The student news website of Omaha Central High School

Current educational map encourages white supremacy

December 11, 2017

For the past 500 years, Americans have been paying the government (in the form of taxes) to teach ideals of white supremacy to their children. In the education system, certain curriculum is grossly under-researched, therefore causing a simple geography lesson to take a turn for the worse when the topic of maps is introduced.
Maps are, for obvious reasons, an integral part of geography. Unfortunately, however, every mapmaker in the history of cartography (the science of mapmaking,) has suffered the pain of being inaccurate. Due to the Earth’s relatively spherical shape, transferring the features of the globe onto a flat surface with complete accuracy is mathematically impossible.
Because of this predicament, every map is slightly distorted. Different shapes of maps (for example, rectangular, circular, or other various shapes) create different types of distortions. These can occur in the forms of distorted shape, size, direction, and area of the continents. Due to these inconsistencies, no map is completely accurate.
For the past five centuries, schools around the world have utilized the Mercator projection of the world map. This is most likely because it doesn’t distort the shapes of countries, and it assumes a practical rectangular format.
Despite its undeniable advantages, the Mercator projection grossly distorts size by a significant margin. It substantially enlarges the countries and continents that are near the poles. For example, Greenland is displayed as slightly larger than Africa. In reality, however, Africa is almost 14 times bigger than Greenland.
In addition, Europe is drawn considerably larger than South America, but in fact, South America is almost twice the size of Europe.
Unfortunately, these aforementioned discrepancies are not the most concerning consequences of using the Mercator projection. These size-related errors are also presumed to advocate racist ideologies.
The Mercator projection enlarges the Northern Hemisphere (which houses predominantly white countries,) while the sizes of countries in the Southern Hemisphere are significantly reduced. Coincidentally, the countries that are magnified are predominantly white and more developed, while the countries that are reduced are predominantly non-white countries.
Psychologists have discovered that, especially from a young age, humans tend to associate bigger size with importance and power. Thus, the Mercator projection creates the illusion that predominantly white countries are superior because they are displayed as larger than non-white nations. This contributes to the “third-world mentality” that is extremely common in modern forms of racism. And most shockingly, this mindset can be instilled in young children as soon as they are introduced to geography.
From an early age, students grow up believing in European/North American bias and ethnic inferiority. Because of this fallacy, the educational system should be motivated to select a different projection of the world map as their default, in order to create an accepting and welcoming environment for people of all backgrounds.
Nevertheless, schools are reluctant to change the default map, because they are worried about “adjustment issues.” These “adjustment issues” still should not deter leaders in the education system from attempting to eliminate potential racial tensions that originate from biased curriculum.
While the transition to a new map projection might be tedious, there is an obvious alternative: a globe. Maps will always experience distortion; a globe is completely accurate. For the past five centuries, the education system could have avoided utilizing a flawed map in favor of this more authentic, ethnically inclusive substitute.
America’s education system has changed to, for the most part, promoting a welcoming setting. Therefore, the Mercator projection should not be used because it contradicts the fundamental American value of equality.

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