What the Tiananmen Square Massacre Taught me about the U.S. by Fatoumata

What the Tiananmen Square Massacre Taught me about the U.S. by Fatoumata - July 2021 Scholarship Essay

When I was in my sophomore year of high school I took an A.P. World History Class. All my life I've always had a passion for history. Learning about the history of different cultures and peoples helped me feel connected to everyone, and overall made me a more educated and progressive individual. In my middle school years, I made it my mission to learn as much as I could about history due to my school not having a good history curriculum. When I came into class and read textbooks that didn’t align with the events that took place it sparked a fire in me. I knew I couldn’t change the curriculum or change my school’s history textbooks, but I knew I could do something, and that was to educate myself.
I started by watching history-related movies, and TV shows on Netflix then expanded to history YouTube channels, textbooks, and articles. To me, history felt like a long story, the story of life, the story of me and you, and the story of the world. But, I knew deep down self-studying could only take me so far so I made a change. In my last year of middle school, my mother suggested to me the idea of boarding school. I thought it was a ludicrous idea because of the misconceptions portrayed in the media about boarding school, so I researched. One day, I came upon the history department's page on the website of a boarding school in my area. This school didn’t only offer U.S. history for five years like my previous school. It offered: Women's History, World History, Ancient World, and much more all taught by teachers with at least their master's degrees. That’s when I knew that my current school was the right school for me.
In my freshman year, I absorbed as much knowledge as I could, and became the top student in my class. Later, I became the only student of color in my A.P. World History class sophomore year. A.P. World History was completely different from Ancient World History. It was all of history from 1200 till now. Though it is hard to pinpoint the most unexpected thing I learned from this course since for the most part, almost everything was unexpected; it would be the Massacre of Tiananmen Square.
The Tiananmen Square Massacre was a horrible event that took place in Tiananmen square. It is believed that up to 10 thousand people were killed. The Tiananmen Square protests started after the death of an important Chinese leader who was in favor of democracy. Young students (college-aged) protested in favor of democracy and reforms to change China’s government to have democratic values. These protests were large, and even when China issued a curfew to stop the protests the students ignored it, and eventually, the attack of Tiananmen Square occurred. Although China denies these events happened many lives were lost the morning of that attack. People were shot, rolled over, and the statue of goddess liberty made of Styrofoam that was the symbol of the protest was destroyed as well.
Though this may not be the saddest event I've learned about in A.P. World History it was one of the most surprising and still sticks with me to this day. I draw comparisons to the Black lives matter protests and protect Asian lives protests going on in America today, and at the time of me learning this information. The Massacre of Tiananmen Square has taught me that even though America has its fair share of problems we are united by the democracy that we all share as well as our rights such as the first and 15th Amendments. We as the American people should unite and stop the cycle of hate that we have created in this country for ourselves, and future generations.