I know I’m the only one who thinks about the usefulness of history anymore. Academics study the thing for itself — knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Laypersons are interested in history strictly for the entertainment value, and political scientists try to make history a primer for politics. All due respect to George Santayana, circumstances from the past do not perfectly repeat themselves so that we get a second chance to retry the same problem (though some rough lessons can apply). Even if historical knowledge gave us hindsight for practical application in the present, the frequency of its usefulness would be limited at best. None of this is to say that history offers us no practical benefit. I am always harping on how it gives consciousness to our lives and informs our choices. Since that isn’t “hard” science with obvious application, some might resist embracing the notion that this makes history useful; however, there is a concrete way of applying this consciousness that is an often ignored aid.
Happily, we have come to a point in human development where we have informed understanding of society and its function. We no longer believe that events are caused by spirits and sprites or that divinity resides in the whims of the king and they are therefore to be honored. We understand today about the structure and function of our society and our ability to shape our communities. This is to say, we can exercise conscious management of our societies through planning and effective legislation, enforcement, and cooperation. We see now that while our world may be a Ship of Fools, it still has a rudder. Even such fools can learn to maneuver the boat, and our choices are the rudder that directs us. You can’t control life, but we can manage our responses to it.
Friedrich Nietzsche noted more than a hundred and thirty years ago that history can and should serve the purpose of living life. Humans can use it to inform our choices — particularly if we are doing “critical history” or writing about the past in ways that undermine the worship of it. Then, we are able to leave off and reject that past in search for something better. Or, as Maya Angelou says: ”When you know better, you do better.” History gives us knowledge from which we can learn and use to build a new future. Since we can choose what we want our society to look like and what values we want it to reflect, we can look at the past and see what we have done before that helped in reaching our goals and what has not (and therefore needs to be abandoned).
So, firstly, we must use history to remind us of why we made these choices. What was the impetus for doing this or that? For example, the social and health effects of industrialization on workers were what led to passage of workers’ compensation programs and safety regulations. Studying this development makes clear why there was a need and what the chosen response was. Next, we look at how this solution operated in practice — what is the history of how that choice or action developed? We want to see what we did. This will of course allow us to avoid repeating errors as Santayana suggests, but it also lets us judge generally on how we are doing at achieving our ends. Have we accomplished what we had hoped? What is working? What good have we done? What isn’t working and what effect has this failure had? Once we see how the thing developed and judged it, we can then make choices for the future. We can reaffirm or redraft our goals. We can adjust our efforts to respond better in areas in which we have not succeeded. Or, we can expand our response or reduce it based on the effectiveness of past actions, need, and interest.
In short, history provides use a means for social analysis. We can use it to make a grade card for ourselves. As a community, we can assess our performance and make choices based on this for our future. In this sense, history is a very real and obvious tool — and it has a substantive rather than just ethereal value. Knowing this, failure to make use of our history indicates not just ignorance or foolishness but also that we are people who fail to try to exercise any will on our society and are content to lead lives lacking consciousness — in which case, we do no better at shaping our world than the unlearned or superstitious who came before us.
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May 122011
On April 12, 2011, the President of the United States issued a proclamation marking the beginning of the sesquicentennial (150th anniversary) of the Civil War. President Obama called upon citizens of the country to observe the event in order to “honor the legacy of freedom and unity” that the war engendered. The Proclamation is full of references to sacrifice and the principle of equality and dedication to the Union and the Constitution. (Read it here: Civil War Proclamation) Although the main contention of the war was slavery, that takes a back seat here to a celebration of nationalism. The official remembrance is driven by patriotism rather than moralism.
At Civil War battlefields around the country, re-enactors are preparing for and performing in mock battles bloodlessly reanimating the violent conflicts that left so many dead, wounded, and broken. They talk about bringing history to life, assure that their uniforms conform to standard, and blast their impotent cannons at other actors for the edification of bystanders. They preen for cameras in reproduction garb and slump to the ground in pretend agony and fake expiration. It’s all very practiced and researched.
Museums in various states have joined in the commemoration as well, and academics — not to be outdone — are holding conferences dissecting every detail of the war and its causes. Even the media has jumped in with both feet. News outlets are running stories by scholars about various aspects of the conflagration and advertisements from civic organizations announcing commemorative events. They all invite you to remember and to feel a patriotic swelling or even reignite the passions of sectionalism with the fervor of ancestor worship. Amateur historians and associations dedicated to honoring participants in the war also fill the blogosphere and national conversation on the event with postings, meetings, and other organized activities.
All of these undertakings are scholarly or political or patriotic. None of them, interestingly, are expressions of grief. At least 600,000 Americans died in the Civil War. Untold others were wounded and maimed. The Indian nations suffered great deprivations during the war and then forfeited more of their land as punishment afterwards. Cities in the south were utterly razed and their societies were turned upside down. Families were literally torn apart and it took some time for the economy and political organizations to recover. Most importantly, the greatest tragedy of the war was that we had to go to such lengths to rid ourselves of the evil of slavery and introduce citizenship to non-whites. These losses and calamities give us much to grieve for and regret — yet, we don’t. Instead, we recreate the killing of our own and eschew a national period of mourning. We do not reflect on the war to ask why we failed — and so miserably — at diplomacy, compromise, and republicanism. Why do we not sorrow at this? Remembrances of the Vietnam conflict always include the laying of wreaths, tearful reflection, and admissions of error. In retrospect, we love the troops there and hate the war. Perhaps we have yet to learn to hate the war that divided us the most. Is our commemoration a sign that we are all still in our hearts not yet reconstructed?
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It must be Christmas — that season of human goodwill — for this week the political pundits declared that Haley Barbour’s run for the presidency is over before it began. Now, pass the eggnog. At issue is Barbour’s sunny recollection of the desegregation of public schools in his native Mississippi. Liberal bloggers have labeled him “revisionist” in his version and racist for his characterization of it. Aww, dammit, now it’s a history fight and I have to get involved.
For the record, when asked why there wasn’t any violence when the public schools in his hometown of Yazoo City finally desegregated in 1970 (16 years after the Supreme Court made segregation illegal in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education) — when there was marked violence in other places — what Barbour said was:
“Because the business community wouldn’t stand for it. You heard of the Citizens’ Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of business leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said that anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you’d lose it. If you had a store, they’d see nobody shopped there. We didn’t have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City.”
Of course the Citizens’ Councils (originally called the White Citizens’ Councils) are infamous for being organizations started precisely to fight integration and preserve segregation in the South. A number of historians have written accounts of the groups’ works and racist agenda. This information is common knowledge. Thus, critics have gotten up in arms over Barbour’s apologia for these despicable organizations. They accuse Barbour of abusing history and minimizing the trauma of the civil rights movement. Interestingly, the articles about the subject note the history of the Citizens’ Councils and point out that they were known as the upscale or “country club” Klan. The members were generally local leaders and businessmen — men of standing. These were not angry, violent crackers. They were bankers, lawyers, businessmen, and community notables. Their tactic was to use economic force to prevent integration. It was in fear of economic reprisals like the councils used that parents in Birmingham stayed home and let their children protest segregation. They were afraid that their bosses would fire them if they were involved, and the family’s economic viability would be questionable — and they were right. Business owners and bosses did use their economic power to quash activism. Citizens’ Councils were just larger, well-organized, community-wide versions of this financial coercion. Thus, it would be wholly inaccurate and offensive to suggest that they were proponents of integration.
If that’s what Barbour actually said, I would be inclined to call bullshit myself, but let’s look at his words. He does not suggest that the council in Yazoo City promoted integration. What he said was that they wouldn’t stand for violence as a tool to fight integration. They opposed the Klan then (which was not always the case in every town in Mississippi, but communities do vary in their practices) and used economic means to achieve their ends (and undermine democracy, by the way). Accordingly, Barbour is confirming what the evidence and histories have already told us. He did not alter the history or falsify it. The righteous indignation of his critics who claim to be protecting history is unwarranted then.
What they really want to object to is the sense of Barbour’s statement — that it smacks of tolerance or admiration for Citizens’ Councils, which were abhorrent organizations in many ways. They ignore, then, the truth of what Barbour said about his local history in an effort to defend the larger history of the civil rights movement and Citizens’ Councils generally. In actuality, both of these positions may be accurate, even though they seem to contradict one another. This is a common problem in dealing with generalizations in history. The limitations of general histories mean that you can’t always give detailed specifics about variations on the theme. Thus, when we talk about slavery, we talk about how poorly slaves were treated and the limitations placed on them. What we don’t always do (again, this is in general histories as opposed to detailed monographs) is give all the minute details about regional difference in slavery practices. For example, in some places, slaves were successful at getting their masters to accept the task system, wherein they were required to work a certain allotment of tasks in a day rather than to work a full day (from sun-up to sundown) necessarily. When they finished their tasks, they were done for the day, whether it was noon, 4:00pm or 10:00pm. In other places, though, slaves were worked all day long as their masters saw fit. This is just one example of the kinds of variations that often get lost in summaries of larger events. There just isn’t enough room in a book to cover everything, so historians use generalizations for convenience sake.
Barbour’s comment brings up just such an incidence. In some places, school integration was met with violence and armed resistance. They had to have a military escort for the black students who integrated Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Ole Miss was the site of rioting when James Meredith first enrolled there. But, in other places like Yazoo City, the integration was unwelcome but not forcibly resisted. That fact is true to that community and says something about the people there (and apparently the documentary record confirms this about the town). Most especially, it points to the reason that racism has remained so stubborn and why discrimination is still so difficult to eradicate — in all parts of the United States. That is that the discrimination has become subtle, non-violent, and economic in nature. It still exists and is manipulated by the men (and now women) of power who dominate American communities. It is harder to identify then, harder to hold those responsible for it accountable, and harder to get consensus to resist (as you don’t get the same obvious sympathy for that as you do for little black girls dying in a church bombing or young people beaten or assaulted with fire hoses on national television). The discrimination is now genteel, which makes it more palatable to many. This clandestine racism is what Barbour represents to civil rights supporters and what is so disturbing. He is not abusing history; he is abusing the economically less powerful (which usually in our country includes disproportionate numbers of minorities). Hence, the need for the war on poverty continues: our segregation is now an economic reality instead of a legal structure. Remember this at the mall this holiday season.
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Nov 132010
In the biblical account from the book of Genesis, when humankind dared to reach for the heavens and challenge God in his holy place, He confounded their tongues so that they could not understand one another. Without being able to communicate effectively, they could not complete their tower, and Babel was abandoned. The people, who had been one after the Great Flood, were now scattered and many.
When historians in the late 19th century embraced professionalism as part of the move to create history that was Truth, God didn’t have to bother to confuse their speech. Of professional historians, He needed not be jealous. Although these academics aspired to know like God, they were confounded themselves by being only men. They thought they could know objectively — have infallible certain knowledge free from human bias and perception. With this aim in mind, they introduced a certification process to weed out charlatans and undesirables. They embraced “scientific” standards and required proper training. They believed they were on the path to unquestionable fact.
We find, however, a century later, that our professionalism has not freed us from error or even brought us a historiography built on fact alone. For example, it has become part of the canon of the historiography about John Kennedy that those who watched his debate against Richard Nixon from the 1960 election on TV thought he won, while those who listened to it on the radio favored Nixon. The lesson drawn by professionals is that looks trump knowledge in televised debates. This conclusion has become a sacred cow in the history of the legend of JFK. His charm and good looks won out that night over Nixon, the surly ideologue. Only, now, we discover that there isn’t any actual evidence to support this claim about the debate. There was no definitive survey of listeners and viewers polled afterward for feedback. It turns out that the story was started by a newspaper columnist who based his conclusion on anecdotal evidence from potentially biased sources and personal impression. The lone survey researchers have been able to locate for confirmation was not scientifically conducted and has problems that make the conclusion unreliable (i.e. It appears that the majority of the radio respondents may have been Republicans or Nixon supporters already and the pool of respondents was too small to be statistically valuable anyway.). Still, historians cite unidentified multiple surveys which do not apparently exist in perpetuating the story. The myth was begun and sustained by faith in secondary literature. When someone finally decided to check on it, the story couldn’t be supported. For years, this untruth was the standard being taught in schools — I learned it. I probably taught it too. Not being expert in that area, I deferred on the subject.
Similarly — if less solemnly, historians have also been able recently to exonerate Mrs. O’Leary’s cow from its previous vilification as a doer of a dastardly historical deed. We no longer point our fingers that way when assigning blame for the Great Chicago Fire. Apparently, a review of the testimony and evidence indicates that human beings were to blame after all. Initial accounts judged it a bovine blunder — caused by the thoughtless upending of a lantern in a barn. As a result of the cow’s ineptitude, the city burned for two days….or at least that was the tale. Long after the fact, a newspaper reporter confessed that he made up the accusation against said cow. His copy sold, however, and was passed word of mouth. It became part of the historical tradition, and you still hear it today. The inaccuracy lives even though the story has been debunked.
If the latter story is a harmless vilification, the larger point remains. If we are making small errors, we must certainly also be making larger ones. And the implications of the former story certainly give pause about our perceptions about American political campaigns. Now, this erroneous knowledge helps shape the lens through which we view televised presidential debates. Are we more inclined to focus on the looks of the participants, knowing this story? In both cases, these falsehoods have been long perpetuated and continue to shape the way we understand the world around us — which is clearly a false knowledge. These are prime examples of things I must unlearn now, thanks to my education and professional training. These are just two errors, but we know there are many more. There isn’t enough room to cite exhaustively here (even of the ones I know). Such error is the cause of our need for revisionism, which not coincidentally was born about the same time as our professionalism.
So, professionalization has not brought us even factually truthful history, much less objective history. We still struggle for veracious factuality. Certification has perhaps brought us the illusion that we have achieved accurate history. Unfortunately, it has not brought the actual credibility hoped. We are now burdened with a guild that gives us Truth apparently no greater than that of the priests who came before us. Yet, we revel in our false confidence.
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I have, on occasion, received a well-intentioned but highly unwelcome review of my work as “professional.” I know it’s meant to be complimentary. This is one of the most laudatory kudos you can get in regard to your efforts in our society today. Calling someone a professional means that you find the person efficient, effective, and educated. More importantly — and subtly — it means you believe they are credible: their work appears to be unbiased, legitimate, and logical. Who could be offended by such a characterization? I am.
It’s because what the author is really getting at is that they find me and/or my work respectable. We are fit, proper, and decent. Were we not, we would be disreputable — the work shoddy and my character impugnable. Perhaps I was disparaging in my conclusions or in my recitation of the facts, or maybe I used sources that were untraditional or biased. Even worse, perhaps I engaged in some kind of scholarly immorality. Gasp. Did I swear? Did I dress in a slothful or inappropriately sexual manner? Did I propose interpretations that were offensive or hostile? Did I not use the third person and voice only neutral, objective comments? In short, was the history I presented palatable and prudent?
Note that professionalism does not aim to create work that moves the reader or amuses. Its intention is to perpetuate work that is clinical, reasoned, and emotionless. The presentation of the work should never be fervent. Rather, academic work should be dispassionate and appeal to reason. It should be classless; one must not use diatribes against the rich, the poor, the oligarchic. Our collective work should bear the identical markings of educated skill. The flip-side of that is that it must conform to certain standards of being. This includes avoiding foul language. (The word “fuck” is not appropriate in an academic setting. You may occasionally be able to slip in a WASP-y “damn” but “mother fucker” or “dick weed” is verboten in scholarly essays. Please note.) Also, footnotes are a necessity, even though no one will ever check these as long as your apparent credibility is sufficient. Do try to use an authoritative tone, too, so as to promote the legitimacy and respectability of the guild. You are one of us; you are representative of our discipline. Try not to drink too much at conferences or mash on students. Sobriety, solemnity, and sterility are the hallmarks of professionalism.
Of course, it doesn’t make your work any less true or meaningful if it uses inappropriate language or lacks an academic construct. You aren’t a lesser scholar if you prefer not to wear a tie or pantyhose to class. Opting to entitle your work Our Racist Forefathers and Their Legacy of Ignobility instead of Founding Brothers doesn’t discredit your conclusions. It just makes it…unseemly…and disreputable to the academic prigs that dominate the field. I’m really not the least bit interested in all that. I absolutely reject the role of scholar as socializing agent. The intent of my practice is not to make anyone behave or groom them for bourgeois manners. I am too busy trying to get people to be conscious. As long as I aim to speak truth to power, I will never seek respectability. In a million years, I’d never choose to be professional over being passionate. Vulgarity before valorization! Take your professionalism and shove it. Respectability has nothing to offer.
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I like to rant. I do it a lot in class. Sometimes, when I get done, my students have looks on their faces that I take to be a mixture of overwhelming shock and awe. The torrent is a giant wave at which to marvel and a force of nature to fear. After a couple of classes, they get a little used to it — as much as you can get used to a tidal wave. I try to dial it back sometimes, but then I think I confuse them because they aren’t getting the whole story. It’s really hard to edit a rant — particularly when you are in it.
This week, I was trying to explain the rise of the Progressives and professionalization. As I made a conscious and passionate decision not to be a professional, it’s hard not to go all out on this lecture. It’s a hot button. I get hot.
So, in the midst of talking about the glory of zoning ordinances and city planning and health departments and safety regulations, I segued off onto racism, sexism, and the Progressives’ overwhelming self-righteousness and authoritarianism. My students only slightly blinked when I went off on the United Way. They looked completely bewildered when I talked about universities as places of indoctrination into racist, sexist, bigoted agendas. I had to back-track a little on that one to explain. Yes, on the one hand, it’s great to build sewer systems and promote public health, but there’s a dark underside to the Progressives, who were looking to control others and force their preferences on them. Woodrow Wilson wanted to spread “democracy” to the world — but it was entirely a democracy of his design and he was not interested in giving it to the women living in the United States. As the great white savior, he could force “self-rule” on backward Nicaraguans, but he wouldn’t give the freedom to vote to Americans with wombs — because science clearly demonstrates that women are inferior to men and unworthy of this basic civil right (and Wilson gets to decide that). See, Progressives were the great arbiters of what is right and good, and their positive works were wrapped up in their priggism. They could pretend all they wanted that they were more enlightened than their predecessors, but the truth is that urban planning and sewage systems weren’t new in the 19th century. Humans managed to develop means to record their stories and build architectural wonders even without the benefit of enlightened, progressive thinking for eons before this time. And, you really don’t want to get me started on the tyranny of the dictionary (as if you are somehow a moron because you put an “e” in judgment).
These Progressives — with their oh, so modern ideas and scientific (racist/sexist) thinking — filled the ranks of burgeoning professions, and even created some of them as the 20th century dawned (Really, you need a degree in Home Economics to effectively do what women have done for thousands of years before?). For ages, human beings had made great discoveries and even managed to flourish on multiple continents, but now, you needed to be certified by some authority to be a competent practitioner in your field — as if having a diploma makes you Immanuel Kant (Was his degree from U of K?). Who could believe that because you have accumulated a certain number of credit hours and taken the requisite courses, you are the equal of Isaac Newton? Conversely, who would want to be an idiot like Thomas Edison? No man achieves greatness without a degree. No, you have to get it, and if you don’t, we won’t hire you or promote your ideas or give you the means for research. Thus, we can pretend that a general business degree means anything more than general bullshit and refuse to hire you without one. And, since we control access to the jobs and financial aid you need to achieve (if you are not a wealthy amateur), we can use our power to keep out undesirables. We won’t accept women or blacks to our schools. If some schools do let them in and try to train them, we won’t give them jobs. Angie Debo spent her life as a research librarian (read: chick job) because even with her graduate degree, no one would hire her as a historian because she was a woman. Vivian Thomas was officially a lab technician when he helped develop the field of pediatric cardiology and trained young white men to do what he was not allowed because he was black. Not having a damned diploma takes nothing away from what these two did, but the certification process made sure they didn’t get status, recognition, or pay for it, even though thousands of less gifted white men got that for doing less. Professionals have sold everyone on the need for education to achieve, yet today women and minorities still face heavy burdens in getting their educations and less compensation even when they do.
In the meantime, in agreeing to be a professional, you have to give up methods or means of doing your work that are eschewed by the guild. Use herbal “concoctions” for healing? You’re a quack, not a doctor. Critical of free market ideology and the infallibility of market models? You are a communist, not an economist. Doubt that it is possible to write True history? You are not one of us, and there is no place for you in the profession. We can dismiss you and keep you out. See, professionalization is simply systematized discrimination. It pretends to be about the method, but it’s really about controlling the maker. And, it doesn’t really make you safe or eliminate incompetency. It’s a prejudiced pretense. I really want no part of all that.
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Oct 052010
The historiophiliac did not instigate war — or rumors of war — with Oklahoma City Public Schools Superintendent Karl Springer, but she inadvertently finds herself in the throes of the same. It was Springer who declared combat — he publicly stated on a local news broadcast that anyone making derogatory statements about our Presidents or showing them disrespect was an enemy of his. He actually, literally announced that he was at “war” with the same. Of course, I didn’t know I was courting battle these many years when I was criticizing Andrew “Jackass” Jackson for his treatment of American Indians and defiance of the Supreme Court or even ridiculing the role of nationalism in the erection of a phallic symbol to honor the ironically impotent father of our country. I wouldn’t change my statements, but I didn’t do it with any intent to instigate a fight with Springer personally. Honestly, at this point, Springer doesn’t even know we are at war. I’m not on his radar, and my current strategy is to lay low to see if the advance party misses my location. I’m a pacifist at heart.
Springer’s intention was to take on the authors of a product called Flocabulary (not me). It seems that they have created a school curriculum that sets vocabulary, math, and social studies lessons to rap to improve learning by students. Data indicates a marked improvement on test scores by students using the program. Springer is content to use the math and English learning tools, but he has publicly come out against the social studies agenda. As noted, his objection is that it suggests disrespect of those identified in the lessons as “Old White Men.” Here are some of the offensive passages:
“Andrew Jackson, thinks he’s a tough guy/killing more Indians than there are stars in the sky./Evil wars of Florida killing the Seminoles./Saying hello, putting Creeks in the hell holes./Like Adolf Hitler he had the final solution./’No, Indians, I don’t want you to live here anymore.’”
“White men getting richer than Enron./They stepping on Indians, women, and blacks./Era of Good Feelings doesn’t come with the facts.”
Springer is disturbed by these “disrespectful” statements, set to a musical form born of the black community, being taught to students in at-risk schools — which in our state usually means schools with large minority populations. Yes, it bothers Springer — an old white guy — that young minority students not be taught to have the proper respect for our dead old white ancestors. I’m sure, though, that race has nothing to do with this matter. (Now, if he wants to beef with the quality of the raps, I’m with him.)
Which brings me to the final twist in the story: Springer is at war with me — a person of mixed race who largely identifies as white — and with the founders of Flocabulary — who are, by the way, a couple of young white guys from California and Pennsylvania (named Blake and Alex). Yes, the white people are at war for the hearts and minds of minority students. It’s that last little bit that makes me put my back into it.
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Aug 212010
You can’t have history without a historian. Other people lived the past, but there’s no story of it unless someone puts it all together. Accordingly, you have to have a historian. So, U.S. history starts when we get our first historian. Who was that? I always find it interesting that we learn all kinds of historical facts about our country in school but never who kicked off the gig. We still operate under the illusion that history writes itself or that these stories are found and being True are the same no matter who writes it. The historian, then, is unimportant. But, that’s a lie. One of many we tell ourselves. Oblivious to the historian, we remain obtuse about his motives (and I do mean his).
You could argue that our first historian was William Bradford (1590-1657) — the Puritan leader who left behind the record Of Plymouth Plantation. That was really a memoir though, rather than a history. He wrote it some years after the fact and it seems his memory got a little away from him at parts. That’s how it is when you go back ten years later and try to recall it all. It might be better to say that our first historian was Juan Bautista Chapa (1627-1695), an Italian monk who took up service in the Spanish Catholic settlements of the southwest. He wrote a History of Nuevo Leon, 1650-1690 using actual governmental records for his sources. Thus, it was researched and inclined to be more scholarly and less biased (perhaps) than a memoir. But, it also celebrated the Spanish settlement of the southwest as the good work of the Catholic fathers (which the Indians would probably dispute). Interestingly, we do not generally start the history of the United States in the southwest. We define ourselves as heirs of the Anglo tradition instead, and this is because those historians who managed to capture the public eye and create the myths of our foundings were white men who lived on the east coast. Chapa has been forgotten.
In between him and professional history lay the fraudulent history of Washington Irving (1783-1809), best known for the Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. Irving was a great storyteller, but his “history” was not so much fact. In 1809, he published a satire on local history under the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker. Irving created his character and then pulled one of the greatest public relations stunts in American literary history. He planted a story in the papers saying that Knickerbocker, a notable Dutch historian, had gone missing. For a time, the City of New York was fascinated with the story. It made a name for Knickerbocker, and when his “history” of New York came out subsequently, it sold well. So successful was Irving in imprinting his character on the public psyche that New Yorkers came to be known as Knickerbockers (or Knicks). (Irving also dubbed the city “Gotham.”) Later, Irving served as Minister to Spain and had the opportunity there to peruse Spanish sources on Columbus’ journeys. He used this research to write historical fiction on the subject. It was closer to a scholarly work, but still fiction. In his later years, he traveled the mid-west, and wanting for money afterwards, he wrote Tour of the Prairies — a first record of Indian Territory at the time of the removals. This was more of a current events kind of piece however, and, meanwhile, an up-and-comer named George Bancroft (1800-1891) was creating the first scholarly Anglo-American history about this same time — eclipsing Irving and ushering in the dominate paradigm we still use.
Bancroft published the first volume of his History of the United States in 1834. He was an educator and a civil servant. He served as Secretary of the Navy, helping to found the Naval Academy in Annapolis. He was a WASP who was educated at Harvard and pursued additional studies in Germany (when only few could afford such an undertaking). Ultimately, he would write four volumes of the history, and it would be marked by romanticization of the founders and the themes of progress and exceptionalism. The founding of the United States, Bancroft wrote, was the greatest moment in the political history of mankind. Of course, Bancroft didn’t cover the history of the Indians or the colonization by the Spanish. No, his history was about the spread of democratic ideals from the English colonies and a celebration of the WASP tradition that produced the Constitution — that most sacred of texts. The most influential of our first historians, Bancroft and his interpretation really set the stage for future historians. Only John Fiske (1842-1901) would match him in influence during the nineteenth century.
Fiske was our first professional historian of note. Like Bancroft, he was educated at Harvard — where he later taught philosophy and history — and studied abroad as well. Early work on evolutionary theory led Fiske to believe in the racial superiority of whites as scientific fact, which naturally would color his history. Again, his work focused on the English colonies for the most part and ignored the Spanish settlements and Native American cultures. However, Fiske also helped further our history as a scholarly endeavor relying on the use of credible sources and factuality. It was part of the new history that attempted accurate representations rather than a celebration of God’s hand at work in the world or the value of the Church. His were civic myths rather than religious ones. A professional, he aided in the promotion of the discipline from a dalliance by wealthy amateurs to a rigorous scholarly undertaking.
Clearly, Fiske and Bancroft set the trajectory of our interpretations with their work and their biases. Thus, it’s valuable to recognize who they were and with what they blessed and cursed us. Really, until we can be conscious of that, we can’t really understand our history — or our historiography for that matter. Thus, to know our history, we must first know our historians.
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Aug 062010
August 6, 1945, a day that should live forever in infamy. On this date, sixty-five years ago, the United States dropped the only nuclear weapon ever used in combat on the civilians of Hiroshima, Japan. If ever there was a greater conscious act of inhumanity, I do not know. Certainly, this is on par with the intentional slaughter of Jews, Serbs, and Tutsis. The difference is that America is much more efficient in its atrocity. It required no face-to-face contact or more than one sortie to kill at least 78,000 souls (and injure or disable another 100,000). By comparison, the attacks of September 11, 2001 killed approximately 3,000 persons.
How do Americans treat this monumental wrongdoing? Do we attempt to rationalize it? Do we own it? Are we dismissive of the act or judgment against it? My textbook treats it this way: “[Harry] Truman was torn between his awareness that the bomb was ‘the most terrible thing ever discovered’ and his hope that using it ‘would bring the war to an end’…Considering the thousands of Americans who would surely die in any conventional invasion of Japan and, on a less humane level, influenced by a desire to end the Pacific war before the Soviet Union could intervene effectively and thus claim a role in the peacemaking, the president chose to go ahead.” Yes, you read that correctly. The decision to kill thousands of unarmed non-combatants was partly due to a desire to squeeze the U.S.S.R. out of peace negotiations. I mean, you want to keep the odds stacked in your favor and you wouldn’t want an equal like the Soviets to keep you from running rough-shod over the Japanese. If they’re going to be pawns, you want them to be your pawns. The other deciding factor — the more “humane” one — was how the deaths of thousands of little children would save you from sacrificing a lesser number of grown, male soldiers. The inherent — and appalling — assumption in that statement is that American lives are more valuable and more desirable to be saved than Japanese ones (even innocent Japanese children where were in no way culpable for the war being waged around them). Drafted or not, part of the nature of military service is that there is a real potential to lose one’s life; it’s part of the code of war. Childhood does not come with the same inherent risk by definition. Yet, the American government and military intentionally assigned a higher value on U.S. soldiers than Japanese civilians — something that has always gone against the code of war. No wonder Robert McNamara said of the war on Japan: we were war criminals and had the war gone the other way, we would’ve stood trial for the things we did.
In an effort to sidestep any civic responsibility or remorse, history textbooks in the U.S. skirt the issue like the passage cited above. Similarly, they do not include any photographs of the atrocity that might make real what we did to the people of Japan. If there are any pictures at all, these are of the rubble of buildings or scorched earth. That is more palatable than facing the horror of what we did to the actual people of Hiroshima. We still don’t want to have to look them in the face.
Really, the historiography is offensive. I submit that perhaps our textbooks should — rather than presenting insulting justifications — just contain photo essays of the victims and let our natural guilt do its work. There is no need for words.
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One of the most painful aspects of studying history is that it often forces us to face ugly truths about our pasts. How we react to those truths says a lot about our cultures and what we have learned from our history (or refused to learn). Our responses indicate our denials, acceptances, repudiations, and other feelings about the stories of our pasts. Leaving aside issues about how we create those stories, the truths we construct and our reactions to them are complicated insights into who we are and how our history has shaped us to this point.
Sometimes, our responses are ludicrous and telling about our absolute inability to grasp the obvious. Again, using the example of the recent Arizona legislation regarding the teaching of ethnic studies is illustrative. Proponents of the law say teaching the history of an ethnic group (or, presumably groups together) is acceptable; what is not is using that history to promote ethnic solidarity or resentment. There really isn’t any way to strip the story of slavery in the U.S. from its offensiveness. It isn’t possible that the story could not cause resentment to black citizens, and it is beyond naïve and moronic to believe that it wouldn’t. Whites who don’t want to face their culpability here may try to soft-pedal it, but the only persons they are fooling in doing so is themselves. It isn’t possible to honestly present things like the Zoot Suit Riot, Chinese Exclusion Act, slavery, and Indian removal without causing resentment or building a sense of community among the descendents of those wronged. Chinese-Americans recognize that it was their participation in that group — and that alone — that made them unwelcome in the U.S. They weren’t barred because Americans came to hate the lot of them individually for personal failings. The hatred was directed toward them as a racial group. How that is not supposed to cause them anger toward white Americans, I do not know, but it’s sheer idiocy to think that you can spin that inoffensively.
At some point, whites and minorities have to face one another, acknowledging the truth of the past. Forcing legislation that minimizes the repercussions and resentments toward the oppressing class does nothing to acknowledge that truth or heal past hurts. Contrast the law in Arizona with those in Germany making it a crime to deny the Holocaust. No flinching, no falsification there. Until we can look unblinkingly at our past without attempting to rationalize or minimize it, we will not have truly learned the lessons of our history — which is why we still struggle with it. These are not easy lessons to learn. It’s uncomfortable at the least and haunting at worst. We can’t resolve these issues and truly make peace with one another until we do though.
The key to this is that we learn to face our history — and more importantly, that white citizens can face the mirror and what they see there. You are the product of white supremacy, racial terrorism, and discriminatory benefits. You still profit from this in many ways. It’s an ugly image. It’s sickening to accept. But, when whites can face this, they can face their fellow Americans of other races with honesty and respect. They can accept the consequences and repercussions of their ancestors’ actions and participate in true reconciliation. When we can face ourselves and others, then — and only then — can we begin to leave behind the burden of our past (although we will never not live with the legacy). We have much history to learn before that happens though, and we have not yet come to the point where we can even do that, as the situation in the Southwest demonstrates.
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