The purpose of history is to explain how things got to be the way they are today. It is not to create a laundry list of "marginalized groups" grievances, which is pretty much how it is being taught now.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the point you're making, but I don't see how the grievances of marginalized groups are separable from an explanation of "how things got to be the way they are today." Rather, they are absolutely critical to that explanation.
See, this is the reaction to any kind of critique of how history is currently taught. No one is suggesting that there should be zero pages dedicated in history books to slavery or mistreatment of Native Americans. It's just that plenty of other things happened in the 18th/19th centuries that are also extremely important that young people today seem to have no knowledge of probably because they've been excised from history classes in favor of constant white guilt tripping.
And the question was if history should be taught from the "perspective of marginalized groups". I was being a bit diplomatic in my first response but to be clear I'll just throw political correctness to the wind and say "no". The important things to learn about slavery are the economic and political forces that led to its establishment and abolition, and how the handling of the abolition of slavery continues to impact our politics and society today. Anecdotes about slaves being abducted or whipped are certainly extremely sad but aren't of much particular value in an overall survey of American history. You could go into stuff like that in a university class specifically on slavery and in museums, but in a general American history class that is just supposed to give you the basics the impact slaver had as an overall institution is the more important subject since you have to cover 250 years of history in a limited time.
If you have some empirical evidence that demonstrates that there is actually an endemic issue of educators opting for "white guilt-tripping" instead of teaching important historical events and phenomena, I'll gladly take a look. Until then, I can only say that as someone who went to a public high school in an extremely progressive city that epitomizes elite academia, not once did I or anyone else I knew have an experience remotely like the one you are describing.
With regard to your second paragraph, I could not disagree more that the sort of content you're describing isn't valuable to a general history curriculum. It is extremely important for young people to understand the
humanity behind what they're learning, not to mention that the example you chose (i.e. the brutality endured by slaves) very obviously had critical ramifications for the broader issues you are more interested in. The way slaves were treated is an innate part of the institution of slavery as a whole, and anecdotes are oftentimes the most effective ways of conveying that treatment because they are memorable and impactful to students. So, I have to categorically disagree with the notion that slavery's big-picture economic and political implications are the only "important" considerations that should be taught. (And I hope that your suggestion was not that anecdotes about slave life are contributing the supposed "white guilt-tripping" that's taking over curriculums?)
You seem to be more generally concerned with curriculums being too specific and students missing out on other important history they should be learning; I don't think that's an intrinsic problem with the question at hand. Educators can spend way too much time on certain events/phenomena
without focusing on marginalized groups, and educators can spend an appropriate amount of time on every important event/phenomenon while also appropriately addressing the perspectives of marginalized groups as they progress through the curriculum. There seems to be some conflation of the style/perspective of content with the pacing of the content.
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