James W. Loewen (1942–2021)

This revelatory, well-documented book should be read by every White American. I always considered myself aware of racial issues, but this book made me realize that many things I'd taken for granted as "just the way things are" were the result of racism and eliminationism. I wish I could require everyone protesting the teaching of "Critical Race Theory" to read it.

It's sometimes a little dense and academic, but if you push through those sections, the narrative is vivid and horrifying. I warn show more you that many of the photos are very difficult to look at.

We will never begin to reconcile the racial issues in the United States until we are willing to confront the past honestly and fully. show less

James W. Loewen gives a master class in historiography -- the study of how our history is written and who is writing it. He examines more than a dozen textbooks popular in our elementary and high schools to see the history we are passing to our children, and the results are sickening and anger inducing. Instead of being works of facts and opportunities for critical thinking, most of the books are little more than jingoistic propaganda designed to avoid offending parents and school boards show more with inconvenient truths about colonialism, slavery, racism, imperialism, and America's bloodiest mistakes in war and peace.

Steve Earle sums up my thoughts best: "And the most important thing to remember is, no matter what anybody tells you, it is never, ever unpatriotic or un-American to question any-fucking-thing in a democracy."

Even as a graphic adaptation of Loewen's original text, this is a dense and thought-provoking work that took me around five hours to read.

FOR REFERENCE:

Contents: Introduction. Something Has Gone Very Wrong -- 1. Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero Making -- 2. 1493: The True Importance of Christopher Columbus -- 3. The First Thanksgiving -- 4. Red Eyes -- 5. Gone With The Wind: The Invisibility of Racism in American History Textbooks -- 6. John Brown and Abraham Lincoln: The Invisibility of Antiracism in American History Textbooks -- 7. The Land of Opportunity -- 8. Watching Big Brother: What Textbooks Teach About The Federal Government -- 9. See No Evil: Choosing Not to Look at the War in Vietnam -- 10. Down The Memory Hole: The Disappearance of the Recent Past -- 11. History and the Future -- 12. Does This Way of Teaching History Work? -- Afterword. The Future Lies Ahead (And What to Do about Them) -- Ackknowledgments show less

A powerful indictment of the way that American history textbooks present the subject: as a long list of facts to memorize, with little analysis, and little encouragement to think critically about big ideas, the causes of events, or how past events affect the present. History does affect the present, and does matter to our lives, and yet textbooks shy away from controversy and discomfort, often championing myths and creating heroes instead of illuminating leaders' flaws and the way their show more ideas changed (or didn't) over time.

Ought to be required reading. See also: America Redux by Ariel Aberg-Riger

No back matter; Powell refers readers to Loewen's most recent edition for source notes and references.

Quotes/notes

Textbook authors almost never use the present to illuminate the past, and seldom use the past to help offer insight into our present. (3)

Americans must learn the historical patterns of racist presidential leadership directly inspiring a racist public response....However, in order to do this, textbooks would need to make plain the cause-and-effect relationship between leader and followers. (12)

Heroification

Cherishing Columbus is a characteristic of white history, not American history in general. (40)

The problem isn't so much those estimates [of the population of the Americas before Columbus's arrival] as the attitude that presenting a controversy - or inviting students to ask those questions and come to their own conclusions - is somehow radical! (49)

When textbooks promote these attitudes ["God on our side"] through their Pilgrim myth, they leave students less able to learn from, and deal with, people from other cultures. (54)

This original sin [what white people did to Native Americans] is our past, and we must acknowledge it. (60)

Somehow...America ended up with 4,000,000 enslaved people, but no enslavers. This is part of a pattern: Anything bad in American history happened anonymously... (98)

....but the authors make no connection between the U.S. failure to guarantee Black rights in 1877 and the need for a civil rights movement in the twentieth century.
Nothing ever causes anything. Things just happen. (110)

No book can convey the depths of the Black experience without including material from the oppressed group - yet no textbooks from my original sample let Black people speak for themselves about the conditions they faced. (115)

the invisibility of antiracism in American history textbooks (119)

Ideas have power - and ideological contradiction is terribly important in the course of history. Yet history textbooks give us no way to begin understanding the role of ideas in our past, or struggles over their contradictions. (130)

Textbook silence on war crimes and violence against civilians makes it much more difficult to understand the antiwar movement. (198)

But the mere passage of time doesn't provide perspective in itself. Information is both lost and gained over time. (211)

Such thinking might be nationalistic, but it's hardly patriotic. Nationalism doesn't encourage critique of our country or work to make it better - it only serves us in the short term. (216)

Presenting a nation without sin mostly leaves students ignorant, unable to understand why others are upset with the United States. This kind of presentation fuels ethnocentrism in students, too - and decreases their ability to learn from others. (218)

When textbooks downplay the...recent past...they make it hard for students to connect the past with issues affecting our present and future. This failure only encourages students to consider all history irrelevant. (223)

Tragedy of the commons (233)

Achieving justice in the present helps reveal the truth about the past....telling the truth about the past helps achieve justice in the present. (260-261)

History is central to our understanding of ourselves and our society. All Americans should be able to command the power of history. They should know basic facts about the United States, and understand the historical processes that have shaped and caused those factual events. They should also know some of the social forces and ideas which have affected their own lives. (261) show less

Though the title sounds like a rant on education in general, this book deals specifically with what history textbooks get wrong, using a dozen textbooks as examples. It's no mere quibble. In the very first chapter I learned that Woodrow Wilson was a flaming racist and Helen Keller was a radical socialist, neither of which were even hinted at during my schooling.

It's a little depressing in spots. I'm young enough that much of my history class dealt with how white people have done nothing but show more screw things up - whenever white people meet non-white people they bring disease, abuse, enslavement, and death. This book taught me that it's actually much worse than I knew. For example, the Pilgrims were grave robbers, the North during Reconstruction was almost as bad as the South, and white people managed to get Indians to fight most of their wars for them the first couple centuries they were here.

It's not all bad. There is, for instance, a chapter on anti-racism immediately following the one on racism. (For all history textbooks ignore the effects of racism, they also ignore racial idealism.) After several chapters on correcting common myths and omissions, the author follows up with not only reasonable justification for learning history in the first place, but also ideas for improving curricula without suggesting there is a One Right Way to teach history. It's a fascinating read, and for all the negative reviews I've read, very easy to figure out which parts are facts and which parts are the author's opinions. I certainly do not agree with everything in this book, but it gave me quite a bit of food for thought. More importantly, it instilled in me a curiosity about American history - something my teachers were never able to do. show less