The average Black person in America knows the name Adolf Hitler.

But how many know the name King Leopold II?

That question matters.

We are taught to recognize Hitler as one of history’s great symbols of evil. And that history should be known. The Holocaust was real. The suffering was real. The murder of millions of Jewish people and others under Nazi rule was one of the most horrific crimes in modern history.

But the question is not whether Hitler was evil.

The question is why Black people are taught so much about Hitler while many are taught almost nothing about King Leopold II and what happened in the Congo.

Under Leopold’s rule, the Congo was exploited with extreme violence, forced labor, mutilation, terror, and mass death. African people were treated as tools for rubber, ivory, wealth, and empire. Families were destroyed. Villages were brutalized. Bodies were broken. A people were violated for profit.

Yet in the Western world, this history is often treated as a footnote.

Black children can graduate from school knowing Hitler, Nazi Germany, and World War II, but never fully learning what European colonial powers did to Africa. They may know concentration camps in Europe, but not rubber terror in the Congo. They may know the suffering of European groups, but not the scale of suffering inflicted on African people by European empire.

That is not an accident.

A people can be controlled by what they are taught to remember and what they are trained to forget.

The issue is not that Jewish suffering is discussed too much. The issue is that African suffering is discussed too little. The problem is not remembrance. The problem is selective remembrance.

When the pain of others is made central, but the pain of Black people is made invisible, Black people are trained to see themselves as spectators in history instead of victims, survivors, builders, and witnesses of their own history.

We are told to mourn what happened in Europe, but not taught to fully understand what happened in Africa.

We are told to recognize Hitler, but not Leopold.

We are told to study Nazi racism, but not Belgian colonial terror.

We are told to never forget one genocide, while being allowed to forget the destruction of millions of African lives.

That imbalance creates confusion. It teaches Black people to carry the memory of other people’s suffering while remaining disconnected from their own.

The Allegiance teaches that knowledge of self requires historical balance. We do not deny the suffering of any people. We do not need to erase one tragedy to tell the truth about another. But we refuse to live in a world where Black suffering is minimized, hidden, softened, or treated as less important.

King Leopold II should be known.

The Congo should be taught.

Colonial violence should be remembered.

African suffering should not be buried under Western priorities.

If Black people are expected to know Hitler, then Black people must also know Leopold.

Because a man who does not know what was done to his people will not fully understand the systems that still shape his condition today.

We are not studying history to hate.

We are studying history to wake up.