After Basketball, Barton and I were having an intense debate about culturism and censorship when he cut in with what seemed to be a total non sequitur, "That means that I and all black people's culture should not be allowed?"
Since he is black and I'm white and we never really discuss race, I felt I needed to tread delicately. "What does that mean? I'm not sure how you got there."
"Well black culture says that studying in school is acting white, that’s a big part of black culture, does that mean that black people are bad?" My reply got nodding and an acceptance of my side in a way that usually only happens in fantasy conversations.
"That is a very new kind of thinking."
"What?"
“For most of history black people in this country have greatly esteemed education. The Little Rock Nine were those kids that got into the white school by the National Guard.”
“Yeah I know about them, fighting segregation.” “
“You think they didn’t want education? Slaves like Frederick Douglas especially prized education. Emancipation through education has traditionally been a black value. The whites in the South didn’t want them to have education, but they overcame and got access.”
“Yeah,” he said obviously thinking to himself. Then he asked the money question, “What happened to make the ideas change?”
It changes with leftist 1960s education historians like Michael Katz and David Tyack. These guys painted educational systems as rigged. They wrote books saying that mobility did not come from schools. Saying, it was all one big scam set up by rich people to make poor people think they had a chance and that their poverty was their own fault.”
“It all starts with them?” Barton was a little incredulous.
“Well the whole society was in turmoil then. But that was when they wrote and that’s when black people got attitude towards school. But a lot of that generation went from being on the left to being leftist.”
“What is the difference?”
“A person on the left still has hope that the system is benevolent overall and notices the improvement over time. They see things like ending slavery and integration as good proof of our nation getting better. Leftists think the system is rotten and oppressive and needs to be overthrown. They preach despair and revolution. And a lot of these people teach in education schools. That message gets passed along to students, sometimes subtlety, sometimes not.”
“You’re right, I was confused.” Then Barton laid out a beautiful conclusion, “We’ve got to teach that basic idea that black people have traditionally struggled for and wanted education again.”
“Damn straight. Got to get people into their greatest hope around.”
“America?”
“That’s what I was trying to say. That’s culturism.”
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Multiculturalism Blinds Historians
Multiculturalism blinds historians. As we have traditionally been a culturist nation, the multiculturalist outlook strips us of our ability to appreciate or understand our past. Applying culturist insights to the book Translating Property by Maria E. Montoya provides examples in spades. This book discusses how we settled land disputes after our victory in the Mexican – American War. The importance of our relationship with Mexico makes it vital that historians and policy makers learn to address the history Montoya covers from a culturist perspective.
Mexico allowed government officials to make huge land grants to their cronies. In a quasi-feudal relationship, laborers were allowed to farm the land for payments in kind. The issue in Translating Property is how these land grants held up in United States Courts after the Mexican – American War resulted in our taking ownership of the current American Southwest. Montoya depicts in lively language and horror, the eviction of the laborers when the land is sold to Anglos. Montoya, as a multiculturalist, wants us to recognize Mexican property laws and relationships. But in Supreme Court case after Supreme Court case our government denies the validity of laborers’ claims based on traditional Mexican relationships.
Rejecting Mexican property relationships was done on culturist premises. Americans were appalled by large land grants. These feudal relationships were repeatedly decried as antithetical to our ideals of individual self-sustenance, property rights and republican virtue. But Montoya depicts all differences and discrimination based upon our values as irrational, arbitrary and unfair. She would have had our legislatures and courts be multiculturalists and translate, appreciate and incorporate Mexican-style peonage relationships. She derides our predecessor’s for not being “culturally neutral.” (181) She then goes one step further. She derides all of those who made distinctions based on culture as racist. Her editorial decisions are natural outcomes of using the multiculturalist perspective while doing history.
When it came to ejection and letting people stay on the land, the post-land grant owners favored Anglos over “Hispanos.” Montoya convinces us of this with lively writing style and great detail. A chart shows that Anglos have over thirty times the number of cattle that Hispanos had and four times the number of fenced area. Montoya calls this “racist” and the discrepancy gets attributed to Hispano’s lack of access to capital. It is a painful irony that multiculturalists do not take cultural diversity seriously. Montoya decries many incidents of Anglos attributing the difference in productivity to cultural distinctions. She calls it, for example, “prejudiced” and “condescending” when a manager accounts for his discrimination in land distribution being due to the Mexicans “following their usual and indifferent ways.” (143) To multiculturalists like Montoya it is inconceivable that culture could actually impact economic outcomes.
Montoya tries to follow the multicultural pattern of appreciating all cultures. As with other historians, this normative multiculturalist pattern is most jarring with her depictions of Native Americans. She tells us that the Jicarillas Apaches, who lived where the land grant she gives most attention to existed, viewed the land as a “spiritual home for themselves and their ancestors.” (21) Though there was mutual raiding, these Apache lived in “relatively peaceful coexistence” with others. (22) This does not sit well with the fact that the first time they are documented they were dancing over the scalp of a white man whose pregnant companion they had murdered. Local tribes she tells us capture women and children in raids and sell them as slaves. As usual, both of these cultural behaviors get blamed on European incursion. We cannot depict all non-Anglo cultures as naturally angelic and have historic accuracy. Apache and those around them were violent and barely survived.
The good news is that multiculturalist history allows us to consider viewpoints other than our own. Apache warfare and Mexican peonage relationships did have their own cultural integrity and virtue. But when American culture does not get accorded parallel respect, our expansion only seems destructive and our decisions arbitrary. Our land patterns were designed to create “urban rectilinearity.” (166) But our ways have also resulted in a much longer lifespan than achieved by either the Apaches or the Mexicans. Our ways have facilitated the greatest population boom in the history of mankind, democracy, sanitation, and electricity. Our Westward expansion was not just a bigoted tragedy. If one takes our perspective as seriously as multiculturalists take those of the Apaches and Mexicans, the expansion of the Western property arrangements and culture can be legitimately depicted as a successful culturist endeavor that resulted in creating an agreeable way of life.
Montoya does a service by showing that our legal decisions were “culturally contingent” and “turned as much on . . . [Supreme Court] perceptions of what constituted proper republican government as on the context of Mexican, Spanish or French Law.” Only respecting land deeds on the basis of written documentation was “a problem of ideology.” (176) But her take home message - that we are biased for not incorporating Mexican culture into our laws – asks for a neutrality that no self-respecting culture would accept. Montoya herself is biased. In a book that derides us for being ethnocentric, she never judges the fact that Mexican land grants are given with the stipulation that no land be sold to foreigners. Her feigned cultural neutrality ends up making Western expansionists who promote their own culture as abnormal and insensitive. But even Montoya’s book has a point of view. To judge historical figures as to whether they were neutral to their own agendas can only distort our appreciation of our culturist past.
In the index of Translating Property “racial prejudice” notes seventeen entries. Most of these entries refer to multiple pages. No corresponding entry for “cultural” or “culturist prejudice" exists. That reflects the fact that culturist analysis is no longer widely considered. Multiculturalism has a near monopoly in academic discourse. Accepting the fact that cultural bias is natural and normal can help replace the condemnation of our historic predecessors with appreciation. Considering our forefather’s culturist notion that cultures can have an economic and political impact will help us replace our depictions of them as wholly mean and irrational with portraits of them as somewhat reasonable and possibly farsighted. History thus taught can train our youth to consider the impact of their cultural choices on our collective destiny. And if culturist understandings once again gain credibility, perhaps our current politicians will also be able to consider the viability of American culture in policy without being seen as abnormally biased, callous and irrational.
Mexico allowed government officials to make huge land grants to their cronies. In a quasi-feudal relationship, laborers were allowed to farm the land for payments in kind. The issue in Translating Property is how these land grants held up in United States Courts after the Mexican – American War resulted in our taking ownership of the current American Southwest. Montoya depicts in lively language and horror, the eviction of the laborers when the land is sold to Anglos. Montoya, as a multiculturalist, wants us to recognize Mexican property laws and relationships. But in Supreme Court case after Supreme Court case our government denies the validity of laborers’ claims based on traditional Mexican relationships.
Rejecting Mexican property relationships was done on culturist premises. Americans were appalled by large land grants. These feudal relationships were repeatedly decried as antithetical to our ideals of individual self-sustenance, property rights and republican virtue. But Montoya depicts all differences and discrimination based upon our values as irrational, arbitrary and unfair. She would have had our legislatures and courts be multiculturalists and translate, appreciate and incorporate Mexican-style peonage relationships. She derides our predecessor’s for not being “culturally neutral.” (181) She then goes one step further. She derides all of those who made distinctions based on culture as racist. Her editorial decisions are natural outcomes of using the multiculturalist perspective while doing history.
When it came to ejection and letting people stay on the land, the post-land grant owners favored Anglos over “Hispanos.” Montoya convinces us of this with lively writing style and great detail. A chart shows that Anglos have over thirty times the number of cattle that Hispanos had and four times the number of fenced area. Montoya calls this “racist” and the discrepancy gets attributed to Hispano’s lack of access to capital. It is a painful irony that multiculturalists do not take cultural diversity seriously. Montoya decries many incidents of Anglos attributing the difference in productivity to cultural distinctions. She calls it, for example, “prejudiced” and “condescending” when a manager accounts for his discrimination in land distribution being due to the Mexicans “following their usual and indifferent ways.” (143) To multiculturalists like Montoya it is inconceivable that culture could actually impact economic outcomes.
Montoya tries to follow the multicultural pattern of appreciating all cultures. As with other historians, this normative multiculturalist pattern is most jarring with her depictions of Native Americans. She tells us that the Jicarillas Apaches, who lived where the land grant she gives most attention to existed, viewed the land as a “spiritual home for themselves and their ancestors.” (21) Though there was mutual raiding, these Apache lived in “relatively peaceful coexistence” with others. (22) This does not sit well with the fact that the first time they are documented they were dancing over the scalp of a white man whose pregnant companion they had murdered. Local tribes she tells us capture women and children in raids and sell them as slaves. As usual, both of these cultural behaviors get blamed on European incursion. We cannot depict all non-Anglo cultures as naturally angelic and have historic accuracy. Apache and those around them were violent and barely survived.
The good news is that multiculturalist history allows us to consider viewpoints other than our own. Apache warfare and Mexican peonage relationships did have their own cultural integrity and virtue. But when American culture does not get accorded parallel respect, our expansion only seems destructive and our decisions arbitrary. Our land patterns were designed to create “urban rectilinearity.” (166) But our ways have also resulted in a much longer lifespan than achieved by either the Apaches or the Mexicans. Our ways have facilitated the greatest population boom in the history of mankind, democracy, sanitation, and electricity. Our Westward expansion was not just a bigoted tragedy. If one takes our perspective as seriously as multiculturalists take those of the Apaches and Mexicans, the expansion of the Western property arrangements and culture can be legitimately depicted as a successful culturist endeavor that resulted in creating an agreeable way of life.
Montoya does a service by showing that our legal decisions were “culturally contingent” and “turned as much on . . . [Supreme Court] perceptions of what constituted proper republican government as on the context of Mexican, Spanish or French Law.” Only respecting land deeds on the basis of written documentation was “a problem of ideology.” (176) But her take home message - that we are biased for not incorporating Mexican culture into our laws – asks for a neutrality that no self-respecting culture would accept. Montoya herself is biased. In a book that derides us for being ethnocentric, she never judges the fact that Mexican land grants are given with the stipulation that no land be sold to foreigners. Her feigned cultural neutrality ends up making Western expansionists who promote their own culture as abnormal and insensitive. But even Montoya’s book has a point of view. To judge historical figures as to whether they were neutral to their own agendas can only distort our appreciation of our culturist past.
In the index of Translating Property “racial prejudice” notes seventeen entries. Most of these entries refer to multiple pages. No corresponding entry for “cultural” or “culturist prejudice" exists. That reflects the fact that culturist analysis is no longer widely considered. Multiculturalism has a near monopoly in academic discourse. Accepting the fact that cultural bias is natural and normal can help replace the condemnation of our historic predecessors with appreciation. Considering our forefather’s culturist notion that cultures can have an economic and political impact will help us replace our depictions of them as wholly mean and irrational with portraits of them as somewhat reasonable and possibly farsighted. History thus taught can train our youth to consider the impact of their cultural choices on our collective destiny. And if culturist understandings once again gain credibility, perhaps our current politicians will also be able to consider the viability of American culture in policy without being seen as abnormally biased, callous and irrational.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Culturism and Whiteness
Culturists and other Americans should all know about whiteness studies because they command a lot of respect in academia's humanities departments. The book "How the Irish Became White" by Noel Ignatiev popularized whiteness studies. Whiteness studies has an interesting perspective. However, logical fallacies, culturist ignorance and destructive tendencies make this field an overall disaster for America. Academia influences our culture and teaches tomorrow’s leaders. For these reasons, it behooves those of us who are concerned with the fate of America to be aware of whiteness studies and culturist critiques of it.
Whiteness studies notes that not all white immigrants were treated the same. The Germans were considered heavy drinkers, the Irish were said to have added negative attributes of allegiance to the Pope and rowdiness. Italians were stereotyped as criminals and anarchists. Jew's communist tendencies were feared. All-in-all, in that immigrants faced discrimination, they were not treated as equally white as the "native stock." Many thought that the Jews, Irish, Serbs, Italians and others were not exactly white. They were even seen to constitute different races and so not fully American.
Being white, according to the whiteness studies folks, gets one privileges. It removes suspicion. Access to better jobs is another perk of whiteness. Besides assimilating, the fastest way for the new immigrants to "claim whiteness" involved buying into and accentuating America's pre-existing racial binary system. That is they had to be racist and distance themselves from blacks. Some, like Jews, had a hard time of this as history taught them to empathize with the underdogs. The Irish, who were sometimes compared to blacks and got terrible jobs, were the most emphatic at claiming their whiteness by being racist towards blacks. Thus, whiteness studies teaches us, white identity was largely built upon racist attitudes towards blacks.
Whiteness studies provide some valuable tools of analysis for historians. Yes, in 1790 Congress made naturalization available to all "free white males." But as immigration increased diversity who was white was less easily determined. Asians were legally barred from naturalizing. It was fairly clear they were not free white males. But what of Syrians? What of Turks? What of the Italians? What of Jews? Since being white was a prerequisite of citizenship, defining it was important. As immigration increased we ceased automatically calling all those with light pigment white. Geography and other factors had to be considered. This is an interesting insight for those of us who study immigration and our traditional attitudes towards immigration.
Some logical fallacies, however, plague whiteness studies. The idea that all American identity stems from racist categories provides a major example. Beyond not being black, Americans have had a lot of sources of identity. Protestant and Enlightenment sources, for example, have been at the root of what has defined America and Americans. We have traditions going back to Jerusalem and Greece, filtered through the Magna Carta and tempered by the searing conscientiousness of our Puritan culturist forefathers. Much of the times when whiteness studies people say "white" they mean "Protestant Enlightenment mainstream culture.” Much of what they call oppressive racism is simple assimilation. When kids get accent-free speech, that largely has nothing to do with a pathological hate for their race or black people. Assimilation can be natural and healthy. American ideals and culture cannot be reduced to belief in color. Whiteness does not account for as much of American identity and culture as whiteness studies proponents claim.
The assumed truth of "white privilege" in whiteness studies provides another example of a logical fallacy. America's wealth is derived from the rational application of mind to material possibilities and problems as well as incredible amounts of hard labor. One does not get wealthy by "claiming whiteness." Those who were seen as white did not get to retire on a government pension at the turn of the century. All people engaged in labor. The majority of those identified as white did grueling hard labor. Demographically, blacks have consistently comprised around ten percent of our population. For ten percent of the population to live off of the labor of ninety percent makes sense. But the idea that white America got all of its wealth, let alone its identity, by exploiting ten percent of the population is ludicrous. Ninety percent of a population cannot live off of the labor of ten percent of a population. Even if they could, this would not generate the fabulous wealth that America has generated. Whiteness cannot account for as much of America's wealth as whiteness studies proponents claim. There has traditionally been very little "privilege" to go around in America.
Culturism holds that cultural differences are real and important. Whiteness studies treats all discrimination against groups as completely arbitrary, irrational and insane. The groups that most worried the Protestant "native stock" of Americans were the Irish, the Italians and the Jews. The Irish Catholicism was seen as a threat to democracy and prosperity. Worldwide, Catholic colonies are less democratic, have lower literacy levels, and lower GDPs than Protestant colonies. Italians were said to lack reverence for education and engage in criminality. Stephan Thernstrom has shown that as late as 1970 Italian economic mobility was not as high as other groups. This month the Gambino family was finally busted in New York. Jews were at the head of labor movements, communist organizations, Civil Rights organizations, and the ACLU. Karl Marx and Freud have not exactly had zero impact on the western world. Is it totally mad to think that Jews have cultural tendencies that did not perfectly meld with the mainstream of American thought? Whiteness studies is much too quick to dismiss all cultural distinctions as arbitrary, irrational and insane.
Whiteness studies bases its claim that America is built on irrational racism on the supposition that all European immigrant groups eventually just became indistinguishable whites. While this was, they say, done on the basis of racism against blacks, it shows we had nothing to fear from diversity. But part of the reason those of us with white skin became white was the 1924 Immigration Act which greatly reduced the influx of peoples from Eastern and Southern Europe (Jews and Italians). This act gets represented as the definitive proof of America's racist dependence on whiteness for identity. If one, however, makes an investigation of the reasons given in the hearings leading to this enactment of this law, they discover that the great preponderance of the reasons given had to do with cultural predispositions, not race. While some were, not all who crafted this law were racists; many were culturists. Whiteness folks would do well to carefully distinguish between race and culture. But that would require that they first admit that cultural differences exist and are important. That would require them to admit that not all decisions by this government and Americans have been made on the basis of something so arbitrary and inconsequential as the color of skin.
Though the perspective has some value, whiteness studies can sometimes seem pathologically antagonistic to America. Karen Brodkin's "How Jews Became White Folks" is symptomatic. Many of the chapters of this book do nothing but call America racist. She even accuses whiteness of leading to her Grandmother's suicide. Racism has existed in America. It has been a major wall between whites and blacks. But, we have many other attributes too. Like others who are into whiteness, Brodkin seems to not notice that our country has any other attributes other than obsessive and persistent racism. Ironically, she considers Jewish self-definition to be a good thing, but American self-definition to be solely racist and oppressive and pathological. Brodkin proudly notes that Jews have been the leaders in all sorts of "progressive" movements such as communism, but then wants paint all the majority cultures' stereotypes about Jews as irrational and insane racism. Culture is important and significant.
Whiteness studies makes some valuable contributions to our understanding of America as well as its treatment of immigrants and assimilation. We need to be aware of and leery of racism. But whiteness suffers from logical fallacies, a failure to distinguish culture from race and, sometimes, a seemingly pathological disdain for America. America has been racist. America has been culturist. Most nations are either still racist and/or practice extremely heavy-handed culturism. Culturism means that we define ourselves. As America is not evil, assimilating into its culture is not evil. Not all attempts at self-definition are oppressive, racist, and irrational. We should not, as multiculturalists would have it, celebrate the cultural attributes of teen pregnancy, the criminal lifestyle and the love for Sharia law. Diversity is real and that is why culturism is necessary. Whiteness studies needs to distinguish racism from culturism if it is to help America get better and not just tear her down.
Whiteness studies notes that not all white immigrants were treated the same. The Germans were considered heavy drinkers, the Irish were said to have added negative attributes of allegiance to the Pope and rowdiness. Italians were stereotyped as criminals and anarchists. Jew's communist tendencies were feared. All-in-all, in that immigrants faced discrimination, they were not treated as equally white as the "native stock." Many thought that the Jews, Irish, Serbs, Italians and others were not exactly white. They were even seen to constitute different races and so not fully American.
Being white, according to the whiteness studies folks, gets one privileges. It removes suspicion. Access to better jobs is another perk of whiteness. Besides assimilating, the fastest way for the new immigrants to "claim whiteness" involved buying into and accentuating America's pre-existing racial binary system. That is they had to be racist and distance themselves from blacks. Some, like Jews, had a hard time of this as history taught them to empathize with the underdogs. The Irish, who were sometimes compared to blacks and got terrible jobs, were the most emphatic at claiming their whiteness by being racist towards blacks. Thus, whiteness studies teaches us, white identity was largely built upon racist attitudes towards blacks.
Whiteness studies provide some valuable tools of analysis for historians. Yes, in 1790 Congress made naturalization available to all "free white males." But as immigration increased diversity who was white was less easily determined. Asians were legally barred from naturalizing. It was fairly clear they were not free white males. But what of Syrians? What of Turks? What of the Italians? What of Jews? Since being white was a prerequisite of citizenship, defining it was important. As immigration increased we ceased automatically calling all those with light pigment white. Geography and other factors had to be considered. This is an interesting insight for those of us who study immigration and our traditional attitudes towards immigration.
Some logical fallacies, however, plague whiteness studies. The idea that all American identity stems from racist categories provides a major example. Beyond not being black, Americans have had a lot of sources of identity. Protestant and Enlightenment sources, for example, have been at the root of what has defined America and Americans. We have traditions going back to Jerusalem and Greece, filtered through the Magna Carta and tempered by the searing conscientiousness of our Puritan culturist forefathers. Much of the times when whiteness studies people say "white" they mean "Protestant Enlightenment mainstream culture.” Much of what they call oppressive racism is simple assimilation. When kids get accent-free speech, that largely has nothing to do with a pathological hate for their race or black people. Assimilation can be natural and healthy. American ideals and culture cannot be reduced to belief in color. Whiteness does not account for as much of American identity and culture as whiteness studies proponents claim.
The assumed truth of "white privilege" in whiteness studies provides another example of a logical fallacy. America's wealth is derived from the rational application of mind to material possibilities and problems as well as incredible amounts of hard labor. One does not get wealthy by "claiming whiteness." Those who were seen as white did not get to retire on a government pension at the turn of the century. All people engaged in labor. The majority of those identified as white did grueling hard labor. Demographically, blacks have consistently comprised around ten percent of our population. For ten percent of the population to live off of the labor of ninety percent makes sense. But the idea that white America got all of its wealth, let alone its identity, by exploiting ten percent of the population is ludicrous. Ninety percent of a population cannot live off of the labor of ten percent of a population. Even if they could, this would not generate the fabulous wealth that America has generated. Whiteness cannot account for as much of America's wealth as whiteness studies proponents claim. There has traditionally been very little "privilege" to go around in America.
Culturism holds that cultural differences are real and important. Whiteness studies treats all discrimination against groups as completely arbitrary, irrational and insane. The groups that most worried the Protestant "native stock" of Americans were the Irish, the Italians and the Jews. The Irish Catholicism was seen as a threat to democracy and prosperity. Worldwide, Catholic colonies are less democratic, have lower literacy levels, and lower GDPs than Protestant colonies. Italians were said to lack reverence for education and engage in criminality. Stephan Thernstrom has shown that as late as 1970 Italian economic mobility was not as high as other groups. This month the Gambino family was finally busted in New York. Jews were at the head of labor movements, communist organizations, Civil Rights organizations, and the ACLU. Karl Marx and Freud have not exactly had zero impact on the western world. Is it totally mad to think that Jews have cultural tendencies that did not perfectly meld with the mainstream of American thought? Whiteness studies is much too quick to dismiss all cultural distinctions as arbitrary, irrational and insane.
Whiteness studies bases its claim that America is built on irrational racism on the supposition that all European immigrant groups eventually just became indistinguishable whites. While this was, they say, done on the basis of racism against blacks, it shows we had nothing to fear from diversity. But part of the reason those of us with white skin became white was the 1924 Immigration Act which greatly reduced the influx of peoples from Eastern and Southern Europe (Jews and Italians). This act gets represented as the definitive proof of America's racist dependence on whiteness for identity. If one, however, makes an investigation of the reasons given in the hearings leading to this enactment of this law, they discover that the great preponderance of the reasons given had to do with cultural predispositions, not race. While some were, not all who crafted this law were racists; many were culturists. Whiteness folks would do well to carefully distinguish between race and culture. But that would require that they first admit that cultural differences exist and are important. That would require them to admit that not all decisions by this government and Americans have been made on the basis of something so arbitrary and inconsequential as the color of skin.
Though the perspective has some value, whiteness studies can sometimes seem pathologically antagonistic to America. Karen Brodkin's "How Jews Became White Folks" is symptomatic. Many of the chapters of this book do nothing but call America racist. She even accuses whiteness of leading to her Grandmother's suicide. Racism has existed in America. It has been a major wall between whites and blacks. But, we have many other attributes too. Like others who are into whiteness, Brodkin seems to not notice that our country has any other attributes other than obsessive and persistent racism. Ironically, she considers Jewish self-definition to be a good thing, but American self-definition to be solely racist and oppressive and pathological. Brodkin proudly notes that Jews have been the leaders in all sorts of "progressive" movements such as communism, but then wants paint all the majority cultures' stereotypes about Jews as irrational and insane racism. Culture is important and significant.
Whiteness studies makes some valuable contributions to our understanding of America as well as its treatment of immigrants and assimilation. We need to be aware of and leery of racism. But whiteness suffers from logical fallacies, a failure to distinguish culture from race and, sometimes, a seemingly pathological disdain for America. America has been racist. America has been culturist. Most nations are either still racist and/or practice extremely heavy-handed culturism. Culturism means that we define ourselves. As America is not evil, assimilating into its culture is not evil. Not all attempts at self-definition are oppressive, racist, and irrational. We should not, as multiculturalists would have it, celebrate the cultural attributes of teen pregnancy, the criminal lifestyle and the love for Sharia law. Diversity is real and that is why culturism is necessary. Whiteness studies needs to distinguish racism from culturism if it is to help America get better and not just tear her down.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Our nation is under attack!!!
Sorry I haven't been blogging much lately. I'm transitioning back into school and work.
You may not be aware of it, but "the nation" is under attack. It is under attack intellectually in academia. I do not mean policies are under attack or that people are being anti-American. I mean the very concept of "nation" has for some time been denigrated as an "imagined community" with no basis in reality. This common perspective has some validity, but it can be questioned on numerous grounds. Furthermore, reinterpreting the facts can teach valuable culturist lessons.
Nations, it is true, are not as old as we often imagine them to be. Followers of this line of thinking particularly like to point out the not-too-distant disconnect between royalty, the people, and the nation. Under monarchy, the king was deserving of veneration, not a nation. The people spoke many different languages and thought of themselves as subjects, not citizens. The King himself often spoke a different language than those in administrative posts. It was only with the rise of republics that the people became attached as a community to a nation. "Nations" did not really exist until popular revolutions identified the people with the state and national destiny.
The newer nations of South America and Africa present even more stark cases of creation. The boundaries of these newer nations represent adminstrative divisions and not indigenous cultural of geographic features. Early maps did not even have nations. When Bolivar told people to think of themselves as Peruvians, he was creating a new category of peoples. Westerners discovered Cambodia's Angor Watt and Mexico's Chichen Itza. Before they were exploited by new nationalists, they meant nothing to the locals. History creates artificial ties to the past in the name of reifying unnatural categories of persons.
This position, first championed by Benedict Anderson, has some validity. It helps understand that nations are not eternal forms of political and identity organization. That said, we must, as Anderson does, make sure that we differentiate degrees of this reality. Some nations have virtually historical precedence. But some, as in England, have real and cultural ties to the past. English may have been standardized recently, but it was not invented out of whole cloth. It's selection by England as their language, was not totally arbitrary. The person who best represents this view (in the sense of being a great scholar and a great read) is Anthony D. Smith of Oxford. He has pointed out that Western connection to Greece, for example, while it has ebbed and flowed, is not arbitrary. No Western nation ties its existence to something that did not occur on its soil.
What if, though, nations are "imagined communities?" First of all, they are not so imagined anymore. After 230 years, the American nation has a history. We have a political founding, a Civil War, national politics, and collectively fought international wars that prove our national "narrative" is not totally fictive. Our nation has an undeniable basis in reality. Beyond this, though, why would nations being invented be a bad thing? In the West we celebrate invention. Is the lightbulb less valuable or more valuable for havinng been an invention? Our constitution is ingenious. We do not deride it because it was just "imagined." We should be even more proud of our nation for its being imagined and subsequently implemented.
The real issue herein, however, are the motives of those who started the debate being described. While the search for objective understanding might have merit, the need to "problematize" the idea of the nation is not a motive that can be said to be neutral. Many of these people are the same ones that championed social history in the 1970s. They said we should focus on ordinary people and not just politicians. If that is neutral it is fair enough. But when they are then hostile to including any great men, presidents or other political leaders in history, they distort more than rectify history. There was a backlash against not having governments in history. Now "Atlantic history" seeks to show that all governmental histories are intertwined. So when we cannot focus on happenings below national sovereignty, we transcend it internationally. The idea that nations are imagined falls suspiciously within the post-1970s pattern of nation depricating by historians.
Nations are good things! One definition of nation is an area within which there is peace. Rather than having warlords and tribes fighting eachother every two miles, you now have large regions in which there is no war. Historians seem to have not heard that modern anthropologists have established that life was previously very bloody. Since nations have risen, war has declined. Furthermore, communities, real or imagined, bring good feelings. Nature, anthropology and common feeling show that people like to belong. On some level it is ridiculous for me to identify with my sports team (GO LAKERS!), but I love it. Beyond this, common languages and trust, a sense of shared history and destiny, facilitates economics and democratic politics. We can trust eachother in business and in politics to not be ruthless. We agree that, when all is said and done, Democrats and Republicans are Americans and want what is best for it. Without this shared narrative, we can break into hostile groups and violence can errupt.
This brings us to the role of historians in the world. Everyone who writes on this topic notes the centrality of historians to the process of nation creation. Historians have to find old heroes and literature and bundle them to concoct a national heritage to celebrate. One can look at this and see it as an artificial manipulation of the identities of generic people. But, first of all, this overlooks the fact that before nations people still had imagined communities and shared cultures; the world before historians was not peopled with unattached individualists. Secondly, we can celebrate this as an act of valuable conscious creation of community. Like the story tellers of old, historians have fostered unity. To the extent that they have used Western sources, they have done so on a moral basis we should celebrate. Historians used to glory in telling of the deeds and values of our past, they should again.
As a history teacher my goal is to reify and glorify our great community. This noble role goes back to the days of the shamans. It is fact-based story telling. I kept this definition of my purpose especially close to my heart as I taught high school history. Teachers and culturists both know very well what people without larger role models can degenerate into. Teachers and culturists both know that without identification with a larger, imagined community, people naturally break off into sophmores and seniors, or races and conflict erupts. For our historians to spend their time deconstructing the nation is pathological. It undermines their profession's great contributions to the world. It, ironically, shows little appreciation for the historic role of historians. It is an abrogation of duty. Worst of all, belittling our nation as "imagined" can destabilize the Western world. And, if we forget to remember the values and examples of our forefathers, I don't want to imagine the very real horrors that might take its place.
You may not be aware of it, but "the nation" is under attack. It is under attack intellectually in academia. I do not mean policies are under attack or that people are being anti-American. I mean the very concept of "nation" has for some time been denigrated as an "imagined community" with no basis in reality. This common perspective has some validity, but it can be questioned on numerous grounds. Furthermore, reinterpreting the facts can teach valuable culturist lessons.
Nations, it is true, are not as old as we often imagine them to be. Followers of this line of thinking particularly like to point out the not-too-distant disconnect between royalty, the people, and the nation. Under monarchy, the king was deserving of veneration, not a nation. The people spoke many different languages and thought of themselves as subjects, not citizens. The King himself often spoke a different language than those in administrative posts. It was only with the rise of republics that the people became attached as a community to a nation. "Nations" did not really exist until popular revolutions identified the people with the state and national destiny.
The newer nations of South America and Africa present even more stark cases of creation. The boundaries of these newer nations represent adminstrative divisions and not indigenous cultural of geographic features. Early maps did not even have nations. When Bolivar told people to think of themselves as Peruvians, he was creating a new category of peoples. Westerners discovered Cambodia's Angor Watt and Mexico's Chichen Itza. Before they were exploited by new nationalists, they meant nothing to the locals. History creates artificial ties to the past in the name of reifying unnatural categories of persons.
This position, first championed by Benedict Anderson, has some validity. It helps understand that nations are not eternal forms of political and identity organization. That said, we must, as Anderson does, make sure that we differentiate degrees of this reality. Some nations have virtually historical precedence. But some, as in England, have real and cultural ties to the past. English may have been standardized recently, but it was not invented out of whole cloth. It's selection by England as their language, was not totally arbitrary. The person who best represents this view (in the sense of being a great scholar and a great read) is Anthony D. Smith of Oxford. He has pointed out that Western connection to Greece, for example, while it has ebbed and flowed, is not arbitrary. No Western nation ties its existence to something that did not occur on its soil.
What if, though, nations are "imagined communities?" First of all, they are not so imagined anymore. After 230 years, the American nation has a history. We have a political founding, a Civil War, national politics, and collectively fought international wars that prove our national "narrative" is not totally fictive. Our nation has an undeniable basis in reality. Beyond this, though, why would nations being invented be a bad thing? In the West we celebrate invention. Is the lightbulb less valuable or more valuable for havinng been an invention? Our constitution is ingenious. We do not deride it because it was just "imagined." We should be even more proud of our nation for its being imagined and subsequently implemented.
The real issue herein, however, are the motives of those who started the debate being described. While the search for objective understanding might have merit, the need to "problematize" the idea of the nation is not a motive that can be said to be neutral. Many of these people are the same ones that championed social history in the 1970s. They said we should focus on ordinary people and not just politicians. If that is neutral it is fair enough. But when they are then hostile to including any great men, presidents or other political leaders in history, they distort more than rectify history. There was a backlash against not having governments in history. Now "Atlantic history" seeks to show that all governmental histories are intertwined. So when we cannot focus on happenings below national sovereignty, we transcend it internationally. The idea that nations are imagined falls suspiciously within the post-1970s pattern of nation depricating by historians.
Nations are good things! One definition of nation is an area within which there is peace. Rather than having warlords and tribes fighting eachother every two miles, you now have large regions in which there is no war. Historians seem to have not heard that modern anthropologists have established that life was previously very bloody. Since nations have risen, war has declined. Furthermore, communities, real or imagined, bring good feelings. Nature, anthropology and common feeling show that people like to belong. On some level it is ridiculous for me to identify with my sports team (GO LAKERS!), but I love it. Beyond this, common languages and trust, a sense of shared history and destiny, facilitates economics and democratic politics. We can trust eachother in business and in politics to not be ruthless. We agree that, when all is said and done, Democrats and Republicans are Americans and want what is best for it. Without this shared narrative, we can break into hostile groups and violence can errupt.
This brings us to the role of historians in the world. Everyone who writes on this topic notes the centrality of historians to the process of nation creation. Historians have to find old heroes and literature and bundle them to concoct a national heritage to celebrate. One can look at this and see it as an artificial manipulation of the identities of generic people. But, first of all, this overlooks the fact that before nations people still had imagined communities and shared cultures; the world before historians was not peopled with unattached individualists. Secondly, we can celebrate this as an act of valuable conscious creation of community. Like the story tellers of old, historians have fostered unity. To the extent that they have used Western sources, they have done so on a moral basis we should celebrate. Historians used to glory in telling of the deeds and values of our past, they should again.
As a history teacher my goal is to reify and glorify our great community. This noble role goes back to the days of the shamans. It is fact-based story telling. I kept this definition of my purpose especially close to my heart as I taught high school history. Teachers and culturists both know very well what people without larger role models can degenerate into. Teachers and culturists both know that without identification with a larger, imagined community, people naturally break off into sophmores and seniors, or races and conflict erupts. For our historians to spend their time deconstructing the nation is pathological. It undermines their profession's great contributions to the world. It, ironically, shows little appreciation for the historic role of historians. It is an abrogation of duty. Worst of all, belittling our nation as "imagined" can destabilize the Western world. And, if we forget to remember the values and examples of our forefathers, I don't want to imagine the very real horrors that might take its place.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
First Day History Lesson at an Unnamed University
Me and my big blogging mouth! For those who do not know, I am in academia. I have been seriously hammered for my opinions. I have gotten in trouble for saying things one should not say. And, I have decided that it is better for me to not say what I feel to a group of 12 people, go placidly amidst the noise and haste and not suffer what I perceive to be retribution and harrassment. My resolutions: 1) Don't talk much. 2) If you do talk, make the statement tentative, phrase your statement in the form of a question.
The topic on my first day visiting an unnamed university was the Enola Gay exihbit controversey. In 1995 the Smithsonian Institute exhibited the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the event. When the academic curators presented their proposal for review, a firestorm broke out. They wanted to tell both sides, ours and the Japanese. They wanted to utilize the new post-national history now hip in academic circles. They also wanted to frame the event as the beginning of the nuclear age and arms race. Veterans groups were mad as hell. They wanted to celebrate, not ponder or bemoan, the end of World War Two.
History can be spun. Our article for the opening class of the semester took the position that there was no objective way to tell the story. From the perspective of someone incinerated (if incinerated people still have one) it was a tragic day. From ours it was a better day. The article challenged the idea that we even had a unified view of the war. The article reminded us that the bombing only saved our soldiers lives, possibly not lives overall. When decrying Japanese imperialism, it reminded us that we had taken Hawaii.
"Yes," there was no way my resolution to not speak would realistically ever hold in any situation "but, even though there are multiple perspectives and each has some validity, could we could use the perponderance of evidence to create an overall picture that has more truth than others?" "Perhaps we have a controversey because back then the perspective was clear about who was good and bad, and it is only with hindsight that alternative views can be considered? In doing history, is it our goal to uncover the past or make a judgement about it?" I was proud at my tentative responses. But as the discussion went on I felt myself slipping. "Don't speak. Questions, not statements" I reminded myself.
But finally, I HAD to ask the big one, "leaving the Japanese, could we say that the Nazi regime was in some sense objectively evil?" To my surprise, someone actually asked me what they had done that was evil. I smiled nervously, having to make a statement. I ventured tentatively but with undisguisable emotion, "well, genocide?" A student who was free to make statements, having the confidence of the majority said, "That is only our perspective. From their perspective they are doing right." I nodded and held my tongue.
At some level I was just plain stunned. At another level, I understood the absence of absolute truth. Culturism holds that each culture has its own truth. Genocide is the hard case. My having been arguing so much about absolute truth lately primed me to pause before screaming about right and wrong. Moments later I recalled the culturist reply. In general, our interfering in other's wars gets us into bad situations; we end up protecting Tutsi maniacs. In Sudan, though it is clearer that we have a cultural affinity with those being murdered, we still have to make a pragmatic choices about intervening. But Nazi Germany was Western. We can judge absolutely that from Socrates on the West has largely held the individual conscience to be sacred. More basically, Jesus said thou shalt not kill. The Nazis went against the Western ideals of freedom of speech and the separation of church and state too. Their ravaging the Western world gave us no choice but to condemn and fight them.
Tentatively, after class I approached the woman who had said Nazi's had their side too. I asked, "The question then becomes, should government exhibits which teach our population, be neutral? Are we obligated to present the idea that the holacaust was good?" Her response further silenced me, "Well, some people think that the holacaust never happened." Silence, John, silence. Silence!!! Another woman chimed in, "We shouldn't judge right and wrong, we are historians. You cannot understand both sides if you have judgement. "So we should teach the Nazi doctrine in our exhibits of World War Two and in our textbooks without judgement?" "Yes. We'll can present their side and then let people decide what they think. That is good history." "Even in public venues?" "Yes." "Okay." I walked away silently.
Too many thoughts. The holacaust is amongst the best documented events in history. There must be some standard of evidence whereby we can nail down facts, even if we want to argue interpretation. Less obviously, if all is interpretation, then we still have a side. These scholars want to work towards a post-nationalist point of view. That is said to be more accurate. But if this leads us to having to say Nazis were right, I don't want it. It may be only our side, but our side holds that Nazis were wrong. We fought, and I would fight, to the death to keep that sort of thought system from sweeping Western civilization. The Nazi's very existence tells us that our values are not obvious. If we do not explicitly teach our values as being right, we cannot assume they will continue. Ultimately, I do not believe in objective interpretations of history. But even if I did, considering the Nazis objectively may make us better historians, but it does not make us better people, and it certainly will not help define, protect and promote our values.
Historians should not check their cultural and moral perspective at the door. I say that even though I largely held my breath and kept my outrage and arguments to myself after entering the classroom. I cannot be proud that I was silent in the face of evil arguments, but I want to graduate. I don't need to go through harrassment over my views at the hands of professors ever again. When I graduate and teach I'll be able to argue my positions from the pulpit of a university position. And though I did not fully express myself to them, I got to express myself to you. That is more important to me. Thanks for reading.
The topic on my first day visiting an unnamed university was the Enola Gay exihbit controversey. In 1995 the Smithsonian Institute exhibited the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the event. When the academic curators presented their proposal for review, a firestorm broke out. They wanted to tell both sides, ours and the Japanese. They wanted to utilize the new post-national history now hip in academic circles. They also wanted to frame the event as the beginning of the nuclear age and arms race. Veterans groups were mad as hell. They wanted to celebrate, not ponder or bemoan, the end of World War Two.
History can be spun. Our article for the opening class of the semester took the position that there was no objective way to tell the story. From the perspective of someone incinerated (if incinerated people still have one) it was a tragic day. From ours it was a better day. The article challenged the idea that we even had a unified view of the war. The article reminded us that the bombing only saved our soldiers lives, possibly not lives overall. When decrying Japanese imperialism, it reminded us that we had taken Hawaii.
"Yes," there was no way my resolution to not speak would realistically ever hold in any situation "but, even though there are multiple perspectives and each has some validity, could we could use the perponderance of evidence to create an overall picture that has more truth than others?" "Perhaps we have a controversey because back then the perspective was clear about who was good and bad, and it is only with hindsight that alternative views can be considered? In doing history, is it our goal to uncover the past or make a judgement about it?" I was proud at my tentative responses. But as the discussion went on I felt myself slipping. "Don't speak. Questions, not statements" I reminded myself.
But finally, I HAD to ask the big one, "leaving the Japanese, could we say that the Nazi regime was in some sense objectively evil?" To my surprise, someone actually asked me what they had done that was evil. I smiled nervously, having to make a statement. I ventured tentatively but with undisguisable emotion, "well, genocide?" A student who was free to make statements, having the confidence of the majority said, "That is only our perspective. From their perspective they are doing right." I nodded and held my tongue.
At some level I was just plain stunned. At another level, I understood the absence of absolute truth. Culturism holds that each culture has its own truth. Genocide is the hard case. My having been arguing so much about absolute truth lately primed me to pause before screaming about right and wrong. Moments later I recalled the culturist reply. In general, our interfering in other's wars gets us into bad situations; we end up protecting Tutsi maniacs. In Sudan, though it is clearer that we have a cultural affinity with those being murdered, we still have to make a pragmatic choices about intervening. But Nazi Germany was Western. We can judge absolutely that from Socrates on the West has largely held the individual conscience to be sacred. More basically, Jesus said thou shalt not kill. The Nazis went against the Western ideals of freedom of speech and the separation of church and state too. Their ravaging the Western world gave us no choice but to condemn and fight them.
Tentatively, after class I approached the woman who had said Nazi's had their side too. I asked, "The question then becomes, should government exhibits which teach our population, be neutral? Are we obligated to present the idea that the holacaust was good?" Her response further silenced me, "Well, some people think that the holacaust never happened." Silence, John, silence. Silence!!! Another woman chimed in, "We shouldn't judge right and wrong, we are historians. You cannot understand both sides if you have judgement. "So we should teach the Nazi doctrine in our exhibits of World War Two and in our textbooks without judgement?" "Yes. We'll can present their side and then let people decide what they think. That is good history." "Even in public venues?" "Yes." "Okay." I walked away silently.
Too many thoughts. The holacaust is amongst the best documented events in history. There must be some standard of evidence whereby we can nail down facts, even if we want to argue interpretation. Less obviously, if all is interpretation, then we still have a side. These scholars want to work towards a post-nationalist point of view. That is said to be more accurate. But if this leads us to having to say Nazis were right, I don't want it. It may be only our side, but our side holds that Nazis were wrong. We fought, and I would fight, to the death to keep that sort of thought system from sweeping Western civilization. The Nazi's very existence tells us that our values are not obvious. If we do not explicitly teach our values as being right, we cannot assume they will continue. Ultimately, I do not believe in objective interpretations of history. But even if I did, considering the Nazis objectively may make us better historians, but it does not make us better people, and it certainly will not help define, protect and promote our values.
Historians should not check their cultural and moral perspective at the door. I say that even though I largely held my breath and kept my outrage and arguments to myself after entering the classroom. I cannot be proud that I was silent in the face of evil arguments, but I want to graduate. I don't need to go through harrassment over my views at the hands of professors ever again. When I graduate and teach I'll be able to argue my positions from the pulpit of a university position. And though I did not fully express myself to them, I got to express myself to you. That is more important to me. Thanks for reading.
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