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5d43c27
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The antidote to feel-good history is not feel-bad history but honest and inclusive history.
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James W. Loewen |
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fc0118f
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In sum, U.S. history is no more violent and oppressive than the history of England, Russia, Indonesia, or Burundi - but neither is it exceptionally less violent.
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James W. Loewen |
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56df2ae
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Many African societies divide humans into three categories: those still alive on the earth, the sasha, and the zamani. The recently departed whose time on earth overlapped with people still here are the sasha, the living-dead. They are not wholly dead, for they still live in the memories of the living, who can call them to mind, create their likeness in art, and bring them to life in anecdote. When the last person to know an ancestor dies, ..
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death-and-dying
lies-my-teacher-told-me
spirits
ghosts
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James W Loewen |
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731b635
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So long as our textbooks hide from us the roles that people of color have played in exploration, from at least 6000 BC to the twentieth century, they encourage us to look to Europe and its extensions as the seat of all knowledge and intelligence. So long as they say "discover," they imply that whites are the only people who really matter. So long as they simply celebrate Columbus, rather than teach both sides of his exploit, they encourage ..
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James W. Loewen |
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e64bea3
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Taking ideas seriously does not fit with the rhetorical style of textbooks, which presents events so as to make them seem foreordained along a line of constant progress. Including ideas would make history contingent: things could go either way, and have on occasion. The 'right' people, armed with the 'right' ideas, have not always won. When they didn't, the authors would be in the embarrassing position of having to disapprove of an outcome ..
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James W. Loewen |
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f20c374
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Americans need to learn from the Wilson era, that there is a connection between racist presidential leadership and like-minded public response.
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James W. Loewen |
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cd543aa
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By idolizing those whom we honor, we do a disservice both to them and to ourselves. . . . We fail to recognize that we could go and do likewise. --CHARLES V. WILLIE
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James W. Loewen |
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fb3d02b
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Paulo Freire of Brazil puts it this way: "It would be extremely naive to expect the dominant classes to develop a type of education that would enable subordinate classes to perceive social injustices critically."
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James W. Loewen |
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5af299c
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History is furious debate informed by evidence and reason.
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James W. Loewen |
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637a0a9
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Native Americans are not and must not be props in a sort of theme park of the past, where we go to have a good time and see exotic cultures. "What we have done to the peoples who were living in North America" is, according to anthropologist Sol Tax, "our Original Sin."
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James W. Loewen |
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8afbf34
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It is always useful to think badly about people one has exploited or plans to exploit.
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James W. Loewen |
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8e5394f
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Could it be that we don't want to think badly of Woodrow Wilson? We seem to feel that a person like Helen Keller can be an inspiration only so long as she remains uncontroversial, one-dimensional. We don't want complicated icons. "People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions," Helen Keller pointed out. "Conclusions are not always pleasant."41 Most of us automatically shy away from conflict, and understandably so. W..
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James W. Loewen |
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7781ed3
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Ironically, Adolf Hitler displayed more knowledge of how we treated Native Americans than American high schoolers today who rely on their textbooks. Hitler admired our concentration camps for American Indians in the west and according to John Toland, his biographer, "often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination--by starvation and uneven combat" as the model for his extermination of Jews and Gypsies (Rom people..
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James W. Loewen |
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7a791c1
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He is a lover of his country who rebukes and does not excuse its sins. --FREDERICK DOUGLASS
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James W. Loewen |
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828945d
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When history textbooks leave out the Arawaks, they offend Native Americans. When they omit the possibility of African and Phoenician precursors to Columbus, they offend African Americans. When they glamorize explorers such as de Soto just because they were white, our histories offend all people of color. When they leave out Las Casas, they omit an interesting idealist with whom we all might identify. When they glorify Columbus, our textbook..
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James W. Loewen |
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89bab65
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Consider a white ninth-grade student taking American history in a predominantly middle-class town in Vermont. Her father tapes Sheetrock, earning an income that in slow construction seasons leaves the family quite poor. Her mother helps out by driving a school bus part-time, in addition to taking care of her two younger siblings. The girl lives with her family in a small house, a winterized former summer cabin, while most of her classmates ..
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James W. Loewen |
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0a9109b
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If you truly want students to take an interest in American history, then stop lying to them.
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James W. Loewen |
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cc84060
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The historian must have no country. --JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
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James W. Loewen |
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93b0728
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Or guides might initiate a discussion of slave names. Many owners insisted on the right to name their newborn slaves--rather than allowing their parents this pleasure--and then deliberately gave them demeaning names or names that ironically invoked godlike figures from antiquity. George Washington, for instance, used Hercules, Paris-boy, Sambo, Sucky, Flukey, Doll, Suck Bass, Caesar, and Cupid. Most slaves received no last names. Guides cou..
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James W. Loewen |
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e494a71
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Socially, segregation labeled African Americans as less than human; the term "boy" itself, applied to the Scottsboro defendants even as they became elderly, implied that they were less than men."
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James W. Loewen |
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103af7e
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Consider how textbooks treat Native religions as a unitary whole. ... "These Native Americans ... believed that nature was filled with spirits. Each form of life, such as plants and animals, had a spirit. Earth and air held spirits too. People were never alone. They shared their lives with the spirits of nature." ... Stated flatly like this, the beliefs seem like make-believe, not the sophisticated theology of a higher civilization. Let us ..
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religion
native-american
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James W. Loewen |
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e162e6a
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Very few adults today realize that our society has been slave much longer than it has been free.
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James W. Loewen |
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d547f7d
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These Americans believed that one great male god ruled the world. Sometimes they divided him into three parts, which they called father, son, and holy ghost. They ate crackers and wine or grape juice, believing that they were eating the son's body and drinking his blood. If they believed strongly enough, they would live on forever after they died.
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religion
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James W. Loewen |
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7a868b3
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Textbooks in American history stand in sharp contrast to other teaching materials. Why are history textbooks so bad? Nationalism is one of the culprits. Textbooks are often muddled by the conflicting desires to promote inquiry and to indoctrinate blind patriotism. "Take a look in your history book, and you'll see why we should be proud" goes an anthem often sung by high school glee clubs. But we need not even look inside."
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James W. Loewen |
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f471c6e
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By idolizing those whom we honor, we do a disservice both to them and to ourselves. . . . We fail to recognize that we could go and do likewise. --CHARLES V. WILLIE3
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James W. Loewen |
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229aeeb
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Indian history is the antidote to the pious ethnocentrism of American exceptionalism, the notion that European Americans are God's chosen people. Indian history reveals that the United States and its predecessor British colonies have wrought great harm in the world. We must not forget this--not to wallow in our wrongdoing, but to understand and to learn, that we might not wreak harm again.
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James W. Loewen |
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1655d37
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No matter how thoroughly Native Americans acculturated, they could not succeed in white society. Whites would not let them. "Indians were always regarded as aliens, and were rarely allowed to live within white society except on its periphery," according to [Gary] Nash. Native Americans who amassed property, owned European-style homes, perhaps operated sawmills, merely became the first targets of white thugs who coveted their land and improv..
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peaceablyscalp
indians
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James W. Loewen |
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5fcbf87
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Europeans were always trying to stop the outflow. Hernando de Soto had to post guards to keep his men and women from defecting to Native societies. The Pilgrims so feared Indianization that they made it a crime for men to wear long hair. "People who did run away to the Indians might expect very extreme punishments, even up to the death penalty," Karen Kupperman tells us, if caught by whites.49 Nonetheless, right up to the end of independent..
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James W. Loewen |
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d6728d3
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what a community erects on its historical landscape not only sums up its view of the past but also influences its possible futures.
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James W. Loewen |
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0bc5504
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There are three great taboos in textbook publishing," an editor at one of the biggest houses told me, "sex, religion, and social class." While I had been able to guess the first two, the third floored me. Sociologists know the importance of social class, after all. Reviewing American history textbooks convinced me that this editor was right, however. The notion that opportunity might be unequal in America, that not everyone has "the power t..
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James W. Loewen |
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b346837
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As Benjamin Franklin put it, "No European who has tasted Savage Life can afterwards bear to live in our societies."48"
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James W. Loewen |
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4a5e47a
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The duty of the historian," Gordon Craig has reminded us, "is to restore to the past the options it once had." Craig also pointed out that this is an appropriate way to teach history and to make it memorable."
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James W. Loewen |
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62f98d7
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Old myths never die--they just become embedded in the textbooks. --THOMAS BAILEY
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James W. Loewen |
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e530e0e
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One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. We must not remember that Daniel Webster got drunk but only remember that he was a splendid constitutional lawyer. We must forget that George Washington was a slave owner . . . and simply remember the things we regard as creditable and inspiring. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses i..
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James W. Loewen |
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9892141
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History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, and if faced With courage, need not be lived again. --MAYA ANGELOU1
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James W. Loewen |
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bab36c3
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It is not too much to say that the blacks in Georgia and the Carolinas made Sherman's march possible. Their help meant that Sherman's forces would not be traveling through hostile territory without supply lines. Rather, the soldiers were more like a huge guerilla force in friendly territory.
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James W. Loewen |
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09b7aab
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For that matter an individual with the money (between $500 and $2,000) and a place to put it can erect a historical marker.
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James W. Loewen |
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612be79
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After Col. Henry Bouquet defeated the Ohio Indians at Bushy Run in 1763, he demanded the release of all white captives. Most of them, especially the children, had to be "bound hand and foot" and forcibly returned to white society. Meanwhile, the Native prisoners "went back to their defeated relations with great signs of joy," in the words of the anthropologist Frederick Turner (in Beyond Geography, 245). Turner rightly calls these scenes "i..
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James W. Loewen |
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7ae1e21
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Whether one deems our present society wondrous or awful or both, history reveals how we arrived at this point. Understanding our past is central to our ability to understand ourselves and the world around us. We need to know our history, and according to sociologist C. Wright Mills, we know we do.8
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James W. Loewen |
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e5fe36c
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New England, would face no real Indian challenge. Indeed, the plague helped prompt the legendarily warm reception Plymouth enjoyed from the Wampanoags. Massasoit, the Wampanoag leader, was eager to ally with the Pilgrims because the plague had so weakened his villages that he feared the Narragansetts to the west.28 When a land conflict did develop between new settlers and old at Saugus in 1631, "God ended the controversy by sending the smal..
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James W. Loewen |
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db62c21
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By 1970, exclusion was so complete that fewer than 500 black families lived in white suburban neighborhoods in the entire Chicago metropolitan area, and most of those were in just five or six suburbs.
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James W. Loewen |
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0546dd0
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Native Americans also insist that "squaw" is a derogatory term. Some believe it derives from a French corruption of an Iroquois epithet for vagina, analogous to "cunt" in English. Others believe it meant "bitch" in Algonquian dialects spoken in Virginia."
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James W. Loewen |
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69a2638
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Textbooks in American history stand in sharp contrast to other teaching materials. Why are history textbooks so bad? Nationalism is one of the culprits. Textbooks are often muddled by the conflicting desires to promote inquiry and to indoctrinate blind patriotism.
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James W. Loewen |
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0b896a6
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On Ho Chi Minh's desk in Hanoi on the day he died lay a biography of John Brown.
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James W. Loewen |