Apr 29, 2022 07:11 PM
(This post was last modified: Apr 29, 2022 07:26 PM by C C.)
Fatala Crapehanger: In the course of being "inclusive" of every population group that has suffered abuse in American history (Blacks, indigenous tribes, Latin Americans, Asians, Jews, Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans, etc), the result is going to be what there arguably already currently is: A watered-down averaging of those collective, individual group histories (due to limited instructional space and time allotted to attention for each _X_).
Desiring the stories of one specific population group to be highlighted more than the others in that crowd of competing grievances thus stands out not just as the common politics of special interest factions doing their lobbying, but may also signify the various ideological movements opportunistically and parasitically attaching themselves to the causes of the applicable revisionary crusades.
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The high stakes of textbooks: On the necessity of complex, inclusive history lessons
https://lithub.com/the-high-stakes-of-te...y-lessons/
EXCERPTS: This is a tale of two textbooks by the great historian John Hope Franklin: the iconic From Slavery to Freedom and his lesser-known Land of the Free.
[...] Looking closely at the labor and context of writing both mainstream American history and Black history underscores the animating impetus and corrective imperative for writing American history across the 20th and into the 21st century...
[...] When the manuscript was submitted to a panel of state historians for review, it immediately became the target of a right-wing book-banning campaign. The book was criticized as being “slanted in the direction of civil rights . . . with high praise for militant groups and condemnation for the great majority” and designed to both “build up a segment of the country at the expense of the rest of the country” and “instill a guilt complex” on white students. Critics complained that, if African Americans were to be discussed, athletic heroes like Jackie Robinson were acceptable—but not intellectuals such as Du Bois.
A well-funded group called the Land of the Free Committee made a twenty-two-minute filmstrip called Education or Indoctrination? and used an image of Franklin’s face with The Communist Manifesto read out as a voice-over afterward. The committee said the book “destroys pride in America’s past, develops a guilt complex, mocks American justice, indoctrinates toward communism, is hostile to religious concepts, overemphasizes Negro participation in American history, projects negative thought models, criticizes business and free enterprise, plays politics, foments class hatred, slants and distorts facts, [and] promotes propaganda and poppycock.”
Ultimately the book itself prevailed. It was modified without evisceration and resubmitted, then finally declared acceptable and adopted for mandatory use in California’s eighth-grade classrooms. Nonetheless, many California radio shows for months after continued to devote hours of talk to the topic, the Pasadena filmstrip continued to be shown and debated (without acknowledgment of changes that had been made to the book), and some local school boards continued to resist using the textbook.
Most threatening in Land of the Free was not the narrative of the contributions of people of color but rather African American studies’ sharpest tool: the critical consciousness that allows us to question the dominance of one social group over another [BTW, that does echo the Marxist offshoot cultural hegemony or "systemic oppression theory" slash conspiracy as do-gooder facade for promotion of the pseudoscientific ideology] and solely triumphal versions of any text or history. Is the American central narrative of upward mobility and the power of positive thinking much more than a shroud for a frank assessment of the past and its ongoing unresolved inequities?
We see this very issue playing out now with the deliberate distortions and manufactured fear surrounding critical race theory, the school of thought and systemic thinking that began in the legal academy with scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado... (MORE - missing details)
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Wikipedia: . . . . David Levering Lewis, who has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for history, said that while he was deciding to become a historian, he learned that Franklin, his mentor, had been named departmental chairman at Brooklyn College.
In researching his prize-winning biography of W. E. B. Du Bois, Lewis said he became aware of Franklin's
Desiring the stories of one specific population group to be highlighted more than the others in that crowd of competing grievances thus stands out not just as the common politics of special interest factions doing their lobbying, but may also signify the various ideological movements opportunistically and parasitically attaching themselves to the causes of the applicable revisionary crusades.
- - - - - -
The high stakes of textbooks: On the necessity of complex, inclusive history lessons
https://lithub.com/the-high-stakes-of-te...y-lessons/
EXCERPTS: This is a tale of two textbooks by the great historian John Hope Franklin: the iconic From Slavery to Freedom and his lesser-known Land of the Free.
[...] Looking closely at the labor and context of writing both mainstream American history and Black history underscores the animating impetus and corrective imperative for writing American history across the 20th and into the 21st century...
[...] When the manuscript was submitted to a panel of state historians for review, it immediately became the target of a right-wing book-banning campaign. The book was criticized as being “slanted in the direction of civil rights . . . with high praise for militant groups and condemnation for the great majority” and designed to both “build up a segment of the country at the expense of the rest of the country” and “instill a guilt complex” on white students. Critics complained that, if African Americans were to be discussed, athletic heroes like Jackie Robinson were acceptable—but not intellectuals such as Du Bois.
A well-funded group called the Land of the Free Committee made a twenty-two-minute filmstrip called Education or Indoctrination? and used an image of Franklin’s face with The Communist Manifesto read out as a voice-over afterward. The committee said the book “destroys pride in America’s past, develops a guilt complex, mocks American justice, indoctrinates toward communism, is hostile to religious concepts, overemphasizes Negro participation in American history, projects negative thought models, criticizes business and free enterprise, plays politics, foments class hatred, slants and distorts facts, [and] promotes propaganda and poppycock.”
Ultimately the book itself prevailed. It was modified without evisceration and resubmitted, then finally declared acceptable and adopted for mandatory use in California’s eighth-grade classrooms. Nonetheless, many California radio shows for months after continued to devote hours of talk to the topic, the Pasadena filmstrip continued to be shown and debated (without acknowledgment of changes that had been made to the book), and some local school boards continued to resist using the textbook.
Most threatening in Land of the Free was not the narrative of the contributions of people of color but rather African American studies’ sharpest tool: the critical consciousness that allows us to question the dominance of one social group over another [BTW, that does echo the Marxist offshoot cultural hegemony or "systemic oppression theory" slash conspiracy as do-gooder facade for promotion of the pseudoscientific ideology] and solely triumphal versions of any text or history. Is the American central narrative of upward mobility and the power of positive thinking much more than a shroud for a frank assessment of the past and its ongoing unresolved inequities?
We see this very issue playing out now with the deliberate distortions and manufactured fear surrounding critical race theory, the school of thought and systemic thinking that began in the legal academy with scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado... (MORE - missing details)
- - - - - - -
- - - - - - -
Wikipedia: . . . . David Levering Lewis, who has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for history, said that while he was deciding to become a historian, he learned that Franklin, his mentor, had been named departmental chairman at Brooklyn College.
"Now that certainly is a distinction. It had never happened before that a person of color had chaired a major history department. That meant a lot to me. If I had doubt about (the) viability of a career in history, that example certainly helped put to rest such concerns."
In researching his prize-winning biography of W. E. B. Du Bois, Lewis said he became aware of Franklin's
"courage during that period in the 1950s when Du Bois became an un-person, when many progressives were tarred and feathered with the brush of subversion. John Hope Franklin was a rock; he was loyal to his friends. In the case of W. E. B. Du Bois, Franklin spoke out in his defense, not (about) Du Bois's communism, but of the right of an intellectual to express ideas that were not popular. I find that admirable. It was a high risk to take and we may be heading again into a period when the free concourse of ideas in the academy will have a price put upon it. In the final years of an active teaching career, I will have John Hope Franklin's example of high scholarship, great courage and civic activism."