{"id":26647,"date":"2020-06-29T10:31:39","date_gmt":"2020-06-29T17:31:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=26647"},"modified":"2020-06-29T11:06:41","modified_gmt":"2020-06-29T18:06:41","slug":"goodbye-columbus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=26647","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye, Columbus"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"22857294765_691521f89d_o\"<\/a>If I write it on my weblog, does that mean I have to go through with it? I’ve decided it’s time to start another beard … if only to hide the turkey wattles on my neck. Besides, it’s not like I have squat-all else to do with my time these days.<\/p>\n

I’ve been thinking about statues and monuments. Statues of Christopher Columbus in particular. Yesterday’s great men are today’s embarrassments: genocidal colonizers, slaveowners, racists, rapists.<\/p>\n

I remember first learning what a genocidal maniac Columbus actually was from historian Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States<\/a><\/strong>,” a book the right has been trying to ban for decades. As it relates to the current debate about taking down statues and monuments, driven in part by the right wing’s ongoing attempts to whitewash history through controlling what books high school and college students are allowed to read, I think it’s appropriate to re-post my 2014 review of “A People’s History”:<\/p>\n

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Read a representative sample of comments on Goodreads or any book review site and you’ll appreciate how polarizing “A People’s History of the United States” is. Readers tend to fall into two exclusionary camps:\u00a0lovers and haters.<\/em><\/p>\n

Zinn’s history has been the target of censors and book banners from its publication in 1980 to the present day. The ongoing controversy over “A People\u2019s History” is what motivated me to read it.<\/em><\/p>\n

As a child I believed my country was exceptional. That\u2019s what I was taught; that\u2019s what the adults I looked up to believed. Victory in WWII was still fresh and the economy was booming under Eisenhower, at least for families like mine. When I was still very young my father joined\u00a0the US Air Force\u00a0and we began to move around the country. I was exposed to families\u00a0who were not like the ones\u00a0I saw on TV, families\u00a0who\u00a0experienced a different American reality from the one I was taught. At an age when I was politically aware enough to know segregation was wrong and could not last, my father was stationed in Virginia and I was sent to\u00a0a whites-only school. Shortly afterward I gave up believing in fairy tales and god. I started reading on my own, a habit I never successfully broke. I protested our early involvement in Vietnam, packed clothes and food for the Freedom Riders, helped a friend obtain conscientious objector status, joined\u00a0SNCC. American history, to me, had begun to look not all that different from the history of any other country.<\/em><\/p>\n

Which is to explain that I knew at least some of the untaught history of the USA before I ever picked up Howard Zinn\u2019s book. Nevertheless, the factual information collected here is shocking. Even for an old cynic like me, the accumulation of sordid details is depressing. On and on Howard Zinn goes, relentlessly rubbing our noses in American history as it was experienced by the Indians, indentured servants, black slaves and freemen, the poor, the landless, the unprivileged, women, child laborers, the bottom 50%. Zinn frankly admits\u00a0this was his express purpose in researching and writing A People\u2019s History; if you accept his premise \u2014 that it is just as important to study history from the point of view of the oppressed as it is from the point of view of the oppressors \u2014 then everything he relates in this book follows. But damn, it\u2019s depressing to try to digest it all at once, even if you appreciate the importance of what Zinn was trying to accomplish.<\/em><\/p>\n

So it\u2019s no wonder to me why an entire political camp \u2014 the American right \u2014 rejects Zinn\u2019s book. The history it recounts, starting with the very first chapter (Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress<\/a><\/strong>; a chapter that is so shocking and disturbing that I suspect many conservative readers never progress beyond it) is incompatible with a belief in American exceptionalism. Or fairies. Nor is it a wonder to me that many on the American right would attempt to suppress this book, purge it from schools and colleges, and call for it to be banned outright. The attack on Zinn and his book follows familiar lines: the author is an America-hater and a Marxist; “A People\u2019s History” is praised by Hollywood celebrities, championed by leftists, and taught by subversives; Zinn\u2019s interpretation of history is meant to weaken American minds and pave the way for implementation of United Nations Agenda 21.<\/em><\/p>\n

In 2009 at North Safford High School in Virginia, “A People\u2019s History of the United States” was challenged as “un-American, leftist propaganda,\u201c even though it was not the primary textbook in that school\u2019s AP history class and was taught alongside an article titled “Howard Zinn’s Disappointing History of the United States,” critical of Zinn’s book.<\/em><\/p>\n

When Howard Zinn died in 2010, Indiana\u2019s then-Governor Mitch Daniels emailed the state\u2019s top education official. \u201cThis terrible anti-American academic has finally passed away,\u201d he began. He went on to demand that A People\u2019s History be hunted down in Indiana schools and suppressed: \u201cIt is a truly execrable, anti-factual piece of disinformation that misstates American history on every page. Can someone assure me that is not in use anywhere in Indiana? If it is, how do we get rid of it before more young people are force-fed a totally false version of our history?\u201d In 2013, Daniels, now president of Purdue University, defended his earlier attempt to ban Zinn\u2019s book from Indiana schools: \u201cWe must not falsely teach American history in our schools.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

In 2012, the Tucson Unified School District banned several books from local high schools. Prominent on the list of banned textbooks (still banned as I write this review) is “A People\u2019s History.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Just this year, in 2014, conservative school board members in Jefferson County, Colorado, proposed sweeping changes to the AP history curriculum. I do not know if Zinn\u2019s book, or parts of it, is being studied by AP history students in Jefferson County, but the statements of the conservative school board members make me think Zinn\u2019s book is on their target list: “Materials should promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials, and benefits of the free enterprise system, respect for authority, and respect for individual rights,\u201d reads the proposal, presented by conservative board member Julie Williams. \u201cMaterials should not encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife, or disregard of the law. Instructional materials should present positive aspects of the United States and its heritage.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Needless to say, I do not adhere to the conservative camp when it comes to the suppression of thought or the denial of historical fact. Zinn\u2019s history helps fill in the gaps in our education and gives us a necessary insight on American exceptionalism as it was experienced by the people we\u2019d just as soon forget. I think it makes the thoughtful student a better and more patriotic American, able to appreciate how much we have actually done to wrest control of our country, and our history, from the one percent who would otherwise be totally in charge. But that\u2019s just me.<\/em><\/p>\n

With all that said, Zinn\u2019s history, though well-written and researched, is a tough one to read, and might overwhelm people reading about the less savory parts of our nation\u2019s history for the first time. It\u2019s hard not to say to yourself, once or twice per chapter, \u201cGee, Zinn, would you lighten up a little?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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You may have missed it, but I included a link to the complete text of Zinn’s opening chapter on Columbus in my review. Here it is again<\/a><\/strong>. It’s not an easy read, but the truth, especially from the perspective of the oppressed, never is.<\/p>\n

Never forget: the Americas were populated and settled long before white Europeans ever set foot here. Those statues of Columbus? Tear them down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday’s great men are today’s embarrassments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,412,250,64,2,30],"tags":[3207,3208],"class_list":["post-26647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-banned-books","category-books-reviews","category-culture-wars","category-history","category-personal","category-reviews","tag-columbus","tag-statues"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26647"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26654,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26647\/revisions\/26654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}