Instead of showing slavery as a foundational economic and social system that shaped the entire U.S., textbooks often treat it as an isolated, temporary "problem" that was eventually solved.

Loewen identifies several ways textbooks "lie" by misrepresenting the nature of historical change:

He is portrayed as a visionary for world peace (the League of Nations) but his record of intense racism and the re-segregation of the federal government is frequently omitted. Key Thematic Distortions