Completely irrelevant. The point is to improve the world we live in. To redress mistakes we're presently feeling the effects of. Not to punish every historical error.
Steven Pinker makes a way better argument in his latest two books than I could in a HN comment about why this stuff is nowhere near "completely irrelevant" if you genuinely care about bettering the world and resolving secular wrongs. By and large, squabbling about what this or that minority ethnicity might have suffered at some time in the past is very much part of the problem, not the solution.
The parent is responding to context that you set yourself:
> Trying to teach kids accurate history of deplorable things done by some people's ancestors is just teaching accurate history.
Specifically, the parent is noting that “the DEI folks” (or whatever descriptor you might prefer) are only interested in teaching about the dark history of “some people”, but there are atrocities committed among every sufficiently large people group.
That's not true and and it's not relevant. Teaching history is teaching history. The DEI camp want to improve the world in which we currently live. That it's due to historical injustice is beside the point. The two things are unrelated.
Feel free to support your claim. In the meanwhile, it's both true and relevant.
> Teaching history is teaching history
Yes, but 1619 != history.
> The DEI camp want to improve the world in which we currently live.
Perhaps their intent is noble, but they seem to have been counterproductive. First of all, DEI programs don't actually work, and this is pretty widely accepted[0][1][2][3][4]. Secondly, broader woke identity politics are not merely ineffective at reducing right-wing identity politics, they are driving them. Since left-wing identity politics became mainstream, right-wing identity politics moved from the fringe to a mainstream position. Right-wing identity politics moved from the margins in 2010 to a pretty popular position among Republicans. Right-wing hate groups have increased in number and brazenness. And by the way, liberals were sounding the alarm that this would be the consequence of going all-in on left-wing illiberalism--there was obviously no way that reducing everyone to their skin color was ever going to do anything other than increasing a right-wing white identity.
