America: Exceptional and Imperfect
We have nothing to fear by learning and teaching American history.
"This land is stolen land and Black people still aren’t free."
Tweet by Cory Bush, U.S. Rep. (D) Missouri
"Hateful, divisive lies. The Left hates America."
Tweet by Senator Ted Cruz, (R) Texas.
It is easier to reshape the history than to reshape the future.
Senator Cruz found a sweet spot in political messaging: Criticize Democrats, especially Black ones, who don't seem patriotic enough. Cruz's Tweet in response to the Tweet by Cory Bush included criticism of Colin Kaepernick, saying he, too "spread the same lies on July 4" two years prior.
The occasion of our national holiday brought new focus on American history. The Critical Race Theory debate lost connection to the CRT of academic analysis. It became oversimplified down to whether American history is the ascendancy of a great, good nation dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal, or whether we failed to live up to that foundational goal. The political left says we haven't. The political right accuses the left of saying we haven't, and they want the good, patriotic people of America to stop the left from telling that vicious, unpatriotic lie.
I think it is possible simultaneously to be a proud, patriotic citizen while accepting that racism has been a constant element shaping public policy in our country. How else to read the words of defenders of slavery, from the first settlements in America through the Civil War? How else to understand Jim Crow and the opposition to the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s? How else to understand America's treatment of Indians? How else to understand the Chinese Exclusion Act?
How else to read our own Declaration of Independence, which justifies our rebellion in part because King George "excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages. . .?" The "domestic insurrections" referred to the British offering freedom to enslaved persons. "Indian savages" refers to the conflicts occasioned by colonists' failure to obey the British effort to maintain peace with the indigenous people by prohibiting settlement west of the Appalachians.
A college classmate, Frank Raines, sent me this comment on patriotism and history. Frank led the Office of Management and Budget during a time America was in budget surplus and we were paying down the national debt. He later became CEO of Fannie Mae.
I am always puzzled by the general inability to keep two concepts in mind at the same time. First, the USA is an exceptional country with admirable features like elections, the rule of law and generous sacrifice for others less rich or powerful. Second, the USA has a deplorable record when it comes to its treatment of African Americans and Native Americans over the past 400 years up to today. One does not have to choose between these narratives or be defensive about them. They are what they are.
During my public school education sixty years ago, I learned a whitewashed history of happy, well-treated slaves--almost part of the owners' families--and Indians happily offering a warm welcome to White settlers, from Thanksgiving at Plymouth Plantation west to the Oregon Trail. It wasn't a total fairy tale; the Gone With the Wind history shared the stage with Huckleberry Finn. The most important element of the education was the invisibility of Black and Native Americans from the history. Native Americans were a nuisance to be discarded, like the bison or the passenger pigeon. We memorized Oregon's state song in third grade, a land "conquered and held by free men, fairest and the best." We celebrated the removal of Indians and the exclusion of Blacks.
American history wasn't about them. Blacks, Indians, people already here from Hispanic Mexico, then Chinese workers were briefly-mentioned victims and extras in the American drama. The history I learned in Medford's public schools was the history of the people who mattered, White Americans.
Cruz understands that White Americans consider the past to be someone else's responsibility, and a point of reference marking the condition before. This is after. Things are good now, and that is the real story of American history. Cruz teases at a lurking fear that someone is calling in an unpaid debt we are reluctant to repay through reparations, affirmative action, minority set-asides, scholarships, public benefits, and this new talk about equity. Aren't we all starting from the same place? A majority of Republican voters tell pollsters they think that White Americans face more adverse discrimination than do Black ones. We are the victims here, Cruz tells us. Don't let the left guilt-trip us.
If one is disinclined to change anything, it makes sense to start with the premise there was never anything that needed much changing, and anything that did is fixed now. Anyone who says anything different must hate America.