Conservatives who enjoy labeling liberals as snowflakes appear to be reversing course and embracing their fears that a discussion of cultural or historical realities could, God forbid, make them or their children uncomfortable. Speaking for myself, the most important lessons I’ve learned regarding life arrived when it confronted me with inconvenient truths that left me feeling very uncomfortable. Whenever encountering romantic, professional, educational or political disappointments, it has usually been facing the embarrassment of my own poor judgment or my embrace of the poor judgments of others that have proven most humiliating.

Though it may, indeed, be human to make mistakes, the repetition or ignorance of personal and cultural shortcomings are a question of choice. Thirty years ago, I had an opportunity to work with several Native American tribes in New Mexico. Like, I suspect, most American Boomers, the history I was exposed to in public schools emphasized the virtues of the pioneer spirit that conquered the western frontier. If indigenous tribes were mentioned, it was only to note that Native Americans were displaced by the advancing tide of European settlers. Occasionally, it was circumspectly suggested they had been treated poorly.

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When I determined to educate myself about this history, I discovered the truth involved an uninterrupted century of abysmal mistreatment of the first Americans. They were slaughtered, betrayed, forced from their homes and eventually confined to reservations. Measles, smallpox and other diseases also decimated their numbers. The “smallpox blanket” vector of deliberate infection is not a myth. Even today, the Supreme Court still wrestles with the just enforcement of treaty promises made more than a century in our past that we have ignored. This failure leaves me uncomfortable. My grandchildren should not have to discover this history on their own. It’s a story that belongs in our classrooms.

The history of African-American enslavement encompasses equally appalling horrors. There were Hudsons in my family who operated plantations on the eastern shore of Maryland when the Revolutionary War broke out. They owned slaves. Because they aligned themselves with the Tories, defending British rule, they lost all their properties, including their slaves. They then migrated to Kentucky. Re-settled, they acquired more slaves and fought for the Confederacy. This family story also makes me uncomfortable, even ashamed.

The Hudsons once again lost most of their holdings and set out for the American west arriving in Santa Fe. I’ve made a point of telling this history to my grandchildren, not necessarily to embarrass them (although I hope they were at least a little uncomfortable) but to make them fully aware of their heritage – the dishonorable together with the admirable.

I grew up during the Civil Rights turmoil of the 1950s and 1960s. I watched police dogs turned loose on black Americans who were only demanding their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote. I watched U.S. Airborne troops protecting the “Little Rock Nine” from rocks and bottles thrown at them by white parents trying to prevent them from attending a public high school. Civil rights protestors were repeatedly assassinated. Young girls were killed on a Sunday morning by a bomb planted beneath their church pew. All this made me uncomfortable and deeply embarrassed as a teenager.

Because of their presence in the daily news, we learned at school about the Klu Klux Klan and its history of violent harassment towards Jews, Catholics and Irish immigrants. Both my English grandfathers were estranged from their parents for marrying Irish girls. Hiding this history is a greater abuse of kids than sharing the truth with them.

Oliver Otis Howard, an ordained minister known as God’s General, was appointed by Ulysses Grant to lead the Freedmen’s Bureau following the Civil War. He was also my grandfather’s uncle. He founded both Howard University and Gallaudet College for the deaf in Washington, D.C. Yet, following the collapse of reconstruction, “O. O.” Howard returned to uniform in order to lead buffalo soldiers during the so-called Indian Wars along the American frontier. It’s possible to feel both pride and shame in his actions. Considering his biography does not make me uncomfortable. I can accept he was a man of his time who accomplished great things yet also committed great crimes.

What does make me uncomfortable are repeated reports of mostly black and Hispanic prisoners released from jail – not because they completed their sentences – but because DNA testing has cleared them of any criminal guilt. Originally sentenced to life terms due to wrongful convictions pursued by prosecutors that often knew they had the wrong man or woman, they were robbed off gainful lives. Usually decades have been lost.

The recent “Parents Rights” movement attempting to curtail public school instruction by forbidding the discussion of facts students might find uncomfortable and banning textbooks or closing libraries to suppress ideas that challenge parents’ preconceptions is a backdoor scheme for imposing minority rule over our schoolrooms. The natural ferment of democracy inherently presses towards expanded rights – currently for women, gays and trans Americans. Achieving equitable treatment for black, brown and indigenous rights remains a battle not yet won. A deliberate, intentional refusal to teach that history should make every parent uncomfortable.

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former Colorado legislator.