History Matters
Posted on July 31, 2007
by: Big Jar
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Why is Helen Keller an important figure in American history?
- What was the name of the first permanent European settlement in North America?
- Did Native Americans participate in the first Thanksgiving?
- What group of people did most of the scalping in colonial America?
- Who was the first European to discover North America?
- Who did Abraham Lincoln free with the Emancipation Proclamation?
- What were Abraham Lincoln’s personal views on African-Americans?
In George Orwell’s landmark novel 1984, protagonist Winston Smith works for a government organization called The Ministry of Truth. He is responsible for rewriting historical documents so they support the official party line of Big Brother. In one memorable passage within the novel, Winston completely fabricates a war hero and constructs an entire official history for a person who never existed. Like all parts of that brilliant and visonary novel, we can see our contemporary society reflected in Big Brother’s futuristic fictive totalitarian government.
U.S. citizens are quick to declare pride in their country and their historical legacy, but very few of us actually know the truth about the last two hundred years.
Twenty one of the fifty states in the U.S. have state adoption committees, who wield an enormous amount of power. These committees approve or reject a textbook’s use for the entire state, and establish their own expansive criteria for doing so. For example, the Texas state adoption committee will not approve any textbook that “seeks to undermine authority.” Although most states have not implemented this system, California, Texas and Florida all have adoption committees. Since these states are so populous, textbook publishers must omit or incorrectly print certain details about American history in order to satisfy those states’ substantial market sizes (Alan touched upon this briefly in an earlier post.) These state adoption committees tend to be fairly conservative, and look unfavorably upon any textbook that is overly critical of U.S. foreign policy blunders or interactions with native people.
For example:
- A textbook that covers the Seminole Wars has no chance of receiving approval in Florida.
- No textbook that acknowledges Texas as once being part of Mexico has any chance of approval in that state.
- Textbooks which mention lynching and frankly discuss the Mississippi government’s role in promoting Jim Crow laws and attempting to suppress the Civil Rights movement have been repeatedly denied adoption rights in that state.
So an elite few filter the information that may be accessed by an overwhelming majority of Americans, and this has a pronounced effect on the way we perceive reality. It’s really not any different from the mass media or political discourse. Even though many people are still manipulated through those information avenues, most educated Americans have become distrustful of politicians and network news anchors. However, I feel like many of those same Americans have come to think of history as something transfixed and objective, undeviating from one monolithic text etched in stone upon a slab of marble somewhere. That’s not what it is at all.
I’ve posted the answers to the posed questions in the comments section. Personally, I did not learn the correct answer to any of these until I went to college–in some cases, it was after I graduated from college. If you had asked me these questions during my senior year of high school, I would have answered all of them incorrectly.
Recommended reading:
Lies my Teacher Told me, James W. Loewen
A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn
A People’s History of the American Revolution, Ray Raphael
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1. Helen Keller was blind and deaf and sat on the wrong end of a toilet plunger. Just kidding. Actually, Helen Keller was an outspoken socialist who often criticized big business and a federal government who prioritized its needs before the needs of the people. She’s famous for the extraordinary amount of protesting, organizing, and writing she put forth on behalf of working class Americans.
2. St. Augustine, founded in Florida, 1581.
3. Of course not.
4. Most of the time, it was Europeans who scalped native americans.
5. Leif Ericsson was probably the first.
6. Lincoln freed the slaves who were living in rebel states. In other words, the slaves living in Maryland, West Virginia, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri were still slaves.
7. During the Lincoln-Douglass debates, Lincoln repeatedly stated that he did not think black people were capable of achieving the same things as white people. He also said this:
“I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people … I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”