President John Dramani Mahama has raised concerns over what he describes as a growing trend of erasing African history and Black experiences from global narratives, warning that such actions undermine truth and perpetuate injustice.
Speaking at a high-level event at the United Nations on reparatory justice, the former president pointed to developments in the United States, where Black history courses are reportedly being removed from school curricula.
According to him, some schools have been directed to scale back teaching on slavery, segregation, and systemic racism, while books on these subjects are increasingly being banned in public institutions.
Mahama cautioned that this pattern reflects a deeper, more dangerous phenomenon—what he described as the manipulation of language to distort historical truth.
“Erasure begins with language, when words are used as a sleight of hand to gaslight and to make people doubt what they know to be true,” he said.
He warned that such practices risk normalising historical amnesia, drawing parallels with the transatlantic slave trade era, where legal and social systems were used to dehumanise Africans.
Mahama stressed that confronting these distortions is critical to achieving meaningful reparatory justice, urging the international community to actively preserve historical memory.
He further called on the United Nations and its member states to ensure that education systems and public discourse reflect accurate accounts of history, rather than “sanitised versions” that diminish the suffering and contributions of African people.
