American History

Subterms

    Latest story

    88 Shares169 Views

    Thoughts On Colonial History for Columbus Day

    by

    The 1619 Project, launched last year by The New York Times Magazine, injected the question of slavery into the core of the traditional narrative of US history. It raised the question not only of what counts in history but how history is taught. Implicitly, it calls into question the great dogma inculcated by schools and the media into generations of Americans: that they are citizens of the “greatest nation on earth.”

    The liberal Times editors knew what they were doing when they decided to promote the project and glean the rewards that come from putting forward an original and potentially provocative thesis consistent with the Democratic establishment’s commitment to identity politics and the party’s quest for black votes. In effect, the 1619 Project seeks to magnify aspects of US history that promote civil rights and black identity.

    The Uncertain Future of the Great Tradition of Propaganda

    READ MORE

    The 1619 Project turned out to be an immediate commercial success as “people lined up on the street in New York City to get copies.” It quickly earned several awards, including a Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times had clearly made the right bet. It even provoked the kind of reaction from conservative Republicans that the Times revels in, since its readership is 91% Democrat or leaning Democrat. 

    Republicans wasted no time coming to the defense of traditional history. Mike Pompeo, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz attacked the project for undermining what they deem to be the true vocation of history, whose purpose, as it is taught in schools, is to bolster Americans’ belief in their institutions. Senator Cotton even defended the institution of slavery as a “necessary evil,” passing it off as an innocent accident of history that was easily rectified by Abraham Lincoln (at the cost of 600,000 American lives). 

    Embed from Getty Images

    The New York Times then discovered an unanticipated problem. Some of its own editorialists are uncomfortable with the idea of giving such prominence to the question of slavery, not because it might dim the glory of past heroes, but possibly because it risks casting a shadow on the nature of the American economy itself, an institution The Times prefers to protect and promote.

    Times editorialist Bret Stephens, a lifelong Republican, underwent a conversion in 2017 in reaction both to President Donald Trump, whom he refused to vote for, and to his party’s support for the alleged pedophile Roy Moore in Alabama. He declared on that occasion that he “can never vote Republican again.” In an op-ed last week, Stephens felt impelled to announce and explain what nevertheless amounts to his alignment with Trump and other Republicans who have taken a stance against the 1619 Project. Trump himself has proposed to withhold federal funding from states that adopt the program.

    In an involved rhetorical exercise, Stephens begins by acknowledging that the ambitious project had “succeeded.” He congratulates its principal author, Nikole Hannah-Jones, on her “patriotic thought.” He then goes on to develop his subtle thought on the distinction between journalism and history, before citing everything that’s wrong with the 1619 Project. His main charge is that “it issued categorical and totalizing assertions that are difficult to defend on close examination.”

    Here is today’s 3D definition:

    Totalizing assertions:

    The usual content of all official history books used in education in most nations and most obviously in American textbooks printed in Texas and distributed throughout the United States

    Contextual Note

    “The Revisionaries,” a documentary released in 2013, revealed the disproportionate influence on the teaching of history of the Texas State Board of Education. It explains how the Texas Board “has the power to shape the textbooks that children around the country read for years to come.” 

    More recently, Times correspondent Dana Goldstein highlighted the ideological contrasts between history textbooks produced in Texas and California. If Stephens is truly concerned by assertions that cannot be defended on close examination, he might want to examine the current textbooks children use. As Goldstein points out, “Conservatives have fought for schools to promote patriotism, highlight the influence of Christianity and celebrate the founding fathers.”

    Goldstein cites some examples. Concerning the issue of immigration, the Texas but not the California textbook contains a clearly “totalizing assertion” designed to please President Trump: “But if you open the border wide up, you’re going to invite political and social upheaval.” On climate change, the Texas textbook asserts “that American action on global warming may not make a difference if China, India, Russia and Brazil do not also act.” This is patently absurd, since anything that the “greatest consumer nation on earth” does will always make a difference.

    Stephens blames the 1619 Project for provoking a political reaction, something he apparently believes both journalism and education should avoid at all costs. “This was stepping into the political fray in a way that was guaranteed to invite not just right-wing blowback, but possible federal involvement,” he writes. But conservatives can always be counted on for blowback against anything that calls into question their dogmas.

    Historical Note

    In his essay, “The Missing Key to the Texas History Textbook Debate,” educator Kyle Ward reviews the history of US  history textbooks, a narrative that begins in 1826. That first textbook by Joseph Worcester launched the still persistent theme of the nation’s exceptional “greatness.” As an example, Ward cites Worcester’s totalizing assertion concerning Christopher Columbus — that “the discovery of America was the greatest achievement of the kind ever performed by man; and, considered in connection with its consequences, it is the greatest event of modern times.”

    For well into the 20th century, all the history textbooks that followed — at least until Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” — “told a similar story: that progress, democracy and the American people were all good; especially if said were white Protestants.” Schools “had one goal in mind when teaching history: to make every student a good, patriotic citizen.”

    Textbooks did evolve. In the latter half of the 20th century, the idea of becoming “a good, patriotic citizen” began to include the complementary idea that a good citizen was also a good consumer. Once history could go beyond recounting the deeds of great leaders and violent warriors, questions such as flight to the suburbs and consumerist culture could be included and treated both as social problems to be studied and specifically American achievements, on a par with the discovery of America. 

    The 1619 Project undoubtedly contains some factual errors and exaggerations. All histories do. Certain events it highlights may or may not merit the attention given to them as to their impact on the course of history. But every historical narrative does precisely that by selecting what best illustrates and accounts for specific factors of change at work at any given time. 

    Bret Stephens objects to his newspaper’s appeal to the idea of truth. “It is finally time to tell our story truthfully,” the Times Magazine proclaimed on its on its 1619 cover page. Stephens legitimately casts doubt on its truthfulness, citing historians who have critiqued its details. But no matter how well researched, history is inevitably a story, not a repository of scientific truth. Stories are never true in the scientific sense. The traditional narrative highlighting the founders’ foresight and America’s greatness is one story. But as a story, it depends on excluding other narratives, such as the 1619 Project.

    Stephens pleads the case for history that focuses on a guiding ideal — Thomas Jefferson’s “all men are created equal.” But history is rarely about imposing ideals. It is about establishing and consolidating power. 1776 was clearly about power. If we had access to Jefferson’s mind when he set out to challenge the English king, we would most likely discover that his idea was closer to all British men of means are created equal. He wasn’t thinking about humanity in general, but about a group of people who had created a community on the east coast of North America.

    Kyle Ward deserves the last word: “At the end of the day, it is not the history textbook that educates students about America’s past, but rather the teachers who develop the lesson plans, organize the instruction and assess students on what they know about history.” The meaning of history can never be found in the content of textbooks. It exists in the shared understanding developed between real people, whether members or a community or teachers working with students.

    *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    More stories

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in World Politics

      What Will Future Generations Say About Us?

      by

      This week, 216 years ago, one founding father killed another in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey. On that early July morning, the vice president of the United States squared off against the former secretary of the treasury. As virtually everyone in America now knows, thanks to Lin-Manuel Miranda, Alexander Hamilton didn’t survive the shootout with Aaron Burr.

      Two Deaths Raise the Specter of Lynching in California

      READ MORE

      At the beginning of this month, Disney released the film version of Miranda’s blockbuster musical, “Hamilton.” So, I could finally see this extraordinary synthesis of history, biography, music and dance. As a musical, it’s riveting. As political commentary, however, it’s surprisingly dated.

      America’s Musical

      “Hamilton” debuted five years ago, in the middle of Barack Obama’s second term as president. Just as Obama was daily reimagining the American presidency, “Hamilton” reimagined the American Revolution and the creation of the United States.

      By casting people of color as the Founding Fathers — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison —  the musical speaks to the universality of that 18th-century struggle and visually links the oppression of Americans at the hands of British colonialism to the oppression of people everywhere. It’s both a projection backward of Obama’s breakthrough and a lyrical version of an Obama speech.

      “Hamilton” is radical in form: the casting, the incorporation of rap. The content, however, is quite mainstream. Aside from a couple of references to slavery and the interests of wealthy bankers, it celebrates the spirit of 1776 in a way that Americans of all political persuasions can embrace.

      And have embraced. On November 18, 2016, only a week after that gut punch of an election, Mike Pence attended a show, which prompted the actor portraying Burr to say at the close, “We, sir — we — are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights. We truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.” It was a message from one rogue vice president to another.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Pence “appeared to enjoy the show and applauded liberally,” NPR reported. And for the next three years, he ignored the remonstration. Pence and Donald Trump, too, portrayed themselves as revolutionary underdogs — rather than the reactionary overlords they really were — who wanted to be in “the room where it happens.” They, too, were not going to throw away their shot.

      Now, in perhaps the supreme designation of mainstream status, Disney has made “Hamilton” available to the masses. How times have changed.

      In 2020, thanks to the coronavirus, live theater seems impossibly risky (why are the performers touching each other? How can the audience sit so close together?). And, with protesters on the street challenging Washington and Jefferson over their slave ownership, the musical suddenly seems behind the times, though not nearly as backward as Aunt Jemima and the soon to be former Washington Redskins.

      As A.O. Scott recently pointed out in The New York Times, “There’s been a bit of a backlash from the left against what’s perceived as an insufficiently critical perspective on slavery (and also on Hamilton’s role in the birth of American capitalism). At the same time, the extent to which Miranda celebrates America’s political traditions has been taken up as a cudgel against the supposed illiberalism of the statue-topplers and their allies.” Miranda himself has acknowledged the criticisms from the left. History doesn’t stand still for anyone, not Jefferson, not Hamilton, not Lin-Manuel Miranda.

      The Great and the Not-So-Great

      What’s remarkable, of course, is the speed with which the political temperament has changed. In a few short months, statues have fallen throughout the United States, and not just those dedicated to the Confederate cause.

      Also torn down or relocated are statues honoring figures associated with the genocide of indigenous people (Christopher Columbus), with slave-owning (Hamilton’s father-in-law, Philip Schuyler) and with racist policing (former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo). Statues connected to colonialism have fallen in the UK, Belgium and elsewhere. Everything, it seems, is up for debate, even monuments to the heroes of the American Revolution.

      We fully expect books and plays written in the 1950s to seem dated. Ditto those produced in the 1970s or even the 1990s. But 2015? The critiques of American failings — slavery, colonialism, racist policing — are not new. What’s changed is that the powerful have been forced to listen.

      Perhaps “Hamilton,” despite its slighting of slavery and reverence for the Founding Fathers, even played a role in preparing the powerful for this shift. But let’s be real: The destruction of images — literally, iconoclasm — is a lighter lift than the transformation of structures. It’s one thing to take down Confederate statues, but quite another to remove racism’s grip on housing, education and employment. Likewise, it’s more politically palatable to recast a play about the Founding Fathers than to grapple with the ugly truths that accompanied the founding of this nation.

      At a deeper level, the musical and the statues share a common veneration of the great person. History, we are constantly reminded in art and monuments, is the product of founding fathers, great conquerors, kings, presidents and prime ministers. Campaigns are launched to diversify those numbers to include women, people of color, perhaps even an activist or two like Martin Luther King Jr. But the focus remains on the individual, not the countless people who turned the gears of history, planted the fields of history, occupied the streets of history and, ultimately, changed the course of history.

      As “Hamilton” acknowledges, great persons are always a product of their time and place, and they’re always flawed in some way or another. Sometimes, those flaws are of an individual nature, like Alexander Hamilton’s adultery (or, more recently, the sexual harassment charges against Park Won Soon, the progressive activist and former mayor of Seoul who committed suicide last week).

      More often, the famous personages are as blind to their faults as most everyone else in their society. Transforming society requires a collective effort to shine a light on these blind spots, as the Black Lives Matter movement has done, at home and abroad, around police violence, racist iconography and the legacy of colonialism.

      Iconoclasts of the Future, Unite!

      So, perhaps it’s time to conduct a thought experiment. We’ve seen how quickly culture has moved on and left the blind spots of “Hamilton” more readily visible. How will future generations condemn us for our blind spots as they tear down today’s statues tomorrow?

      I can almost hear our children gathering in the street to pull down the statues of the famous as they chant, “Carbon hog!” For will not contribution to the destruction of the planet ultimately be seen in the same light as colonialism, as the plunder and robbery of future generations?

      The emancipation of slaves was a radical act in 18th-century America. The Polish revolutionary Tadeusz Kosciuszko berated Jefferson — his friend — at length to free his slaves, and Jefferson ignored him because, just as Pence shrugged off Burr, he could. Jefferson certainly had mixed feelings about slavery, but he was able to maintain the contradiction in his life of slave ownership and sentiments like “all men are created equal” because popular opinion, as opposed to Kosciuszko’s opinion, allowed him to do so.

      Future generations may feel the same way about our simultaneous recognition of the perils of climate change and our car ownership, air travel and use of air conditioning. Greta Thunberg, our generation’s Kosciuszko, similarly berates world leaders and with as little immediate impact.

      Future generations may also look askance at our nationalism. Why do we believe that we owe debts of obligation to strangers who live within certain borders and not strangers who live outside those borders? How could we countenance the return of desperate migrants and refugees to, in many cases, their certain death?

      And what about all the statues raised to military leaders? It seems rather ridiculous to honor men who oversaw the slaughter of others just because they were on the winning side. Future generations may well look at all the celebrated generals as so many mass murderers.

      Speaking of mass murder, how will future generations feel about the millions of animals that we kill every day for our own consumption? Or even the millions that we own as pets? The list of potential blind spots is long indeed, and there are plenty of motes in my own eye. History is constantly evolving. There is no timeless art; there are no timeless values.

      Everything reflects the moment of its production, from the American Constitution to the latest iteration of “Hamilton.” We are engaged in a long, collective conversation enlivened by a soundtrack of insightful speeches, catchy tunes and the rising roar of street protest. As for those future statues, I dearly hope that they are pulled down, defaced, disgraced. Because that would mean, in a future of superstorms and nuclear threats and periodic pandemics, that at least there are still people around to take them down.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in World Politics

      A New Hysteria Around History in the US

      by

      In its report on US President Donald Trump’s Fourth of July weekend in the shadow of Mount Rushmore, the Associated Press characterized his speech as “a direct appeal to disaffected white voters four months before Election Day.”

      While Trump himself “zeroed in on the desecration by some protesters of monuments and statues across the country that honor those who have benefited from slavery, including some past presidents,” the AP notes that Kristi Noem, a Republican governor, “echoed Trump’s attacks against his opponents who ‘are trying to wipe away the lessons of history.’”

      The City on the Hill Has Lost Its Shine and Its Bounce

      READ MORE

      Americans suddenly seem obsessed with history, which used to be dismissed simply as “the past” and subjected to the proverb, “It’s no use crying over spilt milk.” So, what could the phrase “the lessons of history” possibly mean to a contemporary American?

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Lessons of history:

      1) From a historian’s point of view, the nuanced conclusions that can be reached about the possible meaning of events in the past, including the unintended consequences of decisions made by historical persons or institutions 
      2) For the layman in the United States, the simplistic chauvinistic anecdotes and bullet points dispensed in schools, especially when the content derives from books published in Texas

      Contextual Note

      As a prominent actor in what will soon be called an epoch of history — the Trump era — the president is living proof that obtaining a degree from Wharton doesn’t require a solid appreciation for or understanding of history. According to John Bolton, the former national security adviser, Trump may still be ignorant of the fact that the United Kingdom acquired nuclear weapons nearly 70 years ago and that Finland declared independence from Russia more than a century ago. Perhaps those two events took place in the too distant past to pique his curiosity or have so little bearing on today’s geopolitics that they merit forgetting.

      Bolton is not the only commentator to maintain that Trump’s grasp of history or of geopolitical reality is less than impeccable. But just as the killing of George Floyd in police custody has sparked a vast movement of people seeking to reevaluate some salient aspects of US history, Trump has decided that though he may not understand it, he has the duty to defend “history.” He appears to see it as a damsel in distress, bound by the villain to railroad tracks as the locomotive steams toward the captive in the kind of cliffhanger Trump probably remembers from his exposure to the history of cinema.

      Trump is right. History has long been manhandled in the US. And this is the moment to honor it. After all, the history of the now-globalized human race has taken a highly visible turn at least since 2001, with a notable acceleration since Trump was elected in 2016. Given the stakes, Americans should finally not just invest in history’s defense but inject it with the life it deserves. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      To defend history, the best place to begin is to examine the methodology of historians. The word itself is borrowed from French, where the noun histoire signifies both “history” and “story.” History as a discipline can justifiably be described as an imperfect version of the most accurate and complete story we can honestly tell about the past after having examined all the available evidence.” In some sense — on the storytelling side — it’s a discipline closer to literature than science. But Trump refuses to see it as a discipline, preferring to treat history as political advertising. Advertising also tells a story, though no reasonable person would call it a discipline.

      Why is this important? Because the citizens of such a comparatively youthful nation have never really known what to do with history, especially their own history. Among the myths that Americans are taught in school is the idea that the American Revolution sealed the definitive rejection by a forward-looking people of the stale, sclerotic traditions of Europe, whose nations were the prisoners of their history. America was all about creating a new civilization, not adulating the past. With such a vision, even the idea of the past became permanently irrelevant to a people on the move.

      Trump complains that the protest movement is no more than “a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children.” The opposite is of course true. History has already been wiped out of Americans’ field of awareness. History has actors, not heroes. Some stand out symbolically as either heroes or villains, at least for the sake of storytelling.

      Concerning the erasing of values, the famed “Puritan values” the US has traditionally been proud of were long ago replaced by the pursuit of wealth and fame, the two values that have guided Trump’s own life story. As for indoctrinating the children, some of us have an idea of what indoctrination looks like. Many of us were taught at school that Christopher Columbus’ contemporaries believed that the world was flat (false) and that a teenage George Washington, after castrating his father (i.e., chopping down his “favorite” cherry tree), proudly proclaimed, “I cannot tell a lie” (ridiculous).

      Speaking as if preparing his political supporters for battle, Trump declared that “just as patriots did in centuries past, the American people will stand in their way, and we will win, and win quickly.” Time is, after all, money, and short episodes of history are easier to commit to memory. 

      “[W]e will not be tyrannized, we will not be demeaned, we will not be intimidated by bad, evil people,” Trump added, imagining the mustachioed villains clad in black (with skin color to match) who have conspired to bind the damsel to the rails.

      Historical Note

      Donald Trump didn’t just complain. In a bold gesture, he announced an executive order to create a “National Garden of American Heroes” with his own list of obligatory denizens of the garden, the criterion being that they must be “historically significant Americans.” 

      The problem with this approach is that if history is reduced to stories about heroes, the damsel history would remain bound to the tracks. Heroes of various kinds do exist, but because they are deemed heroic, their stories take us outside of history into something closer to dramatic fiction. Worse, heroes can only be understood as champions of some collective endeavor — a cause, venture, belief or even an art form — that students of history need to come to grips with before they can assess the relative virtues and contributions of the heroes. There is little doubt, however, that the idea of celebrating heroes as role models would appeal to the host of a former reality-TV show called “Celebrity Apprentice.”

      Asawin Suebsaeng and Allison Quinn at The Daily Beast describe Trump’s drift as nothing less than a call for a new civil war. But the conflicts Trump typically cites tend to be the war of independence and World War II. The Daily Beast tells us that Trump repeatedly found ways “to compare himself and his supporters to Patriots during the American Revolution—and protesters to members of the British Army.” 

      But Trump then shifted his allusion to the 20th century and World War II when he declared “there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance.” He even glanced at China’s Chairman Mao Zedong: “[T]his left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution.” Heroes are important, but so are recognized villains.

      Trump’s understanding of history resembles a jigsaw puzzle in a tempest where the wind has blown away most of the pieces. Interpreting the scattered ones that are left requires an imagination guided by whatever fantasies happen to be tumbling around in Trump’s unconscious. To be fair, that pretty much corresponds to the way the lessons of history tend to be written by totalitarian regimes. In the end, Trump may be far more normal than people give him credit for.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Click here to read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More