"Everyone thinks they're the good guy - no one thinks they're the bad guy. Even Al Capone thought he was misunderstood."
- Amaryllis Fox - former undercover CIA operative
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| Amaryllis Fox Memoire - Life Undercover. Coming Of Age In The CIA |
As an adult, I realize why my textbooks in history were so skewed and strange -
The people who wrote them had a world of internal biases that were seen as "truth".
1, Western Society is the pinnacle of civilization
2. Europeans did terrible things to almost every other group of people on the planet brought civilization to every other group of people on the planet.
3. Americans are all descendant of Europeans -
4. Americans fought the indigenous people because they were attacked.
5. Manifest Destiny was imperative. There was no other way this could have happened.
At university in a Women's Study Course, I was intrigued by the concept of "The Male Gaze".
Though the term came into being around gender issues and sexuality, I realized that it had been the main problem in my history classes! Not because of sexuality but in terms of who is looking at the scene and who is making the choices about what I learn and see.
Compound that with teaching America the Beautiful, Free, Bold and Magnificent, and the lens you are staring at history through is cracked!
How I'd Reframe It!
Instead of teaching about European cultures as if they were the obvious way cultures should develop or as if they represented "civilization" and everybody else was "less civilized" I would have liked there to be a foundation for how we talk about cultures in general.
Why were they different?
What forces shaped them?
With that as a background for talking about different kinds of people, we could compare the various cultures as they interacted to understand why the outcomes were as they were.
It would make what happened when Europeans encountered different civilizations more understandable, and it would have given me as a student more of an appreciation for different ways of thinking about the colonization of the world.
HISTORY REFRAMED
1. All human beings, every single person alive, your ancestors and mine came from Africa. Africa produced the first modern humans. Human beings left Africa in waves and settled all over the world.
2. As cultures developed in different parts of the world, their environment shaped the melanin content of their skins, the way they developed languge, what they valued, how they lived on the land, what sorts of shelters they needed, what was important for survival, and how they dealt with strangers. They created different traditions, had different sacred beliefs, and made different choices about right and wrong.
3. For Europeans, owning and controlling land (space) became the most important commodity. Europe occupies a very small amount of land. The more land you controlled, the richer and more powerful you were.
4. Western European civilizations had a high proportion of herd animals that would readily accept a human as their leader. Zebras can't be ridden, Bison are hella difficult to domesticate, and will revert to "wild" behavior if startled. Western Europeans also had a very small number of large, dangerous carnivores. This is due to a fluke of latitude, and where these animals settled out after the last Ice Age.
This meant that Europeans lived in close quarters with animals. A number of diseases that infect animals jumped into the European population. These zoonotic diseases became common, and the longer they lived with them, the more tolerant Europeans became of the effects.
(Yes, I know. This is a basic lift from Guns, Germs, and Steel, but man, I wish textbooks had used that model to teach history instead of the confusing one they had when I was a kid!)
5. Western Europeans had a very definite belief that the Christian God had chosen which people were going to be wealthy or poor, held in high esteem, or dismissed. Your status in life was Heaven Ordained.
6. When Europeans encountered other cultures, many of them were culturally and philosphically ill equipped to view these "other" peoples as full human beings or anything approaching equals. Humans in general did not know how to deal with "different" people when they first encountered them.
Why does it matter what lens we use to teach history?
The biggest problem in America right now? Much of the suffering we are still dealing with can be traced to the last two points!
America is still a strong reflection of the Western European Cultures that settled here. We are still treating people as if they somehow "organically" matter less!
Until we face the reality that points number five and six are sung into our bones from the time we start learning the history of who we are, this fight we have between the deserving and the undeserving is going to persist.
We are also going to continually produce people who look at the length and breadth of history and say things like this from former Republican Representative from Iowa - Steve King
This man is a product of a historical perspective that told him that his gaze was the only one that mattered. He certainly doesn't think he's a bad guy. He was just trying to save America from the non-white, multi-cultural infection that he is pretty sure is destroying it.
I am also a product of that history. I'm not a bad guy. I just want to be seen.
He has no reason to question the history as it was taught. As far as he is concerned, what it told him reflects how he has lived his life.
Me? I had no choice but to reject his view of history. Otherwise, I accept that I have no place in it.
Day 2: The Historical Lens Was Cracked!
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