historiophiliac

First, the Historians

admin — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 17:14:39 +0000

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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All Apologies

admin — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 02:54:16 +0000

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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Tea Party U!

admin — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 17:47:46 +0000

Apparently, there is no end to the things the Tea Party people think the government can’t do properly. Now, they’re attacking public education — although what I’m talking about is not an overt verbal assault on the education system. Their hostility to this is implied in the activists’ new project. They have begun hosting multiple-week classes on economics, civics, and government in local areas around the country. Most especially, they are now into hosting classes on the Constitution and it’s meaning. Essentially, this action says two things: one, they weren’t educated in these to begin with, and two, they are hostile to taking such classes from experts.

From the first, we can deduce that either their civics and social studies courses in high school or college were sorely lacking or that they did not undertake their studies in these subjects seriously then. I’ll grant you that much of the civics you get in high school is a waste of time. I don’t know how many times you have to learn to parrot the three branches of government and that our system uses checks and balances to restrain the powers of each, but I learned to recite these ad nauseam. Yet, there are people on TV who don’t seem to understand how government works, judging from the comments they make. I think that, largely, civics training in secondary education is so superficial as to be mostly useless and those teaching it aren’t exactly great political theorists. I know my teachers — in the gifted program no less — never broached anything approaching a deep political statement. (Once when a student in my class tried to throw me by asking about my theory of the social contract, I pretty much shut him down by breaking out the Ibn Khaldun from the 14th century. Nice try, kid.) A solid history class, however, should explain to students what was new about the democracy of the 18th century — and early capitalist theory — and most textbooks do cover this. From these facts, a smart person could deduce that the Tea Party people just weren’t paying much attention in class back then — even to the rudimentary offerings given to them. That would be the norm in America, I think, where citizens don’t appreciate the historical training given to them when they are young. Really, history is wasted on young people.

The latter inference about these Tea Party activists is more interesting and unusual. If they feel that their education in civic matters is deficient, they could certainly enroll in classes at a local junior college or university — even if not for credit — to supplement their knowledge. Adult continuing education programs have been around for years. They are not, however, doing this. Instead, they are hosting their own classes which are taught by non-professional “experts.” Anyone familiar with my work would certainly understand that I am highly sympathetic with those who reject professional history, and I agree that an amateur who is self-educated could be an excellent source for information. I am a little surprised, though, that these activists reject professional political science and economics, as these tend to be heavily dominated by conservatives. I guess they’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater on that one. Maybe they haven’t rejected professional scholars because of some overt hostility to government employees (as many junior college teachers are) or to their scholarship specifically though. I think largely they just assume that the subjects professionals teach will not align with the Tea Party’s interpretation, and, in that case, they are setting up their own courses where they control the information presented. In essence, the purpose of these classes is to indoctrinate or propagandize by reinforcing their message with “education.”

Or, maybe they haven’t thought about it that thoroughly. Maybe they didn’t think about continuing education classes as an option. Or, maybe they don’t live near public schools they could take advantage of. I smell the rebirth of the Chautauqua movement! (Look it up.) Everything old is new again.

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Our Founders Were Racist, Sexist Elitists

admin — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 05:46:38 +0000

Rick Buchanan, a Tea Party activist, recently pontificated to a reporter with the Washington Post: ”The founding fathers were very afraid of a central government.” This from a man organizing a twelve week class for the public on the Constitution — of course, the document that established our central government and even strengthened that from the failure that was a weaker version under the Articles of Confederation. Less ironically, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia considers himself an “originalist” or one who reads the Constitution according to its original meaning for the founding generation (as he determines it). Some other unnamed “patriot” who sponsors foundingfathers.com claims to voice the founders’ intent — particularly promoting your right to have a gun in this country. These few examples illustrate the fervor with which conservative elements in our society promote the importance of the founding fathers’ positions and claim of the primacy of the same. This rhetoric dominates much of the political conversation these days, and it’s pretty much become heresy to reject this mythic founders’ intent and/or suggest that they were wrong in their stands. Citing the founders settles all arguments. Even the ACLU has resorted to this tactic in its attack on government surveillance practices.

A good part of the problem with this veneration of the founders’ intent is that it perpetuates the historical inequalities in our society and fails to recognize that these men were elitists who oppressed others and established a government that protected their ability to do that. Originally, the only citizens with any political standing were white men of property. Blacks, Indians, and other minorities were powerless in this system. They had no civil rights, no recourse to the courts when done wrong, or ability to challenge the status quo. Women too had no rights. Like black slaves, they were prohibited from making a contract with others and were the property of their husbands. Initially, the law even recognized their husbands’ right to beat them — as long as they did not use a stick larger than their thumbs or cause permanent disability. Women had no claim to their own children and no money of their own. Things were equally miserable for the disabled and homosexuals. They were shut away in institutions or punished publicly — humiliated for their “crime.” Even poor white men were excluded under the system. They couldn’t vote or run for office and functioned at the mercy of the wealthy men whose personal power dominated society. The system was designed to give these “best men” the authority to run their communities as they saw fit, and limiting government freed them from restrictions or oversight in doing that. This practice was born of the belief that wealthy white men were better than others and should be the ones to run society then. Others were to be neutralized by the law to prevent any threat to their power.

Then, history happened. The founders’ words were turned against them. ”All men are created equal” came to literally mean all men. And then, “men” was read figuratively to include women. Civil rights movements made truth of the democracy the founders established. Women, minorities, the disabled, and the poor came to have equal footing under the law and in the political system. While inequities certainly persist, our efforts have gone in the right direction and continue. Our founding fathers were wrong to exclude the vast majority of Americans and we have rejected their racist, sexist, elitist ways. We should not be ashamed of this; we should be proud. This talk about the intent of our founders is an insult to our history and an offense to our people — including those who were beaten, abused, force fed, and murdered fighting for their equal rights. The original intent was to discriminate and oppress. There can be no celebration of that and no call to return to it. Those who engage in such are the enemies of democracy and the foes of history. We must want no part of our founders’ aim.

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A Working Class Historian Is Something to Be

admin — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 05:34:51 +0000

If you do an internet search for “working class historian,” you will get a list of links to sites about the history of working class people and scholars researching in that field. The moniker “working class history” covers a wide variety of topics all related to events and practices involving the laboring class. In previous times, historians further broke their fields down more strictly by theme. Some covered working class people’s struggles with their employers. This was “labor history.” Then, there were social and cultural historians who were interested in the habits and mores of the working class who focused on their lives outside of work. ”Working class history” is an umbrella that allows historians to delve into both — recognizing that these issues tend to bleed together and human beings don’t compartmentalize the different aspects of their lives the way historians do (interestingly a strong division between personal and professional lives is generally a marker of the middle class — making it ironic and inappropriate then to approach working class subjects in that manner).

However, even this broader approach to the subject matter continues in professional historians’ tradition of defining their work and identity by the same. What they are is limned by what they study. Rarely do historians define their work in other ways. Occasionally, some will inject their politics into their titles. Thus, you get “feminist historians” and “Marxist scholars.” Funnily, it almost never works the other way. I’ve yet to find a professional who identifies him- or herself as a “reactionary historian,” although there most certainly are some. Generally, however, historians avoid putting too much of themselves in their labels. The idea behind that is that their work is born out of a largely objective standard leading to one truth that holds for all or that the person of the historian is irrelevant to the story. I know, it’s laughable, but it’s true.

The other funny is that American historians are practically obsessed with the notion of class (and race and gender). That’s why there’s such a thing as working class history. They dedicate a whole field to what these workers and their families undertook. Also, cultural and social historians love to write about “highbrow” society and its devotees and the rise of the middle class as well. You can’t avoid the subject of class in American histories. Of course, that’s other people. It’s important to talk about their class. Historians just don’t much talk about their own classes. These they ignore, and it’s the height of idiocy to do it. To quote John Lennon: ”And you think you’re so clever and classless and free.” As much as scholars love to delude themselves that their class is irrelevant and does not touch their work, they are monumentally wrong. Which is another reason I’ve chosen to reject bourgeois professional history. I really am not one of them, and after a brief foray into their domain, I don’t want to be. So, if you want to be a working class historian, well then just follow me.

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New World Cup

admin — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 04:43:41 +0000

The 2010 World Cup tournament is underway in South Africa. For the next month, the eyes of the globe will be on the southern cape to watch teams representing thirty-odd nations take on one another on the pitch (soccer field for us Americans). For eight decades (since 1930), the World Cup tournament has been held every four years as a supplement to the matches in the Olympics. This is the first time the tournament has been held in Africa.

It is significant and symbolic that South Africa play host this year and that it take front and center on the world’s stage. Firstly, this year marks a century since South Africa gained its independence from the United Kingdom. With the end of the Second Boer War, it became a sovereign nation (although remaining in the commonwealth, as did Australia, Canada, and others when gaining their independence). Eventually, the Union of South Africa would give way to the Republic of South Africa, and apartheid would yield to universal suffrage. Segregation practices had been introduced by white colonial landowners who came to the continent in the nineteenth century, and these lingered as common practice into the twentieth century. However, in the 1940’s, a legislative agenda was passed establishing a formal, legal, racialized system. Known as apartheid, the system codified segregation and introduced criminal penalties for violations ranging from leaving your state without approval to inter-racial marriage. Under the system, whites were given privileges and blacks were denied the right to vote. The system perpetuated the crushing poverty in which the black citizens — the majority of the population and the original inhabitants of the continent — were mired and from which they were prevented from breaking free.

Significantly, the segregation system in South Africa would have world-wide consequence. When segregation dominated in the nineteenth century (but before official apartheid), the poor treatment of Indian workers brought to Africa to work in mines and farms would prompt an unknown lawyer cutting his teeth to develop theories of non-violent resistance to white supremacy. The young attorney was, of course, Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi’s work in South Africa was incomplete, as he returned to India to lead the independence movement there. Still, his work in South Africa inspired activists on the African continent — among them: Nelson Mandela, who was just a youngster when the Great Soul was assassinated in the 1940’s (ironically, at the same time that apartheid was legislated). Mandela became an activist, and in 1962 — the same year that the United Nations condemned apartheid — he was sentenced to life in jail for his political “crimes.” In 1963, the U.N. introduced a voluntary arms embargo against South Africa, which was made mandatory for all member nations in 1977. In the 1980’s, the United States legislated an economic boycott of the nation. It was one of more than two dozen nations to do so. South Africa was becoming marginalized by the community of nations as punishment for the lingering discrimination of the apartheid system.

By this time, Jim Crow in the United States had been dismantled. It was no longer legal to discriminate against people in the U.S. because of their race. Of course, we still struggle with perfecting equality in practice, but we have officially thrown off these policies and no longer promote them under the law. This is due in part to a number of activists who were inspired and led by Martin Luther King, Jr. The young reverend, in turn, was inspired, like Nelson Mandela, by the non-violent programs of Gandhi. This was but one of the similarities in our pasts. The U.S. had practiced segregation like South Africa, and it had also engaged in involuntary resettlement programs to force native peoples onto designated lands. The pass system in South Africa (requiring blacks to have written permission to travel) recalled the pass system in the U.S. (requiring blacks who travel off of their plantations to have written permission from their masters to do so). Despite the similarities, there was no love lost between the U.S. and South Africa — perhaps our likeness drove us apart. Ironically, American engineers and businessmen were heavily involved in the mining of diamonds and gold in South Africa. In order to feed that system, cheap labor was necessary. Thus, many of the segregation practices on the cape were begun as a means to control native labor. This was yet another similarity between mining in Africa and plantation farming in America. In any case, the American engineers who worked in South Africa certainly aided in the continuation of segregation and ultimately the implementation of apartheid there.

One of the most notable engineers was a youngster named Herbert Hoover. Hoover worked for a London-based mining organization (Bewick Moreing & Co.), starting out in Australia and moving next to China. Eventually, he came to own a fifth of the company, which also had holdings in South Africa. Hoover gained international renown for his engineering and administrative work and he oversaw work at all of the company’s mines (and even consulted for other mine owners). Ironically, later as president, Hoover signed Proclamation 1872 in March of 1929. This directive limited immigration to the U.S. on the basis of the national origin of the entering alien. Under the proclamation, only 100 individuals a year could enter the United States from the Union of South Africa. In contrast, 65,721 persons annually were permitted to enter the country from Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Obviously, the purpose of this regulation was to prevent blacks from entering the country and increase the white population. It was a product of the racism so rampant in our country then.

Yet, even though we gave off legal segregation before the South Africans and we went so far as to institute sanctions against South Africa for its apartheid system in the 1980’s, the Republic had its first black president years before us. In 1994, Mandela was elected president of the newly reorganized republic, in which legal racial equality was introduced. The U.S., of course, lagged well behind in electing a black chief executive. This suggests a bit of hypocrisy on the American’s part and posits the Republic of South Africa as a new model for the league of nations.

So, it is significant that South Africa host the World Cup this year. It signals the full return of the country to the community of nations, from which it was ostracized for so long. And it is notable that it happen on this anniversary. Twenty-five years ago this month, the South African government offered Mandela his freedom in order to neutralize his symbolism for anti-apartheid critics of the nation. Mandela declined the terms of the parole and remained a political prisoner, garnering international sympathies. Five years later — twenty years ago (in 1990) — Mandela was finally freed and apartheid crumbled. The symbolism of the World Cup this year, then, is inspiring and enlightening. Perhaps now, the Third World has become a New World.

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…But Then Face to Face

admin — Thu, 27 May 2010 03:53:05 +0000

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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Now Through the Glass, Darkly…

admin — Sat, 22 May 2010 17:28:02 +0000

One of the fascinating and frustrating things about the human existence — its temporality, its material quality, the wiring of the brain — is the way in which our filter works. You see, we must, because of the nature of our existence, know things through interacting with or perceiving things. It’s very easy to focus so much on what we see or understand that we forget to be conscious of the way we come to that. The framework is so much a part of who we are — it is who we are — that it’s invisible to us. It’s easy not to see it. It’s like a window pane that when well crafted, we do not observe.

This is not a novel observation I make here, but I raise it to make a point about how the way we understand the world is so shaped by the framework by which we can understand the world. Often, our cultural and social pre-conditions are so normative to us, that we don’t see them anymore either. When we were children, we had to learn such things, but as time passes, we come to take them for granted. You don’t think about how to walk or talk anymore; you can often go through life on auto-pilot because the lessons are so basic you can do them without thought as you mature. The same is true with the way we understand the world to work; we internalize the values taught us and often they are so fundamental that we cannot conceive differently.

And so it is when we come to study history. The subject may be new to us, but we are pre-conditioned already in how we will read these stories. Thus, what we learn and how we understand it is already shaped for us. So it is that the new law passed in Arizona prohibiting certain approaches to teaching ethnic studies illustrates the cultural differences of heterogeneous communities in our country and how we bring our differing views to our history.

Governor Jan Brewer’s spokesperson stated that she signed the legislation because she believes that public school students should be “taught to treat and value each other as individuals.” The purpose of the law, then, is to undermine class consciousness. Students will be indoctrinated to see themselves as singular rather than as members of a racial or ethnic group under the law. Leaving aside the idiocy of this notion (as if human beings didn’t naturally demonstrate a recognition of and, often, affinity for others with the same features as themselves — you will never prevent black people from recognizing their similarity to other blacks or women from finding common cause with other females for example), the real problem of the law is that it is yet another example of and continuation of the cultural war of hegemony that white culture has fought against others in this country since the beginning. Yet again, whites in authority are snuffing out diversity and forcing their culture on others, and the truth is, I don’t even think they realize what they are doing. I think the framework of their understanding is invisible to them here. I don’t think they recognize that this is not a defensive act — it is nothing short of an attempt to undermine any worldview that is not White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. It is an act of aggression.

In the course of the development of western civilization, the notion of individual rights evolved and this sense of personal standing was further augmented by the Reformation. As a result of these intellectual developments, the dominant white culture in the U.S. (WASP) predicates everything on these concepts of individual rights and liberties. They are enshrined in our Constitution, making that framework normative and mandatory for our society. Unfortunately, not all of our citizens and residents share that particular worldview. Those from other traditions sometimes come from a culture where the group is valued more than the individual or the value of the individual is measured by his/her role in the group. Hence, the differences between Cherokee law and white law. To dominate the Indians, the white-run government had to first attack their culture and strip it from them in order to force them to assimilate. Thus, for example, they were forced into individual land ownership when they had held property collectively before. Catholics, too, share a sense of group consciousness, and, of course, Hispanic culture has been largely molded in that tradition (where Catholicism was the official religion of the Spanish empire and its offshoots for so long). When persons from these non-WASP cultures reside in the U.S., their culture often conflicts with the WASP framework dictated by our Constitution and social organization. The new law in Arizona completely misses that fact.

Forcing students to understand themselves as individuals is to indoctrinate them into the WASP tradition and, in doing so, force its hegemony over their other cultural traditions (religious or otherwise). The law, then, is a continuation of the practice of attacking diversity, and this is largely unrecognized on the part of those who want to dominate. They don’t even realize that this is what they are trying to do. They have a sense, I think, that they are taking on group consciousness, but I think they are doing so in order to “Americanize” these students. They are teaching them the “right way” to approach life and racial/ethnic relations in this country — that is, the way certain white people would prefer it. They do not realize that this perpetuates resentment toward whites because it is so in keeping with our previous attempts to force out other cultures and worldviews. So, when the governor thinks she is promoting individualism, she does not see that this is, also, a form of racial and cultural domination. Her view of the framework through which she sees is too dim.

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Happy Phyllis Shlafly Day!

admin — Mon, 10 May 2010 04:48:45 +0000

In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church (then the only Christian church in western Europe) — which was dominated by men — held that women were inherently bad and sinful creatures. They were temptresses and tools of the devil. All were Eves in the garden luring men to sin. Males were the more virtuous sex. They were also the more intelligent and logical sex. This was due to the fact that, unlike women, they did not have free-floating uteruses moving about their bodies. It was the instability of this mobile organ that caused women to be hysterical (a word from the same root as uterus in the Greek).

Thankfully, the Age of Enlightenment brought new insights — not the least of which was related to the new practice of the autopsy (leading to the discovery that the uterus does not, in fact, roam). Women were still considered the less intelligent sex though, which apparently demonstrates a continued belief in a correlation between muscle and mental ability. Enlightenment thinkers also believed that, unlike men, women were prone to imbalances of the humors causing emotional fits and impairing rationality — making them essentially valueless in a society that worships the rational. Time and effort were not to be wasted on the education of women and morons then. The idiots were locked away, and the women married off to a legal master.

But, a funny thing happened on the way to industrialization. The invention of time-saving devices and development of a middle class allowed women the luxury of spare time for a change. To the people of that age, a proper use of this time was studying religious texts and nurturing children. These activities seemed harmless enough — even virtuous. The young American republic was in need of such nurturing and a new notion of womanhood developed that fit the bill. So, women who now had means and opportunity to have influence outside of their homes spent their time on moral causes and religious activities that were considered appropriate for their sex. As the nineteenth century dawned female devotion to religion (in a time when enlightened men’s religiosity waned) led to a new view of women: now they were considered the more inherently moral sex and men were brutes that needed saving. As mothers with biological urges to nurture, women were endowed by God or nature with the traits necessary to prepare the next generation of citizens for their civic and moral duty. Thus, women became the champions of virtue and the voices of righteousness.

Capitalizing on this belief, women continued their activism as the nineteenth century wore on. They were ardent abolitionists, reformers, and advocates of education, healthcare, and later, birth control. They sought to wage war on war, and germs, and male lust. They moved into professions for which they were believed to have a natural inclination: social work, nursing, teaching. Opening higher education to women in these fields eventually led to opportunities for them to move into other fields like history, science, and law. With their natural talents and their educations, they continued their march into productivity outside the home — sometimes at the request of their government (to aid in war efforts) and other times to help themselves (in advocating for the vote or simply to support their families). Many of these women became convinced that they were men’s equals in their abilities to reason, work, and lead. Increasing affluence in the United States as the twentieth century unfolded meant even more opportunity for women to become educated and find ways of working outside the home. These growing opportunities inspired women to push for even more, and a new movement for women’s rights was born. This time, they managed to get legislation passed to protect them from discrimination in the workplace and politics.

But there were those, ideologues wedded still to the nineteenth century notion of women’s worth being tied to their roles as wives and mothers, who fought the march of feminism. Some of these were women themselves. Most notably, Phyllis Shlafly became an author, activist, and agitator working against the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment and the feminist movement. Shlafly argued that a woman’s proper role was to care for her family. So, in between conventions and interviews and speeches, she raised her six children and cared for her husband. After Mr. Shlafly’s death in 1993 and after her children were grown, Shlafly continued in her conservative activism…as a single woman. Today, at eighty-five years old, she remains a vocal and fiery force in politics, if not quite the visible figure she was at a younger age. Still, she remains an important ironic figure for American women.

So, today — on Mother’s Day: a holiday that celebrates the value of women as mothers (and note that we still don’t get days to celebrate our value as contributors to society in other ways) — it is worthwhile to honor the contradiction that is Shlafly and so many women in the United States. While defining her value as a wife and mother, she made a career in the public sphere. She was well-educated, smart, and driven. She wrote books and gave speeches and became active in causes that took her outside of her home and away from her family many a time. She was and is essentially an anti-feminist feminist. But, every time she railed against equal rights and got on her nineteenth century soapbox, she participated in the chipping away of the notion that the value of women is solely in their ability to incubate and nurture the next generation. Yes, they have a biological purpose, but clearly, they have the will and ability to do other things as well. Women in the twentieth century redefined their roles, and women will continue to do so in the coming century. On this day, a throwback to older notions of the value of women, it is useful to recognize the irony that being virtuous mothers has brought and how even today, we still so often define our worth in society this way.

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Items of Joy, Items of Pain

admin — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 19:19:32 +0000

Physical evidence is the building blocks of history. The historian can design the arrangements of these to create a certain presentation: what the shape of the structure will be (comedy, monograph, etc), how large will it be, how will your audience view it, etc. It’s like putting Legos together to make a model. You can take the same little shapes and make a variety of different items from them, but in the end, you aren’t making anything without those little pieces. Everything else may be the artist’s creation — except these.

Ironically, over time, we lose these concrete historical bits that connect us to past events. For the most part, we no longer have the arsenal from World War I (although we have bits of it) or the tableware of medieval peasants or the knives that struck down Caesar. There is something so connecting about being able to have contact with the same items that our ancestors used. I really was in awe in visiting the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial to see the collection of items he touched and especially those he had collected of Gandhi’s. I was looking at the very same fabric that the Great Soul touched. I felt a special connection to someone I so valued at that moment. It’s a momentous feeling. But, for all the artifacts we still have, there are so many we have lost.

What happens to this evidence? History, mostly. Time passes; people die; items get left, destroyed, forgotten. That’s why it’s so vital that we make a record of these things. We must document them as best we can — with photographs, pictures, descriptions, reports — so we have the confirmation of the thing, if not the thing itself. After that, after we have the historical record preserved so that we will always have it for future historians to use, the loss of it is more tolerable. The thing’s history becomes its own.

For example, recently the gun shop owner who sold Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh the Glock pistol with which he was arrested after fleeing the scene of his crime resold the weapon. Apparently, the government returned it to him (Why? He was no longer the legal owner if he sold it to McVeigh, correct?), and he sold it to a collector. There seems to be something disturbing and revolting about someone wanting to own the gun of a famed terrorist. Why would you want that connection to a mass murderer and traitor? He’s no hero. Why hold the tool of the monster in awe? Yet, it has become an infamous item — valued and sought of itself. It has its own history — one that extends past the event of the bombing.

In a sense, it has no place in a museum, particularly at the memorial museum. There, we honor the victims, the sacrifice of the rescue workers, the grief of those of us left behind. We want no remembrance of McVeigh there. We will not add to his infamy there. We will not give him that — the twisted heroism he wanted. It is a place to promote peace and reject the violence that made the memorial a necessity for us. Even if that gun did not kill, it is the gun of a killer. It is better that this item pass from our national collection to whatever individuals can show our compatriots lost this dishonor. As a people, we want no part of that.

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