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​What's History Got to Do with It?

9/19/2020

3 Comments

 
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I’ve been correcting my mis-education on several fronts lately, and Trump’s announcement in mid-September that he was creating The 1776 Commission to “restore patriotic education to the nation” to counteract The 1619 Project, which sheds light on the ongoing impact of slavery in the U.S., dating from the first importation of enslaved Africans, motivated me to start typing.

Trump’s claims that U.S. students have been brainwashed is totally true – just not in the way he meant. Rather than being brainwashed “to hate our country,” we’ve been brainwashed to learn only the positives about our history, or in the rare cases where negatives are widely known, such as the racist internment of Japanese citizens during World War II, they are presented as “mistakes” that were eventually made right (with a 1988 apology and $20,000 to each surviving internee).

An incident in one of my first classes at the University of Wisconsin in 1967 left an indelible mark on my brain, and perhaps contributed to my decision to major in history. The professor was talking about the early days of the new U.S. government when there were only four cabinet positions: Secretary of State, Secretary of War, Secretary of the Treasury and the Attorney General. He said State dealt with relations with other sovereign nations, except for indigenous tribes, which were handled under the War Department. I asked (with some trepidation about speaking up in class) why the native nations were under the War Department and not the State Department. I don’t remember his answer; I just remember how defensive his reaction was.

Since then I have supplemented any official readings with my own explorations – and yes, those have often been much more critical of the U.S. Trump specifically called out Howard Zinn and his “People’s History of the United States,” published in 1980, which tells many of these little-known stories. Interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, Zinn said it was important to tell young people the truth. The reasons so many of these books and podcasts sound so negative is that they are countering the rosy picture most of us have been indoctrinated with.

I’ve read a lot of women’s history, but I learned more in this centennial year of the Nineteenth Amendment, which is usually described as “granting women the right to vote.” That doesn’t quite capture the more than 70-year battle women (and sometimes their male supporters) waged to win that right, especially toward the end when women were beaten, arrested and force-fed in jail. This year I also learned more about the role of black women suffragists, who were most often excluded or put at the equivalent of the back of the bus in white-led suffrage demonstrations.

I just finished reading “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America,” by Ibram X. Kendi, the National Book Award winner published in 2016. Broken into five parts, headlined by Puritan leader Cotton Mather, slaveholder Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, African American scholar and political activist W.E.B. Dubois, and radical Black activist Angela Davis, Kendi interprets the various epochs by their adherence to the concepts of Segregationist (Blacks are sub-human), Assimilationist (Blacks can aspire to be as good as whites) and Anti-Racist (Blacks are already equal to whites).

I never read Jeremy Brecher’s “Strike!” when it was first published in 1972, but I’m making my way through the 506-page, updated 50th anniversary edition of U.S. labor history, published this year. I already knew the high points, like the Haymarket massacre, and the fights to organize in the coal fields, the steel mills and the railroads. But I learned a lot about more recent history, like the wave of strikes during the Vietnam War era, when I was busy protesting on campus. The fact that I was alive in this period, and fairly conscious of social struggles, yet knew nothing about this, is another indication of my mis-education.

The other key element in my re-education, besides just learning these facts, is that I read/hear/see these fighters for a more inclusive, still far from perfect democracy in their own words. Kendi is an African American historian, and Brecher gives us long excerpts of everyday workers describing their desperate living situations that pushed them into action, as well as riveting stories of the strikes they engaged in to improve their lot. Some excellent documentaries about the struggle for women’s enfranchisement this year included recitations of their public writings and personal journals.
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The “great man” (read white, powerful, and, of course, male) theory of history has filled our textbooks for centuries. It’s time to turn to the stories of “regular people” and the oppressed and exploited for a fuller picture. 


3 Comments
Robert Bouwman
9/19/2020 05:41:07 am

Good piece, Melinda. I'm still teaching on line and I see examples of what you are saying almost every day. Many students' idea of a conclusion is to fit their topic into the 'America-is-always-getting-better' theme. The best thing that has happened in the profession is the emergence and rise of so many women historians. I had no women history profs in college or grad school. Women historians have led the change away from the "great men" emphasis.
Do you read Heather Cox Richardson?
Bring on the matriarchy (in honor of RBG)!!!

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Adrienne Lauby link
9/19/2020 11:12:43 pm

One of the causes of the continuing racism in the U.S. is (as others have pointed out) the deep history of slaughtering indigenous people and the horrors of slavery. If our history books taught these two events equally with the glorious founding of the U.S. as a democracy, we'd move more quickly to do something about the current effects of racism.

It is hard for us white people to look for flaws when we step into these discussions with a frame of righteousness.

For instance, in my opinion, the U.S. profiteering on the war in Yemen is a direct result of our racism. It's a terrible situation that we currently bear great responsibly for. Yet, most of us don't know much about this and there's not a lot of outrage. Why? Because 1) the suffering people in Yemen are brown and black-skinned and 2) we've been told over and over than when the U.S. does things overseas, they are in the cause of freedom.

I don't mean to go off topic too far but if anyone is interested in a pretty concise description of our culpability in Yemen, go here: https://www.democracynow.org/2020/9/17/yemen_crisis_us_uae_saudi_arabia

Thanks for the essay, Melinda. It's a great pleasure to read your thoughts.

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Patricia Kane
9/21/2020 08:49:17 am

Our "education" was really an indoctrination, but we didn't know it at the time. Howard Zinn opened my eyes. And it was a painful transition to the full truth. I could only read his book in small segments because I became so upset and needed to process the information.
Right now we are living thru the collapse of the American Empire and fascism advances steadily, day by day.
As predicted, the US is failing from within.
I have no optimistic predictions. I don't even see our basic institutions functioning.
Still, if we only leave the truth behind with the ashes of this country, so be it.

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    Melinda Tuhus

    Welcome to my blog, Leaves and Fishes. It connotes that I'll  often be blogging about environmental issues, though certainly not exclusively. It also references the idea that when people pool their resources -- even if meager --  generous and equitable outcomes can result. Finally, since  "leaves" and "fishes" are both nouns and verbs, I hope to have fun with the words I write. 

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