the flames.
The fate of a memorial to Soviet troops in Tallinn caused accusations of this to fly back and forth between Estonia and Russia.
Not sure how prevalent this is, but the schools this troper went to in England managed to carefully avoid ever mentioning the British Empire in history classes. It was quite bizarre. Empire? No no, Britain never had an empire or subjugated large chunks of the world. We were all on holiday! The only person who ever mentioned the colonies was my English teacher, and that's because he grew up in one.
- This troper agrees that the words 'British Empire' never actually turned up during his education, but it's definitely mentioned, if at least indirectly. American Slave history is essentially founded on it, both sides in WWI criticized the others flaws, and it's absence is apparently one of the reasons the Cold War is just America vs. Russia. I'll admit it's glossed over a bit though.
  - The impression I got from my history teacher, who was thorough enough in general that Tudor Irish policy (conquer the savages) was connected into the Troubles was that is was because everyone *knows* we had an Empire. It's why everyone hates us. It's embarrassing and reminds us of how crap we are now. It is pretty much only covered at A-level as an aside to how getting colonies was a great way of annoying France and Spain (sixteen and seventeenth centuries) or how we had to give the natives their countries back after the second world war (no mention of how we got other people's countries or what we did there beyond building a lot of train networks).
  - Just about every prominent nation has had an empire at some point in its history, but it's incredible how many people will still attack a particular country for having been imperialistic.
  - America suffers badly from this, to the point of being a Wall Banger.
  - The Insular Cases don't really qualify as an American Empire.
  - You don't have to be an Empire to conquer (just think about the Mexican-American war), and just because your forefathers were conquerors shouldn't mean you have to angst about it and make amends to the descendants of the conquered. Unfortunately, this isn't the idea history books seem to have - they either beat it over our heads that we are OMG EVIL and we should PAY, or avoid acknowledging past evils all together - it's a disservice to the schoolkids.
  - The minute you start imposing your will on other nations and dictating their foreign policy, you become an empire. It's the definition.
  - Actually, the definition is "an aggregate of peoples and territories, often of great extent, under the rule of a single person, oligarchy, or sovereign state".
  - It would also raise an obvious question when and how the British Empire suddenly ceased to be so Empire-ish.
This troper, having spoken to a man who married a woman born and raised in Japan and brought her to the states, found out that Japan doesn't teach its children about the various atrocities committed by Japan during World War 2. Incidents like the Bridge on the River Kwai, and the Rape of Nanking are completely absent from Japanese textbooks. In fact, apparently Japanese children are taught that the opening volleys of World War Two was the bombing of HIROSHIMA!!
- The Japanese government refusing to acknowledge most of this is still a sore spot in China and Korea.
- This actually serves as Godzilla's motive in the movie "Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monster All-Out-Attack". The spirits of all those that died in the Pacific conflict want to destroy the modern Japanese culture for trying to forget what happened and use a demonic Godzilla as their vessel.
- So Japanese kids don't have to learn about their forebears' atrocities, eh? Lucky bastards. Imagine how radically different the tone of our culture would be now if we had done that in the U.S.....
  - Considering the fact that the Japanese far-right is willing to commit murder over the appearance of possible disrespect to Japan's Emperor and is really quite okay with the idea of conquering Asia again, I doubt that an equivalent American result would be pretty. Or healthy, even.
Swedish history classes are somewhat peculiar when it comes to WWII. While most of the high school years are dedicated to the horrors of the Holocaust, the horrific war on the continent, and the dramatic happenings in our neighbouring countries, Sweden's part of the war is usually just touched on in a sentence or two, and it's easy to see why. While Finland fought quite successfully against the Soviet Union, the occupied Denmark managed to subvert a lot of prosecution against the Jews, and Norway got occupied only after a betrayal by a fascist local leader, Sweden spent the entire war trading with the Nazis, hushing any voices raised against them in a great propaganda campaign, and even sending back some of the Norwegian refugees. So Yeah...
Averted (mostly) in Australia. Having such a young (less than 300 years) White History, a big chunk of Australian history is dedicated to pre-settlement (usually a mixture of the most common Aboriginal mythologies and what historians and archaeologists have pieced together). At the same time, another prominent portion of Modern Australian history concerns the "Stolen Generation" and general mistreatment of the Natives.
- This troper distinctly remembers going through 12 years of history lessons centered on pre-settlement Aboriginal cultures, Captain Cook, the ANZA Cs at Gallipoli and "Let's be honest, everywhere else is far more interesting." Whether it's to too shameful to talk about the "Stolen Generation" and other atrocities committed against Aborigines throughout Australian history, let alone teach it to anyone below Undergraduate history majors is a perennial hot-button issue in the newspapers, which is the only way most people find out the gory details anyway.
One tends to find the views on a nation's own history as reflected in its school syllabus are generally coloured by how long ago it happened, how noisy the other side got, who won and whether they ever apologised. When it comes to indigenous peoples and colonisation, though...