Antiracism's Invisibility

We may leave out aspects of racism in our texts, but we also leave out antiracism.  It seems to me that textbook authors are trying to remain neutral to all sides of the issue and paint a perfect America by leaving out the gritty stuff.

There's no real drama or suspense in history books. (Maybe, the reason why students always complain that history is boring?!) Authors do choose to employ melodrama to exaggerate people's role in history; this can be seen in the heroification process.

Idealism is something that remains constant in being omitted from textbooks, in this case, the idealism is abolitionism.  John Brown, a radical, white abolitionist was seen as intelligent man...until...wait for it....he took a stand against slavery!  People labeled him as clearly mentally insane, although there is no evidence of this.  In fact, when arrested for treason for his actions, he still clearly wrote in a sophisticated manner about his ideals up until his hanging.  John Brown did take aggressive action to obtain his goals.  However, through his armed action, other abolitionist verbal viewpoints became less radical.  As other white Americans helped during the Civil Rights Movement, John Brown began to seem less "insane."  Other Americans could be portrayed as a murderer, for example, Christopher Columbus, but our textbooks chose to create a hero instead.

President Lincoln's own internal conflict with racism has been left out of textbooks because then we would have to accept that it was a conflict even with the "normal," heroic Americans.  Lincoln did have an epiphany that allowed for his future aspirations to obtain basic humanity for all.  Even with his epiphany, he still struggled with issues internally, he investigated how feasible it was of deporting African Americans.  Students sometimes are unaware of how political figures word their speeches to appeal to a particular group.  President Lincoln did just that; he appealed to northern, white supremacists by vowing to save the union with or without slaves.  However, in other accounts, such as the Gettysburg Address and off the record accounts, he came to claim his personal belief was for all to be free everywhere.  Textbook authors often only use parts of various speeches that are taken out of context or do not include any of Lincoln's actual words.  This is a problem.  Readers are simply to take what the textbook tells them, instead of reading and interpreting primary sources for themselves.

After the war, the slavery in the Union states was not officially abolished; however, the people chose to abolish it due to the change of ideas and morale that had occurred during the war.  Most telling was the Maryland election determining the end of slavery.  The absentee ballots are what decided the election.  Where did they come from?  The white soldiers fighting along side the black soldiers on the side of the Union.

The Confederacy had a different ideological effect.  During the war, they governed and fought under the law of the new Confederacy by capturing Northern blacks and placing them into slavery.  However, the use of black soldiers allowed them to see that maybe they weren't lacking in abilities.  This was important aspect of the war effort.  The Union now had an advantage: they were mostly united on their ideology; however, the Confederacy stumbled with their own ideological confusion that resulted in their loss.  Textbooks would like us to ignore the ideological background, instead they would like us to focus on identical people fighting "for the preservation of their rights and freedom to decide for themselves."  This definition leaves room to miss that one side was fighting to end slavery and the other was fighting to perpetuate it.


Textbooks do a great job of leaving ideas out, so why would readers think they are of any importance? What exactly does it accomplish?