Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
One problem I consistently have is trying to figure out how to rationally discuss history and how to do so accurately without accidentally underplaying nor overstating the obvious extremes of racism in history. It seems like the teaching of history is designed to focus on the extremists and doesn't always give us a realistic portrait of what was happening under the surface. I find this focus very dangerous because it portrays racism as being an overt and easily identifiable issue which is always used for immoral reasons, but the frightening thing is that much of the most "successful" and damaging racial actions were perpetuated by those with good intentions. Or, worse, those who honestly thought what they were doing was for EVERYONE'S benefit despite the protests of those most disadvantaged by said actions. I think it is a mistake to unquestioningly vilify any historical action or figure because there are a plethora of examples of them being far from evil and it threatens the dialogue between the races which is necessary to further equality and friendship today.
One example of an issue I struggle with is when we discuss the Indian Removal where those who supported it are the racists and those who opposed it are absolved from criticism. It always makes me squeamish when people imply that the "good guys" were those who argued against Indian Removal because they felt like the southeastern tribes could be "civilized" and "made white." Somehow I fail to see how that isn't racist. Neither side seemed to be promoting the idea that the native people's nations and cultures should be respected outside of a minor handful. Both seem like different forms of cultural genocide to me and I'm not comfortable with acting like one form of racism is more acceptable simply because on the surface it seems to be the lesser of two evils.
This seems to happen a lot in historical memory where we condemn the obvious extremes without considering the covert yet devastating consequences inflicted by the moral limitations of the moderates or those who were on the "right" side of history. It is because of this interpretation of history that I worry about people who tend to believe racism doesn't exist or isn't a problem unless it's blatantly in their face, and it's perfectly excusable if a racist statement or action is made so long as it isn't intentional. The reverse of this problem is that, because we don't have an open dialogue about the more subtle sides of racism, people start looking so hard for racism that they begin seeing it in everything or jump to conclusions about the character of a person who may or may not be aware of what they are doing. It hardens racial lines and makes it far more difficult to discuss racial problems when our historical memory paints all racists as evil villains, because it makes people believe that if anyone accuses them of being insensitive to race it is an attack on the very fabric of their being. This inevitably makes both sides more hardened in their resolve against one another. So, I think we need to honestly discuss the moderates and well-intended bigotries without completely crucifying them as evil while giving their opponents (who may have been equally or more racist) a free pass.
However, I think it is also difficult to do this without coming across as glorifying or making excuses for them. It is a painful balance and it can backfire in many cases. I know in one book I read about the Indian Removal I was outraged when the author concluded that Andrew Jackson actually preserved the culture of the Five Civilized Tribes by forcing them to go through the Indian Removal. I almost threw the book in the trash, but then when I took some time to absorb it, I was terrified to realize that he may have had a point. Americans were universally trying to detribalize and destroy native sovereignty while taking their land in the early 1800s. Everywhere Americans had the same goal: eliminate all "obstacles" to "progress" by procuring native land either through violence or through legal repeals of recognition. It was in some cases a conflict in methodology. You could take some of the anti-Removal protests' belief that the tribes could be assimilated into white society as technically meaning "let's finish their society off now." Simultaneously, the Nullification Crisis undermined the Supreme Court's ruling in favor of the Cherokee so that even if Andrew Jackson shared the Court's feelings, civil war easily could have broken out given how agitated the South was over the tariff. Though South Carolina's threat of secession was generally rejected by the rest of the South, if the president had sent troops into Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama to repulse white Americans it could have given secessionists the excuse they needed to rally the rabidly anti-tariff sentiments into violently anti-Union actions. It was a very complex situation and it disturbed me to recognize that this historian had a point that Jackson may have acted in what he honestly believed was in the best interest of the Union and the Five Tribes who could be wiped out through "civilization" or war. However, I still felt he was going too far by saying Indian Removal helped preserve southeastern native culture even if I could see why he reached that conclusion. I can see two problems here: 1) People might take that as a way of justifying their ancestors were morally superior for supporting the Removal when his deduction really means that the Five Tribes were boned no matter what because of how biased and arrogant public opinion was against them regardless of what side of the argument they were on. 2) It ignores that the Removal, regardless of estimated destruction another war between them and white settlers may have wrought, still killed off a staggering percentage of their populations, removed them from ancestral homes which were a HUGE part of their culture and, thus, fundamentally altered said culture. So, though I deeply respected and appreciated the more diverse and critical analysis of the issue which focused on not being satisfied with the obvious explanations of extreme racism, I was simultaneously concerned he had understated its role entirely with his controversial final thesis.
I guess what I really want to discuss is this: How can we balance between fairly and accurately discussing such complex issues without overstating/understating the roles racism played nor excusing/praising the "lesser of two evils" as being an acceptable brand of racism? Do you think I am overemphasizing the importance of how we discuss history and its ramifications on modern racial interactions or do you also think this is a significant issue Americans need to worry about? What would you like to see more honestly and openly discussed in history and how might it help improve Americans' relations with one another?
When I speak to younger people about history I try to balance what was done to; Women, Native people and Blacks by also talking about all the backward ideas so called intelligent people had about science and medicine.
Not so much to show how dumb people were, but to illustrate that how we treat one another has evolved with our collective intelligence.
All of this about the relative importance of those who were racist vs. those who had good intentions with bad application is more in the lines of spinning yarn for whole cloth than getting to the core issues. At a basic level, Western history is the study of the flows of power and wealth. Race, religion, education, immune system resistance, geography; all of these are just factors in that study. Once you grok that power and wealth trump all those other factors, you get to see how callously all peoples are treated.
I think part of the challenge is to get people to frame things in the mindset of the times the events took place versus looking at everything through a modern moral lense. "Right" and "wrong" are not, IMO, universal concepts but are relative concepts that shift overtime and are different for different groups of people. A historical act or view may be reprehensible or immoral to people today, but at the time it occurred it was widely viewed as the "right" thing to do and morally acceptable. Getting people to think like or at least understand how people thought then is an immense challenge and not always easy to do.
One example that is difficult for people to wrap their heads around is the views of Abraham Lincoln towards blacks. While Lincoln was certainly anti-slavery, he was not of the mind that blacks were in fact equal to whites. For his day Lincoln was very progressive, but from a modern perspective his views on blacks would be considered racist and backwards. Does that make Lincoln a racist? From a modern perspective perhaps it does. From the perspective of 1860's America it does not.
So, we end up with looking at things on two levels. It is perfectly acceptable to view historical events through a modern moral lense to an extent. However, when it comes to judging the actions and decisions that occurred then, they need to be weighed and viewed within the morality of the time.
We are all influenced to a degree by the manner in which academic history has been handled over the years. What would be the ideal and what has actually transpired are not the same.
History, as in a recounting of past events, changes only when previous inaccuracies are discovered, examined and corrected. History as an interpretive art has long been caught in series of pendulums, the typical pattern of which has been:
A) Primary and first histories written by the "winners" of a recent event. This is most often heroic, it is the place to find hagiography, whatever just happened is treated as an absolute good or absolute evil, or at least not given any sort of balance.
B) The correctives....usually associated with a specific school of thought (emphasis on economic interpretations, emphasis on socio/cultural interpretations, emphasis on ideological interpretations etc.) The correctives typically represent improvements on the primary efforts in that the they are not trying to make themselves look good, but they also typically over correct, they move the pendulum from one extreme to the other extreme....it was all this and now it is all that.
C) Eventually a consensus school emerges which blends the previous interpretations and we finally wind up with monographs with the goal of presenting the truth rather than persuading anyone of the validity of covering theories. There can be multiple "B's", numerous corrective interpretations through which the saga must pass before the consensus work appears.
The bigger the event (revolutions, wars) the more likely it is to be subject to long periods of pendulum pushing before it at last settles into something which isn't tainted by having to squeeze everything into a standing school of thought.
At the moment we are still some distance from a consensus school of thought regarding how to handle racial matters and while I understand your complaint quite well, I am not optimistic that the consensus for this is on the immediate horizon, although there has been progress. Thus, for at least a while longer, any manner in which you treat racial issues is going to provoke dissent. Too much emphasis, not enough emphasis, white people shouldn't try and write black history, blacks shouldn't write black history because they are not objective.....all of this will be with us for some time to come.
We might view this as an opportunity....the job opening is out there....be the first to write a history of racial issues in the US which is so fair minded, so unassailable in its presentation of evidence, so wise in its interpretations and considerations for prevailing viewpoints...that nearly everyone salutes it as the consensus breakthrough.
One problem I consistently have is trying to figure out how to rationally discuss history and how to do so accurately without accidentally underplaying nor overstating the obvious extremes of racism in history. It seems like the teaching of history is designed to focus on the extremists and doesn't always give us a realistic portrait of what was happening under the surface. I find this focus very dangerous because it portrays racism as being an overt and easily identifiable issue which is always used for immoral reasons, but the frightening thing is that much of the most "successful" and damaging racial actions were perpetuated by those with good intentions. Or, worse, those who honestly thought what they were doing was for EVERYONE'S benefit despite the protests of those most disadvantaged by said actions. I think it is a mistake to unquestioningly vilify any historical action or figure because there are a plethora of examples of them being far from evil and it threatens the dialogue between the races which is necessary to further equality and friendship today.
One example of an issue I struggle with is when we discuss the Indian Removal where those who supported it are the racists and those who opposed it are absolved from criticism. It always makes me squeamish when people imply that the "good guys" were those who argued against Indian Removal because they felt like the southeastern tribes could be "civilized" and "made white." Somehow I fail to see how that isn't racist. Neither side seemed to be promoting the idea that the native people's nations and cultures should be respected outside of a minor handful. Both seem like different forms of cultural genocide to me and I'm not comfortable with acting like one form of racism is more acceptable simply because on the surface it seems to be the lesser of two evils.
This seems to happen a lot in historical memory where we condemn the obvious extremes without considering the covert yet devastating consequences inflicted by the moral limitations of the moderates or those who were on the "right" side of history. It is because of this interpretation of history that I worry about people who tend to believe racism doesn't exist or isn't a problem unless it's blatantly in their face, and it's perfectly excusable if a racist statement or action is made so long as it isn't intentional. The reverse of this problem is that, because we don't have an open dialogue about the more subtle sides of racism, people start looking so hard for racism that they begin seeing it in everything or jump to conclusions about the character of a person who may or may not be aware of what they are doing. It hardens racial lines and makes it far more difficult to discuss racial problems when our historical memory paints all racists as evil villains, because it makes people believe that if anyone accuses them of being insensitive to race it is an attack on the very fabric of their being. This inevitably makes both sides more hardened in their resolve against one another. So, I think we need to honestly discuss the moderates and well-intended bigotries without completely crucifying them as evil while giving their opponents (who may have been equally or more racist) a free pass.
However, I think it is also difficult to do this without coming across as glorifying or making excuses for them. It is a painful balance and it can backfire in many cases. I know in one book I read about the Indian Removal I was outraged when the author concluded that Andrew Jackson actually preserved the culture of the Five Civilized Tribes by forcing them to go through the Indian Removal. I almost threw the book in the trash, but then when I took some time to absorb it, I was terrified to realize that he may have had a point. Americans were universally trying to detribalize and destroy native sovereignty while taking their land in the early 1800s. Everywhere Americans had the same goal: eliminate all "obstacles" to "progress" by procuring native land either through violence or through legal repeals of recognition. It was in some cases a conflict in methodology. You could take some of the anti-Removal protests' belief that the tribes could be assimilated into white society as technically meaning "let's finish their society off now." Simultaneously, the Nullification Crisis undermined the Supreme Court's ruling in favor of the Cherokee so that even if Andrew Jackson shared the Court's feelings, civil war easily could have broken out given how agitated the South was over the tariff. Though South Carolina's threat of secession was generally rejected by the rest of the South, if the president had sent troops into Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama to repulse white Americans it could have given secessionists the excuse they needed to rally the rabidly anti-tariff sentiments into violently anti-Union actions. It was a very complex situation and it disturbed me to recognize that this historian had a point that Jackson may have acted in what he honestly believed was in the best interest of the Union and the Five Tribes who could be wiped out through "civilization" or war. However, I still felt he was going too far by saying Indian Removal helped preserve southeastern native culture even if I could see why he reached that conclusion. I can see two problems here: 1) People might take that as a way of justifying their ancestors were morally superior for supporting the Removal when his deduction really means that the Five Tribes were boned no matter what because of how biased and arrogant public opinion was against them regardless of what side of the argument they were on. 2) It ignores that the Removal, regardless of estimated destruction another war between them and white settlers may have wrought, still killed off a staggering percentage of their populations, removed them from ancestral homes which were a HUGE part of their culture and, thus, fundamentally altered said culture. So, though I deeply respected and appreciated the more diverse and critical analysis of the issue which focused on not being satisfied with the obvious explanations of extreme racism, I was simultaneously concerned he had understated its role entirely with his controversial final thesis.
I guess what I really want to discuss is this: How can we balance between fairly and accurately discussing such complex issues without overstating/understating the roles racism played nor excusing/praising the "lesser of two evils" as being an acceptable brand of racism? Do you think I am overemphasizing the importance of how we discuss history and its ramifications on modern racial interactions or do you also think this is a significant issue Americans need to worry about? What would you like to see more honestly and openly discussed in history and how might it help improve Americans' relations with one another?
Fascinating post. The thing so many miss is that history is NEVER simple. Its a complex net of many many factors and leaving a few out changes the picture entirely. Most people want the short answer with a sastifyly and solid finish, but that also isn't the reality.
Another thing you hint at is if we look at the motivations for people's actions, we MUSt see through their eyes and experience. Maybe its such that we don't want to let it in since its no longer socially acceptable but they didn't live in our world. There was a poster in the thread about the miniseires on the Vikings who claimed it was anti-european (in the tv thread). He's looking at it through modern eyes when there is a europe for one thing. But this is how most people deal with histroy, by what they see now.
The uneasy way we don't get crystal clear answers from the past symbolized about the points about Indian Removal is common in many sorts of questions. For instance, many abolitionist didn't like slavery, but they didn't like slaves either. Their thinking either stopped there or they wished to send them away. Is this not also racism? But its qualified. We don't like 'qualified' states of mind.
Why not just deal with it as it is, something without an absolute? Do we need to either support OR excuse the motivations of people long long dead who lived in a different world than ours? That is the value of acadamic discussion and analysis, as you've presented. Those who did not wish the tribes removed because they wished to take away their culture in place, and those who wished to remove them for the land share a lack of respect for the culture. But we also need to look at why they felt that way. What made them have that point of view? We can NOT claim moral superiority over people who lived in a different world unless we know that we wouldn't come out the same. That is the problem with couching history in moral terms.
Just imagine what the future may have to say about us.
One component of history frequently left out is the small things. How people lived. How they stuggled to feed themselves and their families. How they physically lived, in terms of what they had and how they filled all their hours. What their parents taught them as they grew. We need to learn to see people of the past AS people, not just numbers or labels.
This does not mean we can't say an act was a bad choice. But sometimes, there was No good choice on the horizon. And sometimes there is evil and sometimes there is how things are. Hitler grew up in a more civilized world than Atilla. He had every reason to know that he should not do as he did. We undersand that and call him evil. Attilla killed massive numbers indescriminantly, but is it fair to call him evil when it was his culture and in a world where that was how you conqureed?
Let's say, we decided that we didn't need reservations and we should pay off the tribes and let them go buy houses in the city, would this be right by OUR rules or values? We can failry ask that question. I'm not sure you can if it was seveal hundred years ago in a time we wouldn't even recognize the society. The only real way to study it is to look at it without the emotion and see the irony that in effect both would have accomplished the same. The 'right' thing would have been to respect the tribes, but in that time it wasn't seen that way and it wasn't going to be a reality. In its time, it is not really a factor we can historically reasonably consider as an option.
Dealing with modern American societal issues is more in the realm of sociology and perhaps political science.
There are definitely great examples of cross/multidisciplinary studies but I feel that the separate fields of study, history being one of them, should be kept separate.
I think it may be better to decide whether you want to take a more sociological approach to modern American issues though this does not preclude you from drawing upon historical information.
We are all influenced to a degree by the manner in which academic history has been handled over the years. What would be the ideal and what has actually transpired are not the same.
History, as in a recounting of past events, changes only when previous inaccuracies are discovered, examined and corrected. History as an interpretive art has long been caught in series of pendulums, the typical pattern of which has been:
A) Primary and first histories written by the "winners" of a recent event. This is most often heroic, it is the place to find hagiography, whatever just happened is treated as an absolute good or absolute evil, or at least not given any sort of balance.
B) The correctives....usually associated with a specific school of thought (emphasis on economic interpretations, emphasis on socio/cultural interpretations, emphasis on ideological interpretations etc.) The correctives typically represent improvements on the primary efforts in that the they are not trying to make themselves look good, but they also typically over correct, they move the pendulum from one extreme to the other extreme....it was all this and now it is all that.
C) Eventually a consensus school emerges which blends the previous interpretations and we finally wind up with monographs with the goal of presenting the truth rather than persuading anyone of the validity of covering theories. There can be multiple "B's", numerous corrective interpretations through which the saga must pass before the consensus work appears.
The bigger the event (revolutions, wars) the more likely it is to be subject to long periods of pendulum pushing before it at last settles into something which isn't tainted by having to squeeze everything into a standing school of thought.
At the moment we are still some distance from a consensus school of thought regarding how to handle racial matters and while I understand your complaint quite well, I am not optimistic that the consensus for this is on the immediate horizon, although there has been progress. Thus, for at least a while longer, any manner in which you treat racial issues is going to provoke dissent. Too much emphasis, not enough emphasis, white people shouldn't try and write black history, blacks shouldn't write black history because they are not objective.....all of this will be with us for some time to come.
We might view this as an opportunity....the job opening is out there....be the first to write a history of racial issues in the US which is so fair minded, so unassailable in its presentation of evidence, so wise in its interpretations and considerations for prevailing viewpoints...that nearly everyone salutes it as the consensus breakthrough.
I think it will be a long time before that book gets written, since its such a hot button, toss out all but raw emotion issue. The differnt layers of historical documentation play a role here too. We need to read those first generation histories, but with an analitical approach. And we need to read diaries and letters of the time too. We need to idenitfy the mindset and see how it influenced the conclusions and the tone and shading of the history.
But the problem is the knee jerk reaction. Was Lincon a bigot because he did not believe black people were equal in a time when simply beliveing they were people to some was revolutionary? The historian would say he was an exceptional man of his time. The knee jerk absolute would say he was no better. So long as the knee jerker matters more nobody is ever going to be able to look at the reality of the time and change much.
I think the first step is to restore the value of history to education, and not make it dates and battle and wars, but the way people saw their own time as a necessary component. Maybe if we could get people to see that today is not the measure of all things we could move past the bad and on to something better.
And for some its necessary to make the ancestors of present day people evil because they did not live with today's mindset. Nothing is to be gained from this. I will not see my ancestors of seven generations back 'evil' as they no doubt took land from someone in Kentucky. Nor will I see the system which sent them as convicts on a slave ship to Maryland to be sold to a tabacco planter before they eventually went to Kentucky as evil. It was their world, not mine. I can admire their strength and courage to survive, but these are presonal qualities. The world they lived in made them as the world we live in makes us.
Moving on from blaming the past to taking responsibility for today and one's choices would do all of us a lot of good.
This discussion has, from the outset, violated its own principles by distilling itself down to "racism", which is only a single facet of the total sweep of history. History is a very broad discipline, and how historians treat racism is not necessarily a true or even an approximate reflection of the product that historians have created for our consumption.
The quibble of the OP strikes me as as racially-motivated and using history as an example, rather than historically-motivated and using racism as an example.
To varying degrees, historians are subject to the dishonesty of human self-interest. Like theologians, they place themselves at the center of the universe, and erect their discipline on that foundation. I say "varying degrees", because some topics of history generate more apologetic zeal on the inclinations of its practitioners. Racism, as we can see in the OP, is one that quickly rises to a conspicuous surface.
Whenever I see a historian say "for example", it is a signal that the example was the seed from which the entire historical tree had grown, and the shape of the tree (oak or palm or bamboo) is dependent on the choice of seeds. One might even go so far as to postulate that every historian was ultimately born of some moral precept that motivated him to pursue his scholarship, with the latent objective of self-validation.
This discussion has, from the outset, violated its own principles by distilling itself down to "racism", which is only a single facet of the total sweep of history. History is a very broad discipline, and how historians treat racism is not necessarily a true or even an approximate reflection of the product that historians have created for our consumption.
The quibble of the OP strikes me as as racially-motivated and using history as an example, rather than historically-motivated and using racism as an example.
.
That does not seem fair in that the OP stated:
Quote:
How can we balance between fairly and accurately discussing such complex issues without overstating/understating the roles racism played nor excusing/praising the "lesser of two evils" as being an acceptable brand of racism?
Your response was to inform the OP that he/she must have been racially motivated to even ask such a question.
If just asking "How can we overcome the problem of racial sensitivities in writing history?" makes one a racist, then we are left with a permanent state of paralysis. We can't solve it without talking about it and we can't talk about it without creating or being it?
Then what can we do?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
