We have nothing to fear by learning and teaching American history.
"This land is stolen land and Black people still aren’t free."
Cory Bush, U.S. Rep. (D) Missouri
"Hateful, divisive lies. The Left hates America."
Senator Ted Cruz, (R) Texas.
It is easier to reshape the history than to reshape the future.
Senator Cruz found a sweet spot in political messaging: Criticize Democrats, especially Black ones, who don't seem patriotic enough. Cruz's Tweet in response to the Tweet by Cory Bush included criticism of Colin Kaepernick, saying he, too "spread the same lies on July 4" two years prior.
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| 1619 Project |
The occasion of our national holiday brought new focus on American history. The Critical Race Theory debate lost connection to the CRT of academic analysis. It became oversimplified down to whether American history is the ascendancy of a great, good nation dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal, or whether we failed to live up to that foundational goal. The political left says we haven't. The political right accuses the left of saying we haven't, and they want the good, patriotic people of America to stop the left from telling that vicious, unpatriotic lie.
I think it is possible simultaneously to be a proud, patriotic citizen while accepting that racism has been a constant element shaping public policy in our country. How else to read the words of defenders of slavery, from the first settlements in America through the Civil War? How else to understand Jim Crow and the opposition to the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s? How else to understand America's treatment of Indians? How else to understand the Chinese Exclusion Act?
How else to read our own Declaration of Independence, which justifies our rebellion in part because King George "excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages. . .?" The "domestic insurrections" referred to the British offering freedom to enslaved persons. "Indian savages" refers to the conflicts occasioned by colonists' failure to obey the British effort to maintain peace with the indigenous people by prohibiting settlement west of the Appalachians.
A college classmate, Frank Raines, sent me this comment on patriotism and history. Frank led the Office of Management and Budget during a time America was in budget surplus and we were paying down the national debt. He later became CEO of Fannie Mae.
I am always puzzled by the general inability to keep two concepts in mind at the same time. First, the USA is an exceptional country with admirable features like elections, the rule of law and generous sacrifice for others less rich or powerful. Second, the USA has a deplorable record when it comes to its treatment of African Americans and Native Americans over the past 400 years up to today. One does not have to choose between these narratives or be defensive about them. They are what they are.
During my public school education sixty years ago, I learned a whitewashed history of happy, well-treated slaves--almost part of the owners' families--and Indians happily offering a warm welcome to White settlers, from Thanksgiving at Plymouth Plantation west to the Oregon Trail. It wasn't a total fairy tale; the Gone With the Wind history shared the stage with Huckleberry Finn. The most important element of the education was the invisibility of Black and Native Americans from the history. Native Americans were a nuisance to be discarded, like the bison or the passenger pigeon. We memorized Oregon's state song in third grade, a land "conquered and held by free men, fairest and the best." We celebrated the removal of Indians and the exclusion of Blacks.
American history wasn't about them. Blacks, Indians, people already here from Hispanic Mexico, then Chinese workers were briefly-mentioned victims and extras in the American drama. The history I learned in Medford's public schools was the history of the people who mattered, White Americans. Cruz understands that White Americans consider the past to be someone else's responsibility, and a point of reference marking the condition before. This is after. Things are good now, and that is the real story of American history. Cruz teases at a lurking fear that someone is calling in an unpaid debt we are reluctant to repay through reparations, affirmative action, minority set-asides, scholarships, public benefits, and this new talk about equity. Aren't we all starting from the same place? A majority of Republican voters tell pollsters they think that White Americans face more adverse discrimination than do Black ones. We are the victims here, Cruz tells us. Don't let the left guilt-trip us.
If one is disinclined to change anything, it makes sense to start with the premise there was never anything that needed much changing, and anything that did is fixed now. Anyone who says anything different must hate America.
7 comments:
What is the difference between those who want history to continue ignoring the deplorable treatment of Blacks and Native Americans, and those who deny the Holocaust? Until recently, I had never even heard of the Tulsa massacre. Keeping such information hidden is what's unpatriotic. Of course, Republicans' idea of what's patriotic now is Trump on a stage dry-humping our flag with a shit-eating grin on his face.
The United States is unique. It is the only nation on the planet that didn't evolve from a homogenous tribal population, but instituted by colonists. Imagine if the Native Americans had been left alone. Given time they might have developed technology and this country would look more like Japan or China. But that didn't happen.
However, it was founded by caucasian settlers, wealthy farmers for the most part, and also slave owners. Thus the new nation was set on a path that has led it through a civil war and immigration from all over the World. Through all of this the founding tradition of European caucasian culture has endured, despite the fact that the nation looks nothing like it did a 250 years ago. Though the founders envisioned a classless society ("all men created equal") we find ourselves with a ruling class who control a political party that has now abandoned the core founding principles in favor of an authoritarian state.
Perhaps this was inevitable, wealth has a tendency to accumulate and it's only through government that equity can be maintained. Corrupt that, and all kinds of bad stuff starts happening.
The United States has struggled with race for most of it's existence, and now is at another inflection point, since the fundamental issue of the Civil War was not resolved. The founders never imagined that slaves and women might one day desire a different status (LGBTQ...what!!), even though the documents they created expressed just such a possibility.
What Ted Cruz and all the others are saying is that they really didn't mean it.
Nikole Hannah-Jones’ “1619 Project,” claimed that the whole point of the United States Constitution was to impose and preserve slavery.
That’s not history. That’s ideology.
It did preserve slavery, and the rights it bestowed were only intended for white, male landowners. That's not ideology. That's history.
Mike,
You missed my point. I said “whole point.”
Slavery was not “the whole point” of The Constitution. That tendentious claim by the 1619 Project was pure ideology, and has been debunked by many reputable historians.
Rick; a nit to pick, is that we are not the only Nation State to have arisen from Colonial Status; just look to the South, where Mexico, all of Central and South American Nations are governed by Colonial descendants, and even Canada, whose treatment of First Nstions folk, while perhaps not as genocidal as ours, certainly doesn't merit any brownie points on a Humanitarian scale.
Point taken. I thought of other New World nations and feel that the US is unique in that it threw off the colonial rule with a revolution and the institution of democracy, such as it was. That plus slavery makes us different, but not better than Canada, who some might believe is still a colony. (kidding!)
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