I have discussed the implications of leaving races out of textbooks in previous posts. However, Loewen's Chapter 5, "Gone With the Wind" goes a step further to analyze just how racism is being left out and why it should not be.
Loewen states, "Race is the sharpest and deepest division in American life." So my question is, why are we ignoring the issue of racism? Surely, we all know it exists. Being born and raised in Mississippi, I was surrounded by reminders of our past, slavery and segregation. Although, I did not live to witness these events, I have lived through events that have made me question my fellow American citizens. In most recent times, we elected and recently reelected our first non-white president, which caused quite a stir. I was appalled to see that some people I knew were using derogatory terms of our past to refer to our President. Why would we use these terms from a shunned slavery and/or segregated past if there was not an underlying issue?--racism. Most people fret when they are accused of being racist, but if you attribute a quality (or in their reasoning, downfall) to a particular race, there is only one word for it-racism.
It is important to analyze what information textbooks choose to include, why they include it, and what they leave out and why? It is easiest to present racism as a flaw of the times and choose to represent the story as part of progress. However, history books fail to examine the flip flop nature of the United States' policies that hurt the path to equality.
First we must analyze, what causes racism? It stems from Native Americans' land being stripped of them and the enslaving of Africans. No one in their just mind would look at another human being and see them as a slave, but as the socioeconomic system developed so did the false stereotype. Whites had to justify their ideals for their own moral, so they began to "forget" all the viable information they had gained from Africans during the Renaissance, meanwhile they began classifying them as stupid and uncivilized and claiming that slavery would be for their benefit.
We all remember learning about slavery from as early as grade school, but textbooks carefully word passages to minimize the white complicity in it. Therefore, slavery is seen as a sad tragedy. I believe a lot of teachers perpetuate this because of the fear of causing conflict within their classroom amongst the races. Textbooks only like to mention those who made a positive contribution to our history through heroification; therefore, the less favorable characters of history are simply omitted or glazed over. Slavery not only occurred in the south, but also the north. Many are unaware of this fact due to omission. Famous Presidents, such as Jefferson owned 267 slaves at the time of his death, but historians leave this out or use pity as a man caught in the wrong time to describe his choices. They choose only to describe the good things he did. The upper class enjoyed the benefits of slave labor; they became very wealthy. Others admired their lifestyle, which increased the ideology of the justification of slavery. In many of our wars with the Native Americans, we omit the real reason for American intrusion, instead attributing it to obtaining land. However, runaway slaves often took refuge with the Natives, which uncovers the true reason for war.
The Civil War allowed for Union troops to fight side by side with African Americans for the same cause. This began to disenfranchise the notion that their race makes them less valuable and less intellectual. This brought great change to the morale and ideals of the American people; even in the South, people began to see slavery as inhumane. With the Confederacy's ideology of slavery beginning to waiver, the war would be lost.
Those that were accepting of the change began to help during the Reconstruction phase following the war. Some terms that are still used in textbooks carrying negative connotations are carpetbagger and scalawag. Why would we still ask students to memorize the definition for these words? We don't ask students to memorize the definition of other offensive terms? Why not call them the white Americans from the North (carpetbagger) and from the South (scalawag) that assisted the African Americans during the Reconstruction phase? Yet, textbooks attribute their reasoning to help the African Americans as greedy, but there was almost never financial gains or they were in unsafe conditions.
Textbooks discuss the terrible actions that were opposed upon black people, yet we still manage to minimize it, but how? During Reconstruction, in Hinds County, Mississippi, whites killed an average of one black person a day. That's a fact; how can you hide it? Well, you can't hide it, but you can make it VERY hard to infer through fact omission and textbook wording. Another issue that is left out is the inequality in the non-whites' education. If not dangerous to go to school, the educational resources were far from equal. African Americans who succeeded financially were often attacked by whites who wished to suppress them.
So we must ask ourselves, what was the real problem of reconstruction- the African Americans or the confederates? The answer is simple: the confederates. They held resistance to change and did not want to see the blacks prosper, thus hindering their ability to integrate into society.
The flip-flop of American policy began in 1890 during "the nadir of American race relations." During this period African Americans were restricted in their rights by people of the North and the South. Segregation became the law of the land. The Supreme Court held up segregation laws, such as "separate but equal." Things could never be separate and equal at the same time because if you are denying one's right to something then they are not receiving equal treatment. Through the cultural response, many of these became social norms. Presidents supported these types of laws; therefore, it perpetuated the American citizens viewpoint on racial segregation.
It is important that we examine racism through African Americans' viewpoint instead of the typical white viewpoint that is told in textbooks. If the same white viewpoint is continued, racism's true harm will never be fully understood because it will always be sugar coated. Loewen cited a startling study that found young white adults have the least tolerant viewpoints. He attributes this to the ignorance of American history. OF COURSE, if textbooks are glazing over racism and the young adults did not grow up when civil rights were stripped from African Americans, how could they understand? As teachers, isn't it our job to educate students on history and create relatable moments to the present. Racism fits perfectly here. It is still widely present in our society, just covered by the blanket to make America be the ideal nation. Not until we understand and fix the issue of racism, can we truly be the ideal nation.
I found this extremely interesting and eye opening from Loewen by examining how racism won in America after our reconstruction period as compared to Germany's own battle with Nazism. Their country moved forward, sure there are some people still subscribing to those viewpoints, but it did not continue in their future policies as it did in ours through segregation. Thus we must see the importance of explaining the causes of racism to provide our students with the power to understand why it is still present and what can be done in the future.
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