Equal Time for White People

Here's the thing, blacks do not have an independent history of whites in the US therefore it can be argued that it the history of both groups are two sides of one coin and should be viewed and studied as one coin. Both need the history not just one group or rather all need to see this as one history of one nation.

You made a statement with these words 'knowledge of their own history'. This is a very different mind set to 'knowledge of our history' and only reinforces this separation Saven is referring to. So why isn't it 'our' history? The history of the nation which is made up of more than one group?

Tiassa so to question these groups is to be under the spell of a white supremacist? So you say jim crow was taught badly in school and the idea is not to teach all the proper history both white and black but to separate them and only give one group a history which really belongs to the everyone? I guess we can call these groups the jim crow of modern education

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So his title is bs, and he is "questioning"? I think his title is accurate and well chosen to express his content and viewpoint, which is standard racial bigotry. And no, he isn't "questioning" any such thing: he is assuming - explicitly - that it is racist to have these groups. He says so, right up front.

Didn't seem all that close a parody, to me. The only place I've ever seen anything close to that in is white supremicist rantings.

OK, Lucy - you're reading that. Getting a better idea of where this guy is coming from?

What do you suppose our thread starter thinks these blacks are really up to, concealed by their "diversionary tactics"?

It's not "our" history because "our" history does not include it. And you might well ask "why" that is.

 

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Iceaura: It's not "our" history because "our" history does not include it. And you might well ask "why" that is.

Well it is your history, the fact that it isn't viewed that way speaks volumes. Black and white its american history. The notion that you are all so non racist now that it all has to be treated differently and separately (the jim crow of cultural affairs) is laughable at best. Separate but equal as if its all happening in a vacuum but hey its your society so what do I care.

 

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Why must African Americans have history taught separately? I think it's insulting to even suggest a class that states ok this is your history, you must relate to it because you're the same colour as the people who made it. Who fought for equality, which they obviously did not succeed in because you're still being separated from the white devils you still have to be in a separate class to learn about your race.

OMfG is this seriously not considered racism? you're still separating people making it obvious that we consider a person different because of their skin colour, that we are fixated on the past and Still cannot see that a persons parents (and their parents parents and their parents, parents parents etc), skin colour and their race's history have nothing to do with the person itself.

A person has a different skin colour = they have a different history = they're a different kind of people. Is it impossible to make a curriculum that does not separate people by their races or genders?

 

They don't. It isn't.

What are you talking about? Do you think there is some kind of rule that various aspects of history are divided up by race and assigned to different classes?

 

saven is kinda interesting
he claims to have had another handle

furthermore lucy bats for him, ("thats not what he said") in another thread as done here

mmph
lucysnow
saven's apologetic
old buddies perhaps?

/curious sneer

 

I'm going by this statement you made "It's not "our" history because "our" history does not include it. And you might well ask "why" that is."

Basically the argument is that blacks cultural studies groups exist to correct a wrong, well if you see the information taught there are being 'their' history and not an aspect of american history then there is something wrong. In other words why is there a need to study each races achievements or history in a vacuum as if it happened isolated from everything else? It seems to suggest that there is still some unspoken residue of segregation that blacks look at 'black things from a black perspective' etc

 

Well then if I don't, and there is no such need, then nothing's wrong.

Sure. Except it isn't unspoken, the "residue" is a large and significant pile, and it has little to do with a focus on American history as it involved blacks.

 

If you don't what?

Well then change the 'pile', seems that if the history isn't there for all then its all a bit fruitless, especially if having a unified nation in which all members feel they are a part is a goal. In a way it proves Saven's point which is that to offer to blacks what you would deny in the average history course for all is a pandering and a little condescending. What would make some feel that white americans cannot benefit from knowledge of that aspect of history?

 

The advocates of these black pride classes may think so.

Seriously, how long does it take to get your shit together? Forever, if you perpetuate the divisiveness yourself.

 

Not in real life. In your imaginings, maybe.

What you said, in the immediate post I quoted right there above the reply. "well if you see the information taught there are being 'their' history and not an aspect of american history then there is something wrong."

Who does? Not the black history profs or students.

You'd have to ask those who feel that way - again, not the black history profs or students.

People have been working on that for a while - the resurrection of some long-overlooked aspects of American history being part of that effort.

 

Legal equality is something quite different from sameness and uniformity. Black people do represent a unique American experience, and their history can be studied from this perspective, the same way history can be studied from various perspectives. For example, one could study US history from the perspective of advancements in firearm design.

 

(Insert Title Here)

Not at all. Rather, to question these groups according to the typical rhetoric of the white supremacist is the problem.

I think you're headed in the wrong direction on that. Let us consider your point to Spidergoat:

"Here's the thing, blacks do not have an independent history of whites in the US therefore it can be argued that it the history of both groups are two sides of one coin and should be viewed and studied as one coin."​

History is not a dead body of knowledge. Indeed, I side with Napoleon, who allegedly said that "history is a lie agreed upon".

Consider the idea of a story. Any story. While some contemporary writers attempt to defy basic components of stories, one of the essential elements of anything remotely resembling traditional storytelling is one of perspective. In the United States, the perspective from which we tell history has been that of the white Christian male. Consider a basic point from American history, told in two different ways:

• Early settlers did attempt to incorporate the native population, but found them too lazy and belligerent to be of any practical use.

• Columbus noted that the indigenous tribes were of little value to the slave system because the people resisted bondage.​

They are, you realize, the same point.

I always recommend James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me; he has a chapter called "Red Eyes" that discusses the impacts of how history is taught on minority populations, with some focus given to the indigenous tribes. Available online is a 2006 interview Loewen gave, called "History Through Red Eyes":

My first teaching assignment was at Tougaloo College, a historically black institution in Tougaloo, Mississippi. In my first year, I taught a course developed by the history department that was titled "The Freshman Social Science Seminar." In it we introduced students to sociology, anthropology, political science, economics, and psychology in the context of African American history. This made sense because 99% of our students were African American.

The second semester of the course began with events immediately following the Civil War. I had a new group of students in the second semester, and I didn't want to do all the talking on the first day of class, so I asked them, "We're starting with Reconstruction. What is that period?"

What followed was an "Aha!" experience for me. Or it might be better called an "Oh no!" experience. Sixteen out of 17 students said, "Reconstruction was that period right after the Civil War when blacks took over the government of the Southern states. But they were too soon out of slavery, so they screwed up, and white folks had to take control again."

Now, there are at least three complete misstatements -- lies I would call them -- in that sentence, and I was just floored by it. Blacks never took over the government of the Southern states; the Reconstruction governments did not, on the whole, screw up; and whites didn't resume control at the end of Reconstruction. However, a certain group of "whites" did take control, using terrorist tactics. It was, in fact, the original Ku Klux Klan.

So I thought, "What must your teachers have done to you to make you believe that the one time your group was center stage in American history, they screwed up, and whites had to take control back again?"

If it were true, that would be fine. But it is not true. What these students had learned we might call BS -- that would be Bad Sociology -- in the black public schools. What they had learned was being taught by black teachers in all-black schools. But it was white supremacist history because their teachers were just blindly teaching what was in the textbooks. Seeing the outcome made me aware that history can be a weapon and that it can be used against you, just as it had been against my black students.

(Jetty)​

He goes on to mention his lawsuit (Lowen v. Turnipseed) over Mississippi's rejection of his textbook in which students and faculty at two colleges attempted to write a new, more factually correct historical overview. "But our book just wasn't racist enough," Loewen asserts, "so the state refused to adopt it." They did eventually win.

And he tells how he moved up to teach at the University of Vermont, where he encountered similar historical distortions:

As I had done in Mississippi, I went to nearby high schools to learn where my students were getting the bizarre ideas they brought to college. Many of these ideas had to do with "savage" Indians. Lies My Teacher Told Me is based on my intensive reading of 12 high school American history textbooks. I claim to be the only American ever to attempt such a feat. It was a desperate career move that no one should try at home.

I have to say that the task of puncturing myths was much harder for me in Vermont than in Mississippi. It's fairly easy for someone coming into Mississippi from outside to see what the white supremacists have gotten wrong about the state's past. But myths about Indians are national myths -- or lies. They are harder to detect, because almost all of us "know" things about Native Americans that are wrong. So it's harder for us, especially for non-Indians, to step outside our education and culture and realize when we are making the same kinds of mistakes.

(ibid)​

And he discusses the famous story of the purchase of Manhattan Island. There is a long list of things wrong with that story. But it's also a fine platform for diving into the general trouble about how history is taught and how that relates to minority cultures in America:

We should also examine our terminology. As we often use them, our words becomes counterfactual. For example, we use the word "discover" to mean the first white person to see something. And we don't just say this about Columbus discovering America, but about the settlers discovering the Mississippi River and so on. We use the term "settler" for whites moving westward and the terms "savage" or "renegade" for Native people who were already living there and had lived there for centuries.

Although part of our problem is terminology, it isn't enough for teachers just to clean up their language. That would be a good start, but it would be even better if they get students to think about these terms and if they find misuse of terms in a textbook or some other source, that they then write the textbook author or publisher and see if they can get the language changed. Even if the publishers don't do anything, it will engage the students and make everybody smarter. And it could even get the textbooks improved.

And fall, with Columbus Day and Thanksgiving, is a terrible time for learning about Native Americans -- to learn non-true facts, that is. Historically, many well-intentioned teachers have perpetuated lies and myths regarding these two events as they have been traditionally taught in schools throughout the U.S.

Today, kids as young as second- and third-graders are still told these stories. They are the distortions of the conquerors, and they make the Indians look stupid. And that means that our crimes against Indians are continuing as long as we teach such nonsense. This kind of education has a terrible effect on Native children. I have spoken at American Indian reservations from Maine to Washington State, and I've learned that many Native Americans hated history as it was taught to them in school. How history was taught affected them deeply. It affected their self-confidence; it affected their ability to function in our world. It also has a terrible impact on non-Indian people: it makes us ethnocentric and stupid about other cultures.

(ibid)​

Various subsections of history, such as black history, or women's history, or indigenous history, allow students an opportunity to experience a more accurate consideration of history, a broader diversity of historical factors, and a deeper understanding of the complex undercurrents that form the traditional historical narrative.

So now we might arrive at the concept of "white history". The first thing to remember is that while white males are a statistical minority in the United States, they are the empowered majority. That is, their voice is the most influential in matters such as law, justice, and history. So if the textbooks mischaracterize white history, it's usually white people who are to blame for the shoddy scholarship. It is not that these errors should not be corrected, but rather that, in terms of communities or bodies sociopolitical, they did it to themselves. Unlike blacks, women, or native Americans, at least, the white male doesn't have anyone to blame but other white males.

The idea of teaching "white history" is not—or should not be—offensive in and of itself. Rather, the context in which it is suggested and advocated more often than not strikes people as shot through with bad faith. Look at Saven's suggested course topics: they're all about supremacy. Let us consider:

(1) White Europeans: A Unique Cultural Heritage — To the one, this seems a fair title. To the other, will the course acknowledge when, say, Italians and Jews were finally accepted as "white"? What will this section of the course teach about how a people becomes "white"?

(2) The rapid rise to dominance of Caucasians in the Western world — White cultural pride would suffer devastating blows if this section was taught honestly. How much time should be spent, for instance, on the philosophies of American slavery? What would the course teach about the bizarre distortions of Biblical principle asserted to defend slavery? For instance, keeping slaves illiterate was considered charitable, because if they could read, they might encounter ideas like equality and freedom that would only upset them. It would be unkind to upset the Negro slaves, as their minds are unfit to understand such notions. Thus, it would be unchristian to teach slaves to read.

And how much time would the section give to Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which includes the essential suggestion that the exploitative nature of capitalism is a consequential product of early Protestantism, especially Calvinism.

(3) Slavery -- or survival of the fittest..? A "politically incorrect" examination of of the slave trade — I'm not sure what I could say about this that it doesn't already say about itself.

(4) Why does everyone else try to look like white people..? Envy..? Or is it the emerging new standard of beauty..? — Perhaps this section might spend some time considering why white people deliberately tan themselves? And maybe it could attempt to explain "wiggers" in terms of "the joys of being white". Naturally, of course, the idea of aspiring to wealth will have nothing to do with this section, since it's about looking "white", and not about the appearance of affluence. Of course, considerations of affluence can be tailored to meet the outcomes tailored in sections 2 and 3 above.

(5) Reverse discrimination: Why do we need quotas..? Can't the other races compete on their own..? — I would be interested to see how this section of the course deals with cycles, ripples, and echoes. After emancipation, for instance, blacks began their rise through society, only to have it interrupted again by Jim Crow. And while the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s accomplished much, it did not score a complete and final victory. Along the way, they struggled through stupid ideas like "separate but equal", and in the years since the Civil Rights luminaries blacks have endured continued indignities at the hands of white America. How is it that a remarkable majority of crack users are white, but the overwhelming majority of federal crack prosecutions are against blacks? Whether it is substandard (separate but "equal") schools, workplace discrimination (see Griggs v. Duke Power Co.), unequal law enforcement, or other forms of practical discrimination, the problems such situations can create are generational. That is, a moment of justice, such as the Griggs decision or the breaking of police corruption in Los Angeles, does not fix the problem for entire communities anymore than a rape conviction fixes the damage done to the victim. The effects of discrimination and oppression continue to echo for years.

Yes, things have been getting better, especially in the last fifteen to twenty years, but white supremacists have jumped on this notion to declare that nothing more is needed. Not only does widespread whining about "reverse discrimination" usually reflect a personal desire over societal need, but it also perpetuates the problems in troubled communities as well as the advantages of the privileged class.

Part of the reason so many people are cynical about the bawling over "reverse discrimination" is that they're sick and tired of the sacrificial lambs always being the same group of people. Anecdotally, a biracial friend of mine finally lost his temper with the eccentric uncle at a Thanksgiving dinner ten years ago. The white uncle was going off about how the white man was so goddamn oppressed and so on, like a right-wing radio host. Instead of reading him the riot act, my friend simply set down his fork, looked across the table at him, and said, "Maybe it's about your turn?"

Analogously, with the economic crisis, the working classes are tired of it being their turn to sacrifice for the privileged. The people know they owe a toll to this society if it's going to be saved, but the rich who cyclically wreck the place always emerge well enough off as a class, and the working classes are set back to a diminished standard of living. If the CEO of a multinational loses his house, he usually has a couple to spare. If the factory worker who showed up and did his job right loses his house, he's on the street.

Likewise, the "white" solution to racial inequality is to extend the disadvantages of ethnic minorities. Many people are simply tired of this. The problem is that one or two, or even a hundred white people suffering some sort of deprivation in order to give ethnic minorities a chance to prove their merit isn't going to solve the problem. It is, as I have noted, generational. There will be many sacrificial lambs, and even the Bible acknowledges the cost of injustice over time (Num. 14.18); the long toll of inequity is hardly a new concept in human thinking.

This would certainly make for an interesting section of the course, but by and large—indeed, nearly exclusively—the "white studies" talk I hear from people is more about the superficial politics intended to excuse current generations from correcting the problems caused by their forebears.

(6) The incredible contributions made by the white race to the arts and sciences. — Talk about insecurity in identity politics. I did an art history course at University of Oregon once that could easily pass for this. Of course, given that the curriculum covered the Renaissance, one should not expect to learn about traditional African masks, or the diversity of African percussion.

(7) Whites and their higher-than-normal intelligence statistics: Is it genetic..? Or is it some sort of cultural bias..? — Maybe this should be coupled with a subsection entitled, "Asians and Math: A Jewish Conspiracy?"

(8) The future of the white race: Who will lead the way..? — The answer is clear: separatists. Perhaps we should append a second question to the subtitle: "Why is it important?"​

We might, indeed, heed the note in the topic post that, "Obviously I'm not serious about having this stuff taught in schools," but if there is a rational point to be made by such a list, perhaps we should consider more realistic coursework. As it is, the point our topic poster is making is to demonstrate why discussion of "white studies" is viewed so derisively by so many people.

One can, indeed, study French, German, or English history, or the history of any other predominately white culture at some university or other in the same manner one might study Chinese or Russian history. Indeed, reading selections from the Travels of Ibn Battuta as part of a world history course gives only the barest exposure to the development of Islamic culture. What sort of specialists in Arabic history and language would we have working in the American effort against terrorism if we were afraid to teach specialized history because a bunch of half-witted white supremacists said it was racist to do so? The black experience in America is rich, unique, and fairly detailed, so why not have an African-American studies course that considers the development of the black community in this country? If the only experience students should have available allowing them to see the history of black people in the United States is the general American history curriculum, what will happen to that curriculum if it is to give a fair picture? And what of women's studies? If the history of women in the United States is treated according to the phallocentric American history narrative, how accurate an idea of American women can a student expect to learn?

I think part of what people overlook when they ask questions, such as spaceChild's—"Is it impossible to make a curriculum that does not separate people by their races or genders?"—is the challenge of fitting that much information into the curriculum. Consider a high school level general survey of American history. 180 days, one hour a day. How much can you really fit into that? For instance, there is a fascinating but very difficult to read book called Pious Passion, by Martin Riesebrodt, which considers the definition of fundamentalism and compares and contrasts the rise of American Christian fundamentalism in the 1920s to the rise of Iranian Islamic fundamentalism through the 1970s. Just focusing on the American part of that, it's a messy, difficult history to slog through. You could spend a whole week on the fundamentals of faith (there are between five and twenty, depending on the movement) and still not reasonably describe American fundamentalism for students. Yet, in the coming years, the rise of fundamentalism will emerge as a very significant event in American history, as it is close to the heart of the warring ways of the New American Century as well as the developing civil rights arguments of the early twenty-first. But how much time can one spend on a bunch of crazy people from the 1920s in a general survey curriculum?

Specialization is a key to understanding history. The body of knowledge that constitutes history only grows. Diverse themes rise to new prominence with the passing of time. The context of any given culture undergoes transformations small and large. And yet there are some who would object to specialized examinations of history. Coincidentally, perhaps—or maybe not—these are most often also the people whose political outlooks are eroded by a deeper understanding of history.
____________________

Notes:

Jetty, Mike. "History Through Red Eyes: A Conversation With James Loewen". Phi Delta Kappan, v. 88, n. 3. November, 2006. Phi Delta Kappa International. Accessed June 25, 2009. http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k_v88/k0611jet.htm

Burger, J. "Opinion of the Court". Grigs v. Duke Power Co.. Supreme Court of the United States. March 8, 1971. Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School. Accessed June 25, 2009. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0401_0424_ZO.html

Bible: Revised Standard Version. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/r/rsv/

See Also:

Loewen, James. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: Touchstone, 1996.

Riesebrodt, Martin. Pious Passion: The Emergence of Modern Fundamentalism in the United States and Iran. Don Reneau, trans. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1998.