Throughout On Juneteenth, Gordon-Reed emphasizes that US and Texas education play an integral role in indoctrinating students with certain ideas about the past. She points out inclusions, omissions, and the reasons for both, demonstrating that what is included in and what is left out of taught historical narratives work in tandem to produce and perpetuate historical narratives that give people a manufactured sense of themselves in the present. She provides several examples of historical narratives that are taught in school settings alongside other significant stories and details that add to their complexity but are nonetheless excluded from history classes. Her main point is that the production and perpetuation of sanitized narratives diminishes the complexity of past events and peoples that would produce a richer analysis and interpretation of the past and therefore understanding of the present. 

In Chapter 5, Gordon-Reed notes that although people of the past were deeply concerned about race and race relations, as evidenced by historical archives, there has been a concerted effort to de-emphasize the role of race and racism in the development of the United States. She points to the evasion of race in the historical narratives of school textbooks as a primary example of this concerted effort (107).