Don't know much about history: New, New Framework For AP U.S. History
August 5, 2015 12:55 PM Subscribe
The College Board has just released the latest curriculum framework for its Advanced Placement U.S. history course, in response to some long-brewing controversy around the updates, which were to be the first since 2006. Critics of the prior changes are happy, while those who supported the prior edition are miffed. If you've missed the lead-up to this, here's some more history on the AP U.S. History debate...
Back in early 2011, when the AP Biology was being announced, the update to AP U.S. History was postponed because "some teachers complained that parts of the history course seemed vague." The prior document (PDF) is pretty short - 39 pages total, with 7 on what to cover when teaching U.S. history.
The new framework (PDF saved on Archive.org) really stirred things up with conservatives, as summarized in this piece on HuffPo, with embedded AP U.S. History Practice Exam and Course and Exam Description. The Republican National Committee even waded into the fray and denounced the College Board's new framework for the AP U.S. History exam for its "consistently negative view of American history."
The fight over the AP course blew up in Jefferson County, Colorado, with conservative board members, backed by the Colorado chapter of Americans for Prosperity getting national attention for this and their other efforts to drastically change the school systems in the County, resulting in a strong recall effort now under way. And earlier this year, Oklahoma Lawmakers voted to cut funding for AP U.S. History and called for State-drafted curriculum.
To see what really changed, Education Week detailed some of the changes, and posted an open letter (PDF) from professors and teachers who wrote the framework, defending their work. But the College Board to the complaints to heart, and even hired some of their critics on for the rewrite, who are now commenting positively on the latest updates.
You can read the new framework (PDF), and browse through prior Advanced Placement U.S. History exam materials on College Board's website, to compare prior years.
Back in early 2011, when the AP Biology was being announced, the update to AP U.S. History was postponed because "some teachers complained that parts of the history course seemed vague." The prior document (PDF) is pretty short - 39 pages total, with 7 on what to cover when teaching U.S. history.
The new framework (PDF saved on Archive.org) really stirred things up with conservatives, as summarized in this piece on HuffPo, with embedded AP U.S. History Practice Exam and Course and Exam Description. The Republican National Committee even waded into the fray and denounced the College Board's new framework for the AP U.S. History exam for its "consistently negative view of American history."
The fight over the AP course blew up in Jefferson County, Colorado, with conservative board members, backed by the Colorado chapter of Americans for Prosperity getting national attention for this and their other efforts to drastically change the school systems in the County, resulting in a strong recall effort now under way. And earlier this year, Oklahoma Lawmakers voted to cut funding for AP U.S. History and called for State-drafted curriculum.
To see what really changed, Education Week detailed some of the changes, and posted an open letter (PDF) from professors and teachers who wrote the framework, defending their work. But the College Board to the complaints to heart, and even hired some of their critics on for the rewrite, who are now commenting positively on the latest updates.
You can read the new framework (PDF), and browse through prior Advanced Placement U.S. History exam materials on College Board's website, to compare prior years.
Mr. Krieger points to the framework's treatment of Manifest Destiny as evidence of that negative slant: "Instead of a belief that America has a mission to spread democracy and new technologies across the continent," he writes, "the framework teaches the nation 'was built on a belief in white racial superiority and a sense of American cultural superiority.' "
I mean holy fucking shit dude!! I can't even begin to craft a coherent response to this!
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:00 PM on August 5, 2015 [48 favorites]
I mean holy fucking shit dude!! I can't even begin to craft a coherent response to this!
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:00 PM on August 5, 2015 [48 favorites]
debating ideas instead of regurgitating facts.
God forbid our high school students learn how to think.
Now it says simply that the Europeans' introduction of guns and alcohol "stimulated changes" in native communities.
Oh, lord.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:00 PM on August 5, 2015
God forbid our high school students learn how to think.
Now it says simply that the Europeans' introduction of guns and alcohol "stimulated changes" in native communities.
Oh, lord.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:00 PM on August 5, 2015
I'm pretty happy to have been taught history from the IB curriculum (which encouraged critical thinking, as well as examining both inside and outside perspectives on US history). I don't have many other positive things to say about IB, but I certainly appreciate not having been taught a whitewashed version of US history.
Oh, and I aced the AP US History exam too.
posted by schmod at 1:01 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
Oh, and I aced the AP US History exam too.
posted by schmod at 1:01 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
"...and then the ungrateful, uppity Negroes forgot their place in the 1950s and 1960s and went on a rampage. It wasn't until the glorious reign of St. Reagan (hallowed by His name) in the 1980s that God-fearing real Americans were able to begin turning the tide and restoring America to its rightful order.
Your homework for today is to think about the dangers of Mexican immigrants and say 10 Hail Reagans."
posted by Sangermaine at 1:03 PM on August 5, 2015 [5 favorites]
Your homework for today is to think about the dangers of Mexican immigrants and say 10 Hail Reagans."
posted by Sangermaine at 1:03 PM on August 5, 2015 [5 favorites]
I think it's a shame College Board took down the 2014 framework*, because if you wanted to stimulate conversations and discussions, what better way than to offer teachers two similar takes on history? And as noted in the Education Week write-up, the frameworks are not a detailed curriculum. The early brief/vague guidance and the new 2014 edition both left out Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., because you don't have to remind history teachers about such key people in history, right? Right?
posted by filthy light thief at 1:05 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:05 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
Reality, of course, has a well-known liberal bias. That is why we have to change the curriculum to serve our particular worldview. Gotta get that echo chamber started early!
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 1:06 PM on August 5, 2015
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 1:06 PM on August 5, 2015
Sangermaine: the reality is no less upsetting. In fact it's more upsetting, because it actually is taught like "and then black people asked for rights nicely and white people gave them to them and that was the end of racism in America." Similarly, the Triangle Factory Fire spontaneously made people realize sweatshops were bad and they passed some laws and labor was never exploited again. Suffragettes asked nicely for voting rights, etc etc.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:06 PM on August 5, 2015 [30 favorites]
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:06 PM on August 5, 2015 [30 favorites]
* And I'm even happier that Archive.org does what it does, in preserving what is treated by some as ephemera.
This is all to say, history and social study teachers still have latitude in what and how to teach, including critical thinking. This isn't a curriculum.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:07 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
This is all to say, history and social study teachers still have latitude in what and how to teach, including critical thinking. This isn't a curriculum.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:07 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'm not naive enough to think there's such a thing as apolitical historical narratives, but this kind of thing drives me into paroxysms of rage. I'm sorry I don't have a more constructive comment. It's just, ugh.
posted by Xavier Xavier at 1:08 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Xavier Xavier at 1:08 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
The AP US History education I got in the early 90s was pretty goddamned right wing (and lazy), but that was probably partly just a function of being in a crap school in rural Nebraska.
posted by the phlegmatic king at 1:08 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by the phlegmatic king at 1:08 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit: Reality, of course, has a well-known liberal bias. That is why we have to change the curriculum to serve our particular worldview. Gotta get that echo chamber started early!
Related: Rapid cultural change on race — but Republicans and conservatives lag behind
Related: Rapid cultural change on race — but Republicans and conservatives lag behind
The Post poll found 60 percent saying the nation needs to continue making changes to give blacks and whites equal rights, while 37 percent say those changes have already been made.posted by filthy light thief at 1:09 PM on August 5, 2015 [4 favorites]
The findings mark a shift from a 2014 Pew Research Center poll asking the same question. Back then, prior to Ferguson, 46 percent said more changes were needed to guarantee equal treatment.
"the framework teaches the nation 'was built on a belief in white racial superiority and a sense of American cultural superiority.' "
Listen dude, do you want us to talk about our exceptionalism or not? Oh, you don't mean that kind of exceptionalism? You shoulda said.
posted by rtha at 1:15 PM on August 5, 2015 [13 favorites]
Listen dude, do you want us to talk about our exceptionalism or not? Oh, you don't mean that kind of exceptionalism? You shoulda said.
posted by rtha at 1:15 PM on August 5, 2015 [13 favorites]
I'm reminded of my own junior year history class; a couple of my friends and I had to take the class that was one step down what we were qualified for (we could have taken the high-honors level, but the honors-level was all we could squeeze into our schedules). Not only were we all light years beyond the material in skill, we were all also pretty liberal and were not buying the whole American-Exceptionalism thing.
The point at which all of our brains broke was when we were covering World War II, and the teacher brought in a filmstrip to show us, all made up of newsreel footage from the period, and we sat there watching clip after clip of charging troops and cannons and shit in black and white all set to military music and a breathless narrator. The filmstrip took all class, and ended moments before the bell rang - but after it rang, we sat there for a moment in shock, having realized that this 50-minute film that was ostensibly about the Second World War had only spent:
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:34 PM on August 5, 2015 [9 favorites]
The point at which all of our brains broke was when we were covering World War II, and the teacher brought in a filmstrip to show us, all made up of newsreel footage from the period, and we sat there watching clip after clip of charging troops and cannons and shit in black and white all set to military music and a breathless narrator. The filmstrip took all class, and ended moments before the bell rang - but after it rang, we sat there for a moment in shock, having realized that this 50-minute film that was ostensibly about the Second World War had only spent:
2 minutes on the Holocaust, andWe pretty much just slept through the remaining couple weeks of classes. I think one of my friends even wrote one page from his final term paper as if he were narrating a baseball game just to amuse himself, and I put lyrics from Sting songs in the frontispieces of my term papers for the same reason (although I chickened out and credited them to "Gordon Sumner").
90 seconds on Hiroshima.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:34 PM on August 5, 2015 [9 favorites]
Look, we have to teach these kids how bold and visionary and righteous our government was so we can show how bloated and tepid and weak it is.
posted by tallthinone at 1:42 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by tallthinone at 1:42 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
Specific objections [include the notion] that white Southerners had "pride in the institution of slavery"
This is historical revisionism in its most distressing, anti-factual, and destructive form. Not only did Southerners take pride in the institution of slavery, they believed slavery, and its racist principles, to be essential to the greatness of Southern, and indeed, American, society.
The following quote is from the "Corner Stone" speech given by Alexander Stephens after ascending to the office of vice president of the Confederacy:
"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." (March 21, 1861).
His words ooze with unrestrained pride.
posted by Gordion Knott at 1:47 PM on August 5, 2015 [46 favorites]
This is historical revisionism in its most distressing, anti-factual, and destructive form. Not only did Southerners take pride in the institution of slavery, they believed slavery, and its racist principles, to be essential to the greatness of Southern, and indeed, American, society.
The following quote is from the "Corner Stone" speech given by Alexander Stephens after ascending to the office of vice president of the Confederacy:
"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." (March 21, 1861).
His words ooze with unrestrained pride.
posted by Gordion Knott at 1:47 PM on August 5, 2015 [46 favorites]
Look, we have to teach these kids how bold and visionary and righteous our government was so we can show how bloated and tepid and weak it is.
The government plan was bold and visionary and righteous. The people administering it did, and do, have flaws and weaknesses, and we can't pretend they didn't, and don't.
Besides, sometimes reminding people of the foibles of the past helps to put the sins of the present in proper perspective. I was coincidentally asked to do research on "political sex scandals in US History" for a theater project in early 2001, and it forever changed my perspective on the whole Lewinskygate thing - because when it comes to philandering, Bill Clinton does not hold a candle to Warren G. Harding.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:49 PM on August 5, 2015 [6 favorites]
The government plan was bold and visionary and righteous. The people administering it did, and do, have flaws and weaknesses, and we can't pretend they didn't, and don't.
Besides, sometimes reminding people of the foibles of the past helps to put the sins of the present in proper perspective. I was coincidentally asked to do research on "political sex scandals in US History" for a theater project in early 2001, and it forever changed my perspective on the whole Lewinskygate thing - because when it comes to philandering, Bill Clinton does not hold a candle to Warren G. Harding.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:49 PM on August 5, 2015 [6 favorites]
I just Googled "warren g harding scandals" and one of the suggested searches was "warren g harding scandals beastialitality" [sic] which just sounds like a Mortal Kombat finishing move. So to speak.
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:55 PM on August 5, 2015 [12 favorites]
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:55 PM on August 5, 2015 [12 favorites]
My high school history teacher really enjoyed showing us this cartoon from the McKinley campaign. He taught the course with an overhead projector and about 30 overhead slides every class.
(Not AP though. I went to school with the poors.)
posted by bukvich at 1:56 PM on August 5, 2015
(Not AP though. I went to school with the poors.)
posted by bukvich at 1:56 PM on August 5, 2015
I just Googled "warren g harding scandals" and one of the suggested searches was "warren g harding scandals beastialitality" [sic]
Can't say I came across that....
But, when he was the governor of Ohio he had a mistress - one his wife knew about, and there's even a story about how once the mistress showed up and the wife stood on the porch throwing furniture at her to drive her away. When Harding began his bid for the Presidency, his handlers tracked her down and gave her this exorbitant sum of money to move to Japan for the next few years.
And Harding still ended up having an affair with this other girl while he was president (and she really was a girl, it was a "barely legal" kind of situation) and they would hook up in the Oval Office's coat closet. He knocked her up, and quietly slipped her money every month to support his kid - but then when he died, she waited a couple months then turned up at his widow's house to say "this is his kid, and he was giving us money, can you keep that bit up?" His widow, of course, said "nothing doing" and she had to write a tell-all book about the whole thing.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:02 PM on August 5, 2015 [12 favorites]
Can't say I came across that....
But, when he was the governor of Ohio he had a mistress - one his wife knew about, and there's even a story about how once the mistress showed up and the wife stood on the porch throwing furniture at her to drive her away. When Harding began his bid for the Presidency, his handlers tracked her down and gave her this exorbitant sum of money to move to Japan for the next few years.
And Harding still ended up having an affair with this other girl while he was president (and she really was a girl, it was a "barely legal" kind of situation) and they would hook up in the Oval Office's coat closet. He knocked her up, and quietly slipped her money every month to support his kid - but then when he died, she waited a couple months then turned up at his widow's house to say "this is his kid, and he was giving us money, can you keep that bit up?" His widow, of course, said "nothing doing" and she had to write a tell-all book about the whole thing.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:02 PM on August 5, 2015 [12 favorites]
The College Board is not some sort of neutral arbiter, it's basically a non-profit façade of the corporate testing company ETS, who run a boatload of for profit tests including the SAT, AP exams, the GRE, PRAXIS and shitload of others. They're the ones collecting the bulk of your $75 test fees. They're in the business of pushing the AP test to become a universal standard, making themselves plenty of money in the process. There's no surprise here that the College Board caved as soon as a few wingnut states banded together to threaten their market share.
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:04 PM on August 5, 2015 [28 favorites]
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:04 PM on August 5, 2015 [28 favorites]
"warren g harding scandals beastialitality"
This has to be like a human-driven equivalent to the Google Deep Dreaming algorithm where one person misspells it, then the next clicks it for an auto-complete suggestion, then the next and the next and so on until it becomes a competitive search term. Amazing.
posted by Ryvar at 2:05 PM on August 5, 2015 [4 favorites]
This has to be like a human-driven equivalent to the Google Deep Dreaming algorithm where one person misspells it, then the next clicks it for an auto-complete suggestion, then the next and the next and so on until it becomes a competitive search term. Amazing.
posted by Ryvar at 2:05 PM on August 5, 2015 [4 favorites]
These people keep using the word "balanced" and "fair" and it's not clear they actually understand what that even means.
They understand just fine; look them up in the Orwellian doublespeak dictionary.
posted by Walleye at 2:11 PM on August 5, 2015
They understand just fine; look them up in the Orwellian doublespeak dictionary.
posted by Walleye at 2:11 PM on August 5, 2015
Strange Interlude: "I just Googled "warren g harding scandals" and one of the suggested searches was "warren g harding scandals beastialitality" [sic] which just sounds like a Mortal Kombat finishing move. So to speak"
Look, just because his partner's called "Nate Dogg" doesn't make it beastialitality.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:21 PM on August 5, 2015 [23 favorites]
Look, just because his partner's called "Nate Dogg" doesn't make it beastialitality.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:21 PM on August 5, 2015 [23 favorites]
deep sigh.
posted by likeatoaster at 2:28 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by likeatoaster at 2:28 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
Specific objections ranged from the framework stating that the nation's founders believed in "white superiority"
I just... I can almost understand where they're coming from with some of the other objections (not agree, of course, but see how they could think that way), but how can anyone maintain with a straight face that the founders didn't believe in white superiority? They said so in so many words!
posted by languagehat at 2:32 PM on August 5, 2015 [6 favorites]
I just... I can almost understand where they're coming from with some of the other objections (not agree, of course, but see how they could think that way), but how can anyone maintain with a straight face that the founders didn't believe in white superiority? They said so in so many words!
posted by languagehat at 2:32 PM on August 5, 2015 [6 favorites]
"Instead of a belief that America has a mission to spread democracy and new technologies across the continent," he writes, "the framework teaches the nation 'was built on a belief in white racial superiority and a sense of American cultural superiority.' "
The two parts of this sentence aren't necessarily incompatible. Many/most Americans really did believe they were spreading good things across the continent ... Aaaand things kinda fell apart quite a bit in the implementation, as these kinds of things usually do.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 2:33 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
The two parts of this sentence aren't necessarily incompatible. Many/most Americans really did believe they were spreading good things across the continent ... Aaaand things kinda fell apart quite a bit in the implementation, as these kinds of things usually do.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 2:33 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
The College Board is not some sort of neutral arbiter, it's basically a non-profit façade of the corporate testing company ETS, who run a boatload of for profit tests including the SAT, AP exams, the GRE, PRAXIS and shitload of others.
College Board and ETS are both nonprofits. ETS is contracted by College Board to administer tests.
I'm not saying they do or don't make money, only that legally they are both nonprofits.
posted by those are my balloons at 2:37 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
College Board and ETS are both nonprofits. ETS is contracted by College Board to administer tests.
I'm not saying they do or don't make money, only that legally they are both nonprofits.
posted by those are my balloons at 2:37 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
Critics Succeed in Removing Critical Thinking from New Critical-Thinking Based History Education
posted by klangklangston at 2:39 PM on August 5, 2015 [11 favorites]
posted by klangklangston at 2:39 PM on August 5, 2015 [11 favorites]
Number of times "white" appears in the 2014 framework: 34
Number of times "white" appears in the 2015 framework: 20
posted by chortly at 2:43 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
Number of times "white" appears in the 2015 framework: 20
posted by chortly at 2:43 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
I just spent all day in the blistering hot listening to the same seminar four times before finding out I'm being railroaded into a new contract after the employment period has begun. I'll decompress and hopefully find the energy to come back later for something more comprehensive.
I'll just say that every APUSH teacher I know - which is actually a lot - is incensed at what a mealy mouth and spineless move this was. In fact, we knew they'd given up the ghost when this years DBQ was entirely about conservatism and contained seven documents that shone a positive light on the rise of conservatism and zero that shone an unflattering one. The last training I went to we had one of the high poobah graders and the discussions about the subject were .... tense.
The most frustrating part is this is just another one of the outrages du jour that fuel the far right base. College Board, a gigantic entity with decades of clout, completely folded because of 1,000 internet signatures. I've said this plenty of times, but on the internet managing to get 1,000 signatures is basically getting NO signatures.
posted by absalom at 2:45 PM on August 5, 2015 [12 favorites]
I'll just say that every APUSH teacher I know - which is actually a lot - is incensed at what a mealy mouth and spineless move this was. In fact, we knew they'd given up the ghost when this years DBQ was entirely about conservatism and contained seven documents that shone a positive light on the rise of conservatism and zero that shone an unflattering one. The last training I went to we had one of the high poobah graders and the discussions about the subject were .... tense.
The most frustrating part is this is just another one of the outrages du jour that fuel the far right base. College Board, a gigantic entity with decades of clout, completely folded because of 1,000 internet signatures. I've said this plenty of times, but on the internet managing to get 1,000 signatures is basically getting NO signatures.
posted by absalom at 2:45 PM on August 5, 2015 [12 favorites]
"Instead of a belief that America has a mission to spread democracy and new technologies across the continent," he writes, "the framework teaches the nation 'was built on a belief in white racial superiority and a sense of American cultural superiority.' "
The two parts of this sentence aren't necessarily incompatible. Many/most Americans really did believe they were spreading good things across the continent ... Aaaand things kinda fell apart quite a bit in the implementation, as these kinds of things usually do.
First off, to the extent that there's any one or two abstractions that America was 'built on,' White superiority and American cultural superiority are exactly what America was built on. Second, the idea that 'spreading democracy' across the continent, for values of 'democracy' that are recognizable today, had anything to do with actual American history is a complete misunderstanding, as is the spectacularly incoherent bit of pro-corporate ideological vomit entailed in the assertion that America was 'built on' the mission of spreading new technologies in geographical space.
The problem isn't just that Krieger's emendation to American history is incompatible with the truth. It's also utterly false, although it's really teetering precariously on the line between 'empirical claim' and 'uselessly vague abstraction.'
posted by clockzero at 2:49 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
The two parts of this sentence aren't necessarily incompatible. Many/most Americans really did believe they were spreading good things across the continent ... Aaaand things kinda fell apart quite a bit in the implementation, as these kinds of things usually do.
First off, to the extent that there's any one or two abstractions that America was 'built on,' White superiority and American cultural superiority are exactly what America was built on. Second, the idea that 'spreading democracy' across the continent, for values of 'democracy' that are recognizable today, had anything to do with actual American history is a complete misunderstanding, as is the spectacularly incoherent bit of pro-corporate ideological vomit entailed in the assertion that America was 'built on' the mission of spreading new technologies in geographical space.
The problem isn't just that Krieger's emendation to American history is incompatible with the truth. It's also utterly false, although it's really teetering precariously on the line between 'empirical claim' and 'uselessly vague abstraction.'
posted by clockzero at 2:49 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
"First off, to the extent that there's any one or two abstractions that America was 'built on,' White superiority and American cultural superiority are exactly what America was built on. "
Oh, bullshit. European cultural superiority though… ;)
posted by klangklangston at 3:04 PM on August 5, 2015
Oh, bullshit. European cultural superiority though… ;)
posted by klangklangston at 3:04 PM on August 5, 2015
It seems we made some pretty fine pewter-ware.
posted by clavdivs at 3:07 PM on August 5, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by clavdivs at 3:07 PM on August 5, 2015 [3 favorites]
absalom: The most frustrating part is this is just another one of the outrages du jour that fuel the far right base. College Board, a gigantic entity with decades of clout, completely folded because of 1,000 internet signatures.
I think there's a lot more than internet signatures pushing them here. I could see brushing off the comments from some conservative county-level school boards, or even a few states who have enough Republicans together to vote on party lines against this, but I think the denouncement from the RNC was the strongest public "vote" against the prior framework. I think they're trying to whitewash history, but it's more than a little internet poll.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:07 PM on August 5, 2015
I think there's a lot more than internet signatures pushing them here. I could see brushing off the comments from some conservative county-level school boards, or even a few states who have enough Republicans together to vote on party lines against this, but I think the denouncement from the RNC was the strongest public "vote" against the prior framework. I think they're trying to whitewash history, but it's more than a little internet poll.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:07 PM on August 5, 2015
You know, accepting AP exams for college credits is typically at the discretion of each university department.
Now, I'm not saying that I would ever expect university history departments to get their collective acts together. But the leverage is there. Especially if it could be framed in a way that pointed out that historians are being pushed out of their own exams.
Someone more politically savvy could start calling this an academic freedom issue—but, finally, one that academics themselves have the power to rectify. By saying that the credit isn't good anymore, you just get to go to an upper-level class straightaway. Or just not accepting the exam at all.
posted by migrantology at 3:10 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
Now, I'm not saying that I would ever expect university history departments to get their collective acts together. But the leverage is there. Especially if it could be framed in a way that pointed out that historians are being pushed out of their own exams.
Someone more politically savvy could start calling this an academic freedom issue—but, finally, one that academics themselves have the power to rectify. By saying that the credit isn't good anymore, you just get to go to an upper-level class straightaway. Or just not accepting the exam at all.
posted by migrantology at 3:10 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
No, no. The new American superiorty in culture was the new found rights for oppressed whites and a vauge framework for others to follow suit.
This was later epitomized by the "Empire" style.
posted by clavdivs at 3:11 PM on August 5, 2015
This was later epitomized by the "Empire" style.
posted by clavdivs at 3:11 PM on August 5, 2015
The issue, to me, is the hyperbole of rhetoric used on all sides that obscures the purpose of the entire venture, which is, you know, education.
Dismissing the superiority angle is horseshit (hello, slavery), but saying "the nation was built on a belief in white racial superiority and a sense of American cultural superiority," smells of horseshit inasmuch as it implies every 18th century fur trapper was a proto-Ted Nugent.
That's why I want everyone to vote for the Calm the Fuck Down Initiative.
Calm the fuck down. For America!
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 3:18 PM on August 5, 2015 [3 favorites]
Dismissing the superiority angle is horseshit (hello, slavery), but saying "the nation was built on a belief in white racial superiority and a sense of American cultural superiority," smells of horseshit inasmuch as it implies every 18th century fur trapper was a proto-Ted Nugent.
That's why I want everyone to vote for the Calm the Fuck Down Initiative.
Calm the fuck down. For America!
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 3:18 PM on August 5, 2015 [3 favorites]
Now, I'm not saying that I would ever expect university history departments to get their collective acts together. But the leverage is there. Especially if it could be framed in a way that pointed out that historians are being pushed out of their own exams.
The leverage is a lie. Many state legislatures are controlled by the GOP, and public universities are at their mercy. Wisconsin is cutting some quarter billion dollars from the UW system budget and trying to eliminate tenure. I don't see a whole lot of boat rocking coming from the history faculty over the AP exam.
posted by MikeMc at 3:20 PM on August 5, 2015
The leverage is a lie. Many state legislatures are controlled by the GOP, and public universities are at their mercy. Wisconsin is cutting some quarter billion dollars from the UW system budget and trying to eliminate tenure. I don't see a whole lot of boat rocking coming from the history faculty over the AP exam.
posted by MikeMc at 3:20 PM on August 5, 2015
There are similar statements from J. Davis at the start of the CSA.
That it wasn't about slavery is an artifact of the Lost Cause. See, also, the northern troops were inferior to the southern troops. The northern generals were inferior to the southern generals. The northern victory was inevitable given its industrial might.
We had one AP class in my HS, biology. Still kinda pissed about that.
posted by persona au gratin at 3:26 PM on August 5, 2015
That it wasn't about slavery is an artifact of the Lost Cause. See, also, the northern troops were inferior to the southern troops. The northern generals were inferior to the southern generals. The northern victory was inevitable given its industrial might.
We had one AP class in my HS, biology. Still kinda pissed about that.
posted by persona au gratin at 3:26 PM on August 5, 2015
President and Mrs. Coolidge were being shown [separately] around an experimental government farm. When [Mrs. Coolidge] came to the chicken yard she noticed that a rooster was mating very frequently. She asked the attendant how often that happened and was told, "Dozens of times each day." Mrs. Coolidge said, "Tell that to the President when he comes by." Upon being told, the President asked, "Same hen every time?" The reply was, "Oh, no, Mr. President, a different hen every time." President: "Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge."posted by kirkaracha at 3:35 PM on August 5, 2015 [7 favorites]
Also, what T.D. Strange said.
To further illustrate the point. Pearson does not make the AP test, but Pearson DOES sell most of the states their neutral End of Course tests, the textbooks aligned with the neutral End of Course test, the remediation software for those who cannot pass the neutral End of Course test, and the computer software that must be licensed to administer all of these tests. John Oliver, as you might expect, did an excellent long form on it. [Fanfare] I can't recommend watching and sharing it enough.
Anyway...
Adj. close on Pearson's stock price in 2001, before the advent of No Child Left Behind, ran between 7-8 dollars. In 2005, a few years into the NCLB mandates, the Adj. close generally ran between 8-8.25. By 2010, as the federal mandates started to hit the threshold of impossibility (90% of students... 100% of students), it ran from 11-13.50.
Over 2015, it has remained comfortably ensconced right there between 18-50-20 dollars per share. Currently it's at 18.50. The stock price of an educational testing company has basically *doubled* in the last five years in the middle of state austerity budgets and a total economic downturn. Hm.
posted by absalom at 3:35 PM on August 5, 2015 [7 favorites]
To further illustrate the point. Pearson does not make the AP test, but Pearson DOES sell most of the states their neutral End of Course tests, the textbooks aligned with the neutral End of Course test, the remediation software for those who cannot pass the neutral End of Course test, and the computer software that must be licensed to administer all of these tests. John Oliver, as you might expect, did an excellent long form on it. [Fanfare] I can't recommend watching and sharing it enough.
Anyway...
Adj. close on Pearson's stock price in 2001, before the advent of No Child Left Behind, ran between 7-8 dollars. In 2005, a few years into the NCLB mandates, the Adj. close generally ran between 8-8.25. By 2010, as the federal mandates started to hit the threshold of impossibility (90% of students... 100% of students), it ran from 11-13.50.
Over 2015, it has remained comfortably ensconced right there between 18-50-20 dollars per share. Currently it's at 18.50. The stock price of an educational testing company has basically *doubled* in the last five years in the middle of state austerity budgets and a total economic downturn. Hm.
posted by absalom at 3:35 PM on August 5, 2015 [7 favorites]
Look, we have to teach these kids how bold and visionary and righteous our government was so we can show how bloated and tepid and weak it is.
EmpressCallipygos: The government plan was bold and visionary and righteous. The people administering it did, and do, have flaws and weaknesses, and we can't pretend they didn't, and don't.
Then we're in violent agreement. Except for the part about the government plan being righteous. Our government has frequently been on the wrong side of morality. And we're still cleaning up the pieces.
My comment was more about the arguments you'll hear tomorrow night: America was great then and we're shit now. Crafting a narrative that inflates our past successes while glossing over imperfections, stumbles, mistakes and bad intentions helps make that case.
posted by tallthinone at 3:37 PM on August 5, 2015
EmpressCallipygos: The government plan was bold and visionary and righteous. The people administering it did, and do, have flaws and weaknesses, and we can't pretend they didn't, and don't.
Then we're in violent agreement. Except for the part about the government plan being righteous. Our government has frequently been on the wrong side of morality. And we're still cleaning up the pieces.
My comment was more about the arguments you'll hear tomorrow night: America was great then and we're shit now. Crafting a narrative that inflates our past successes while glossing over imperfections, stumbles, mistakes and bad intentions helps make that case.
posted by tallthinone at 3:37 PM on August 5, 2015
Also, "creating a narrative" is not even the goal of AP US History. The goal is to cultivate historical thinking skills, recognize important themes in US History, and be able to analyze and contextualize primary sources in order to craft strong historical arguments. To recognize the existence and historiography and to approach documents - ALL documents - with a strong understanding of place, time, and point of view. In fact, "creating a narrative" is the literal exact opposite of the goals of real history and the AP History classes.
World History - my other class - is getting revised next year. I shudder to think.
posted by absalom at 3:45 PM on August 5, 2015 [5 favorites]
World History - my other class - is getting revised next year. I shudder to think.
posted by absalom at 3:45 PM on August 5, 2015 [5 favorites]
Then we're in violent agreement. Except for the part about the government plan being righteous. Our government has frequently been on the wrong side of morality.
Oh, I was referring to the general conception of the government as opposed to any of the specific policies.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:02 PM on August 5, 2015
Oh, I was referring to the general conception of the government as opposed to any of the specific policies.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:02 PM on August 5, 2015
The new AP History test will just be the question "Is The United States of America the best country that ever was or will be?" And then there's a bubble to fill in saying "Yes, and God bless it."
posted by drezdn at 4:10 PM on August 5, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by drezdn at 4:10 PM on August 5, 2015 [4 favorites]
There'll be a picture of Jefferson writing the declaration of independence being controlled by marionette strings held by a translucent floating Jesus
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:12 PM on August 5, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:12 PM on August 5, 2015 [6 favorites]
My AP history teacher in 11th grade taught me mainly two things. There's always a counter story to the more generally accepted version of history they put out there. And "never trust the man." In retrospect, I guess that's kind of one thing. Well, that and love for Howard Zinn.
posted by triage_lazarus at 4:15 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by triage_lazarus at 4:15 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
I took AP US history as a junior. I had a mad crush on this guy who could've straight up been an underwear model for Calvin Klein. Sigh. I passed that exam. Everyone did. Don't remember a thing. Never took another history class but learned a lot after college. Shrug.
posted by discopolo at 5:13 PM on August 5, 2015
posted by discopolo at 5:13 PM on August 5, 2015
> Related: Rapid cultural change on race — but Republicans and conservatives lag behind
I'm astonished that a study found that a group of self-identified conservatives aren't changing their views as fast as people who identify themselves as progressives. It's almost as if the two groups of people support different rates of social change by definition.
Isn't this a bit tautological?
posted by Sunburnt at 5:39 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'm astonished that a study found that a group of self-identified conservatives aren't changing their views as fast as people who identify themselves as progressives. It's almost as if the two groups of people support different rates of social change by definition.
Isn't this a bit tautological?
posted by Sunburnt at 5:39 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
The slave owners, the white men who drove people off their land, the politicians who supported mass human rights abuses? Those aren't American heroes. Those are villains. If American history should be celebrating American ingenuity and heroism--which is arguable, but even if it is--then there is no excuse for positive or even neutral treatment of those men. Every person who claims that American history that refuses to give sympathetic treatment to tyrants, cowards, and monsters is not sufficiently pro-America is as much a villain as they are. I hope future standards reflect that fact.
I'm of Mexican-American descent and I went to high school with teachers who got away with overt racism, and I thought I hated history until I grew up and got my hands on better reading material. The fact that monsters like this get to determine the course of American education probably has a lot to do with why certain ethnic groups tend to do very poorly in high school, because academic success requires buying into all this white supremacist horseshit.
posted by Sequence at 6:07 PM on August 5, 2015 [5 favorites]
I'm of Mexican-American descent and I went to high school with teachers who got away with overt racism, and I thought I hated history until I grew up and got my hands on better reading material. The fact that monsters like this get to determine the course of American education probably has a lot to do with why certain ethnic groups tend to do very poorly in high school, because academic success requires buying into all this white supremacist horseshit.
posted by Sequence at 6:07 PM on August 5, 2015 [5 favorites]
Like hookman, the horrors of Jacksonian banking will be still told around bonfires.
"The slave owners, the white men who drove people off their land, the politicians who supported mass human rights abuses? Those aren't American heroes."
I tend to agree with exceptions. But I usually start with Cortez if history has any chronological validity. You could start with Columbus and the religious strife in many European countries that led to colonization.
But John Adams a war criminal, bah. Like any person he thought law, English law justified revolt and his wife was smarter then he.
posted by clavdivs at 6:24 PM on August 5, 2015
"The slave owners, the white men who drove people off their land, the politicians who supported mass human rights abuses? Those aren't American heroes."
I tend to agree with exceptions. But I usually start with Cortez if history has any chronological validity. You could start with Columbus and the religious strife in many European countries that led to colonization.
But John Adams a war criminal, bah. Like any person he thought law, English law justified revolt and his wife was smarter then he.
posted by clavdivs at 6:24 PM on August 5, 2015
How much does a national framework like this really influence individual classes? I would expect the biases and teaching skills of particular teachers to matter much more; if someone is determined to teach American exceptionalism, or American misdeeds, then they'll find time to do so.
My own high school history teachers (not AP, but in a specialized school) were quite good about getting into the details that I've heard other people complain were not taught—US imperialism in Latin America, actual causes of the Civil War, debate over using atomic bombs to end WWII, people like John Brown and Eugene V. Debs. (We also had one teacher who showed us Oliver Stone's JFK. I don't know if he really believed the film's conspiracy theory, but we had a class debate about it regardless, with people doing actual research to back up their positions. Good practice for more polarized left-right questions.)
posted by Rangi at 6:42 PM on August 5, 2015
My own high school history teachers (not AP, but in a specialized school) were quite good about getting into the details that I've heard other people complain were not taught—US imperialism in Latin America, actual causes of the Civil War, debate over using atomic bombs to end WWII, people like John Brown and Eugene V. Debs. (We also had one teacher who showed us Oliver Stone's JFK. I don't know if he really believed the film's conspiracy theory, but we had a class debate about it regardless, with people doing actual research to back up their positions. Good practice for more polarized left-right questions.)
posted by Rangi at 6:42 PM on August 5, 2015
I don't see how this matters. My high school had two AP US history teachers, one conservative and one liberal. I was vaguely aware of the AP syllabus, and I looked at it when exam time was near, but it seemed to have little influence on the day to day. Kids in the liberal section got a more liberal view, etc, but mostly people left with the same political biases they entered with.
To the extent the ideology in the class affected us, I think it was mostly a function of either (a) the textbook, which had a slightly conservative bent, or (b) the tone and rhetoric chosen by the teachers personally.
I get the sense this is mostly a symbolic fight.
posted by andrewpcone at 7:36 PM on August 5, 2015
To the extent the ideology in the class affected us, I think it was mostly a function of either (a) the textbook, which had a slightly conservative bent, or (b) the tone and rhetoric chosen by the teachers personally.
I get the sense this is mostly a symbolic fight.
posted by andrewpcone at 7:36 PM on August 5, 2015
If it helps, the petitions to recall the Jefferson County School Board members responsible for some of the most egregious conservative bullshit have been turned in, and they got more than twice the number of signatures required for the recall.
posted by asperity at 8:02 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by asperity at 8:02 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
but mostly people left with the same political biases they entered with.
Would you be willing to share the crosstabs from the fictitious poll you're basing this statement on?
posted by tonycpsu at 8:09 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
Would you be willing to share the crosstabs from the fictitious poll you're basing this statement on?
posted by tonycpsu at 8:09 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
Dismissing the superiority angle is horseshit (hello, slavery), but saying "the nation was built on a belief in white racial superiority and a sense of American cultural superiority," smells of horseshit inasmuch as it implies every 18th century fur trapper was a proto-Ted Nugent.
That's why I want everyone to vote for the Calm the Fuck Down Initiative.
Calm the fuck down. For America!
I support calming the fuck down.
I do think it's accurate to say that America's society, culture, and political economy are all deeply influenced by the prominence of race as an organizing principle, though.
posted by clockzero at 8:37 PM on August 5, 2015 [3 favorites]
That's why I want everyone to vote for the Calm the Fuck Down Initiative.
Calm the fuck down. For America!
I support calming the fuck down.
I do think it's accurate to say that America's society, culture, and political economy are all deeply influenced by the prominence of race as an organizing principle, though.
posted by clockzero at 8:37 PM on August 5, 2015 [3 favorites]
The fact that monsters like this get to determine the course of American education probably has a lot to do with why certain ethnic groups tend to do very poorly in high school, because academic success requires buying into all this white supremacist horseshit.
This is the absolute, bulls-eye thesis of the classic Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen.
posted by absalom at 9:00 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
This is the absolute, bulls-eye thesis of the classic Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen.
posted by absalom at 9:00 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
Thanks for the great post, filthy light thief. There's a lot to dig into here. I've spent the last couple days pouring through the revised revision to find the differences. I can point out some of the big ones if you want, but it's largely stuff that feels small unless you look at it in the aggregate: words like "conflict" are replaced with "misunderstanding" or "disagreement", "white resistance" against the '60s Civil Rights Movement has changed to a generalized "resistance," minorities have faded from view, there's less assigned responsibility for negative events, and so on.
I've spent the last year buried in all this, and it can feel like a lot like people are arguing over air, but it has very real consequences for students. It played out in the news for the one district in Colorado, but that was by no means an isolated event. I know teachers in 3 or 4 different districts that were called to the carpet this year to prove they weren't brainwashing their students. The College Board spoke loudly the whole year about the faith they had in their framework and how they had no intentions of changing it -- only to roll over during the summer and cave to basically all of the critics' demands. It felt as abrupt as a U-turn. The language from the College Board literally went from "it's just a framework, there is no bias" to "new framework coming, and THE BIAS IS GONE!"
On a practical level, this has been awful for students. The ones who took this class this last year have now basically been told they learned a wrong version of history, and the ones who take it this upcoming year don't feel there's any sense of stability in their course. Lots of classrooms this year had visits from board members, politicians, and non-elected members from various activist groups (like the Koch brothers groups), observing students and interrogating teachers. Students read and sometimes directly saw people attacking their teachers for being unpatriotic because of the new AP US history framework. A lot of the vitriol around this became downright madness, and that's not an environment that promotes critical thinking and learning for students.
More philosophically, I really worry the precedent this sets. That the College Board changed course so quickly and so completely (literally telling teachers "THE BIAS IS GONE!") sets the message that they were wrong, and that too much attention on negative events in American history is wrong. There is no critical thought in that, no space for differences of opinion, no ability to debate. It promotes the idea that there is ONE correct interpretation of history -- which is the exact opposite of what the redesigned course was supposed to be. It removes from students the ability to deal with complex issues and the trust they deserve as young adults to make their own decisions. And, even more, it shows students that the loudest, most aggressive voice wins: call someone unpatriotic and you have a bulletproof trump card. Those are not the habits a social studies teacher ought to promote.
posted by lilac girl at 9:14 PM on August 5, 2015 [11 favorites]
I've spent the last year buried in all this, and it can feel like a lot like people are arguing over air, but it has very real consequences for students. It played out in the news for the one district in Colorado, but that was by no means an isolated event. I know teachers in 3 or 4 different districts that were called to the carpet this year to prove they weren't brainwashing their students. The College Board spoke loudly the whole year about the faith they had in their framework and how they had no intentions of changing it -- only to roll over during the summer and cave to basically all of the critics' demands. It felt as abrupt as a U-turn. The language from the College Board literally went from "it's just a framework, there is no bias" to "new framework coming, and THE BIAS IS GONE!"
On a practical level, this has been awful for students. The ones who took this class this last year have now basically been told they learned a wrong version of history, and the ones who take it this upcoming year don't feel there's any sense of stability in their course. Lots of classrooms this year had visits from board members, politicians, and non-elected members from various activist groups (like the Koch brothers groups), observing students and interrogating teachers. Students read and sometimes directly saw people attacking their teachers for being unpatriotic because of the new AP US history framework. A lot of the vitriol around this became downright madness, and that's not an environment that promotes critical thinking and learning for students.
More philosophically, I really worry the precedent this sets. That the College Board changed course so quickly and so completely (literally telling teachers "THE BIAS IS GONE!") sets the message that they were wrong, and that too much attention on negative events in American history is wrong. There is no critical thought in that, no space for differences of opinion, no ability to debate. It promotes the idea that there is ONE correct interpretation of history -- which is the exact opposite of what the redesigned course was supposed to be. It removes from students the ability to deal with complex issues and the trust they deserve as young adults to make their own decisions. And, even more, it shows students that the loudest, most aggressive voice wins: call someone unpatriotic and you have a bulletproof trump card. Those are not the habits a social studies teacher ought to promote.
posted by lilac girl at 9:14 PM on August 5, 2015 [11 favorites]
"Dismissing the superiority angle is horseshit (hello, slavery), but saying "the nation was built on a belief in white racial superiority and a sense of American cultural superiority," smells of horseshit inasmuch as it implies every 18th century fur trapper was a proto-Ted Nugent."
But in general they were! Part of critical thinking is realizing that their cultural context was both pervasive and comparatively hellaciously racist/sexist/xenophobic/assholish! Like, we understand that science and literature have moved forward from the late 1700s — nobody would blink an eye if you said that Thomas Jefferson believed in a miasma theory of disease but all of the sudden we have to pretend they weren't cultural chauvinists? The best surgeon in 1776 couldn't get a modern medical license, let alone perform a heart transplant. The reason the Nuge is a laughingstock is because he clings to ignorant theories of social interaction, economics, guitar solos… We can remember them as prescient and innovative in some ways (Amboy Dukes) while also recognizing that they committed to some ridiculous bullshit by modern standards (Wang Dang Sweet Poontang). We don't need to pretend that Solon has the answers to civil rights; we can admit that the Founding Fathers were hypocritical, racist and that even they recognized that America would need to outgrow their ideas (hence Marbury v. Madison).
posted by klangklangston at 12:41 AM on August 6, 2015 [8 favorites]
But in general they were! Part of critical thinking is realizing that their cultural context was both pervasive and comparatively hellaciously racist/sexist/xenophobic/assholish! Like, we understand that science and literature have moved forward from the late 1700s — nobody would blink an eye if you said that Thomas Jefferson believed in a miasma theory of disease but all of the sudden we have to pretend they weren't cultural chauvinists? The best surgeon in 1776 couldn't get a modern medical license, let alone perform a heart transplant. The reason the Nuge is a laughingstock is because he clings to ignorant theories of social interaction, economics, guitar solos… We can remember them as prescient and innovative in some ways (Amboy Dukes) while also recognizing that they committed to some ridiculous bullshit by modern standards (Wang Dang Sweet Poontang). We don't need to pretend that Solon has the answers to civil rights; we can admit that the Founding Fathers were hypocritical, racist and that even they recognized that America would need to outgrow their ideas (hence Marbury v. Madison).
posted by klangklangston at 12:41 AM on August 6, 2015 [8 favorites]
I get the sense this is mostly a symbolic fight.
For white people, I'm sure it is. Which is not meant to be mean or anything. The thing about that whole invisible backpack thing is that it's invisible. You don't tend to notice it when it's not heavy. It wasn't at all symbolic when I was the one sitting at the desk in a high school in a low-income, heavily-minority district. I'm sure there are a fair number of liberals who just want to change the curriculum to score points; I'm not that much of an idealist. But for kids who don't have that privilege, who have to be twice as good to get just as much, it matters a lot when you are pounded every year with the idea that "American exceptionalism" applies to white slave owners but not you. It matters when the word problems in pre-algebra all involve people with names that don't sound like yours. It matters when you don't read anything in class that takes place in a world you recognize.
And it matters especially much when you see how many people with influence in the world are willing to fight tooth and nail to prevent their kids and grandkids from being brought up with the idea that non-white Americans' lives have also mattered.
So, in that sense, maybe it is symbolic, but it's symbolic like burning crosses.
There is an intense message here about who matters and who had better behave themselves to avoid upsetting the people who matter.
posted by Sequence at 2:43 AM on August 6, 2015 [8 favorites]
For white people, I'm sure it is. Which is not meant to be mean or anything. The thing about that whole invisible backpack thing is that it's invisible. You don't tend to notice it when it's not heavy. It wasn't at all symbolic when I was the one sitting at the desk in a high school in a low-income, heavily-minority district. I'm sure there are a fair number of liberals who just want to change the curriculum to score points; I'm not that much of an idealist. But for kids who don't have that privilege, who have to be twice as good to get just as much, it matters a lot when you are pounded every year with the idea that "American exceptionalism" applies to white slave owners but not you. It matters when the word problems in pre-algebra all involve people with names that don't sound like yours. It matters when you don't read anything in class that takes place in a world you recognize.
And it matters especially much when you see how many people with influence in the world are willing to fight tooth and nail to prevent their kids and grandkids from being brought up with the idea that non-white Americans' lives have also mattered.
So, in that sense, maybe it is symbolic, but it's symbolic like burning crosses.
There is an intense message here about who matters and who had better behave themselves to avoid upsetting the people who matter.
posted by Sequence at 2:43 AM on August 6, 2015 [8 favorites]
EmpressCallipygos: The filmstrip took all class, and ended moments before the bell rang - but after it rang, we sat there for a moment in shock, having realized that this 50-minute film that was ostensibly about the Second World War had only spent:
2 minutes on the Holocaust, and
90 seconds on Hiroshima.
And, I'd bet good money, no time at all on the Soviets actually bearing the brunt of defeating the Wehrmacht.
posted by Gelatin at 5:20 AM on August 6, 2015 [2 favorites]
2 minutes on the Holocaust, and
90 seconds on Hiroshima.
And, I'd bet good money, no time at all on the Soviets actually bearing the brunt of defeating the Wehrmacht.
posted by Gelatin at 5:20 AM on August 6, 2015 [2 favorites]
I thought my AP American History class was boring but my AP Euro history class was taught by an extremely intelligent, blisteringly well-educated, chain-smoking rage-feminist with a wit sharper than brand new straight razor. She was also fluent in German and French and she scared the living hell out of us.
She is my second favorite teacher of all time.
I don't think she even knew or cared what the AP guidelines were, but that's the only AP test I got a '5' on.
posted by Doleful Creature at 7:14 AM on August 6, 2015 [2 favorites]
She is my second favorite teacher of all time.
I don't think she even knew or cared what the AP guidelines were, but that's the only AP test I got a '5' on.
posted by Doleful Creature at 7:14 AM on August 6, 2015 [2 favorites]
If it helps, the petitions to recall the Jefferson County School Board members responsible for some of the most egregious conservative bullshit have been turned in, and they got more than twice the number of signatures required for the recall.
It's funny because the American History debacle is what got them national media attention, but they'd been being criticized from the first because of their incompetence, pettiness, and what just seemed like glee in driving off the award winning superintendent and hiring a less qualified replacement at a much higher salary. That said, their attempt to whitewash the history curriculum seems to be what really crystallized the opposition and the media attention to that issue is probably what made the signature drive so successful.
I think the signature drive actually finished in about half the time they legally had to collect enough signatures. They actually had LINES to sign the petition at the library I go to, both weeks they were there.
posted by Gygesringtone at 9:05 AM on August 6, 2015 [3 favorites]
It's funny because the American History debacle is what got them national media attention, but they'd been being criticized from the first because of their incompetence, pettiness, and what just seemed like glee in driving off the award winning superintendent and hiring a less qualified replacement at a much higher salary. That said, their attempt to whitewash the history curriculum seems to be what really crystallized the opposition and the media attention to that issue is probably what made the signature drive so successful.
I think the signature drive actually finished in about half the time they legally had to collect enough signatures. They actually had LINES to sign the petition at the library I go to, both weeks they were there.
posted by Gygesringtone at 9:05 AM on August 6, 2015 [3 favorites]
"the nation was built on a belief in white racial superiority and a sense of American cultural superiority," smells of horseshit inasmuch as it implies every 18th century fur trapper was a proto-Ted Nugent."
But in general they were! ... nobody would blink an eye if you said that Thomas Jefferson believed in a miasma theory of disease but all of the sudden we have to pretend they weren't cultural chauvinists?
Hey, let's not smear the fur trappers by lumping them in with Thomas Jefferson. Fur trappers enjoyed fluid milieux quite different from the racialized regime Jefferson was helping implement. Plenty of trappers wound up married into and recognized as allies by Native American tribes. Consider fur trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, of partly African descent (via Haiti?): he and his Potawatomi wife arguably founded Chicago -- but the fur trader era was ended by the city's racial purges. A nation built on the practices of fur traders and fur trappers might have wound up quite different.
(Weirdly, I can kind of see the fur trappers palling around with Ted Nugent, though.)
posted by feral_goldfish at 10:07 PM on August 6, 2015 [2 favorites]
But in general they were! ... nobody would blink an eye if you said that Thomas Jefferson believed in a miasma theory of disease but all of the sudden we have to pretend they weren't cultural chauvinists?
Hey, let's not smear the fur trappers by lumping them in with Thomas Jefferson. Fur trappers enjoyed fluid milieux quite different from the racialized regime Jefferson was helping implement. Plenty of trappers wound up married into and recognized as allies by Native American tribes. Consider fur trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, of partly African descent (via Haiti?): he and his Potawatomi wife arguably founded Chicago -- but the fur trader era was ended by the city's racial purges. A nation built on the practices of fur traders and fur trappers might have wound up quite different.
(Weirdly, I can kind of see the fur trappers palling around with Ted Nugent, though.)
posted by feral_goldfish at 10:07 PM on August 6, 2015 [2 favorites]
Plenty of trappers wound up married into and recognized as allies by Native American tribes.
I wonder how equitable the wives in those marriages thought those marriages were.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:48 AM on August 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
I wonder how equitable the wives in those marriages thought those marriages were.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:48 AM on August 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
I don't wonder how equitable Sally Hemings thought her ownership by Thomas Jefferson was.
But sure, that's a question. Maybe hellish. Maybe more elastic than the monocultural marriages later built on the stolen land. I don't know what marriages they would have used as a point of comparison. Their sisters' marriages? What would they have considered to be the relevant advantages/disadvantages?
(And again, weirdly: I can kind of see Kittihawa, Mrs. Thomas 'Broken Hand' Fitzpatrick, et al. swapping stories with Pele Massa-Nugent, the 17 year old Kanaka Maoli whose parents gave permission to Ted to become her legal guardian, since she was too young to marry under state law.)
posted by feral_goldfish at 12:19 PM on August 7, 2015
But sure, that's a question. Maybe hellish. Maybe more elastic than the monocultural marriages later built on the stolen land. I don't know what marriages they would have used as a point of comparison. Their sisters' marriages? What would they have considered to be the relevant advantages/disadvantages?
(And again, weirdly: I can kind of see Kittihawa, Mrs. Thomas 'Broken Hand' Fitzpatrick, et al. swapping stories with Pele Massa-Nugent, the 17 year old Kanaka Maoli whose parents gave permission to Ted to become her legal guardian, since she was too young to marry under state law.)
posted by feral_goldfish at 12:19 PM on August 7, 2015
My comment was actually an inexact way of saying that I'm not 100% convinced that those arrangements were actually "marriages", in any conventionally-understood sense of the word.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:33 PM on August 7, 2015
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:33 PM on August 7, 2015
I'm in no position to convince you. Sources are scanty and I don't have access to them anyhow.
FWIW: Over time, like some of the other French hunters who lived among Native Americans, du Sable became more and more involved in Indian life. He learned to speak the Potawatomi language and those of several neighboring tribes. Du Sable is said to have met the great Ottawa chief, Pontiac, and to have served as his emissary to the Midwestern tribes Pontiac was trying unsuccessfully to unite against British expansionism. The unusual degree to which du Sable was accepted as a member of Potawatomi society was demonstrated when he was permitted to marry a Potawatomi woman named Kittihawa. Potawatomi women were generally forbidden to marry outside the tribe, to say nothing of marrying non-Indians. The two married in a traditional ceremony, much later (in 1788) undertaking a second ceremony officiated by a Catholic priest.
On the other hand, your criterion seems ... easy to meet. I mean, when you say 'any conventionally-understood sense of marriage', you're opening up an immense range of possibility (even confined to the North American continent in the last few centuries).
posted by feral_goldfish at 2:02 PM on August 7, 2015
FWIW: Over time, like some of the other French hunters who lived among Native Americans, du Sable became more and more involved in Indian life. He learned to speak the Potawatomi language and those of several neighboring tribes. Du Sable is said to have met the great Ottawa chief, Pontiac, and to have served as his emissary to the Midwestern tribes Pontiac was trying unsuccessfully to unite against British expansionism. The unusual degree to which du Sable was accepted as a member of Potawatomi society was demonstrated when he was permitted to marry a Potawatomi woman named Kittihawa. Potawatomi women were generally forbidden to marry outside the tribe, to say nothing of marrying non-Indians. The two married in a traditional ceremony, much later (in 1788) undertaking a second ceremony officiated by a Catholic priest.
On the other hand, your criterion seems ... easy to meet. I mean, when you say 'any conventionally-understood sense of marriage', you're opening up an immense range of possibility (even confined to the North American continent in the last few centuries).
posted by feral_goldfish at 2:02 PM on August 7, 2015
> My comment was actually an inexact way of saying that I'm not 100% convinced that those arrangements were actually "marriages", in any conventionally-understood sense of the word.
I understood your comment that way, but I hope you really mean "not 100% convinced" and that's not just a bit of litotes indicating that you're actually 100% convinced those marriages were all patriarchal/colonialist/imperialist fakes that hide a reality of hideous subjection and exploitation. I exaggerate a bit for effect, and I don't actually think you think that, but I've known people who absolutely do apply the most rigorous of contemporary ethical/cultural standards to the past and assume pretty much everybody was evil but Sojourner Truth and it was completely impossible to have a "real" marriage between people of different races, social strata, etc. Of course I understand where those ideas are coming from, and it's perfectly in order to react against the romantic/ignorant idea that such marriages were happily-ever-after pairings of souls, but I still bristle, because the kind of overreactions I'm mocking overlook the complexity of human lives and loves. The fact that there were a whole lot of horrible marriages (and "marriages") doesn't mean they were all that way, and I'm sure that some of "those arrangements" actually were as good as marriages got in those days. It's fine to say the chances of that were pretty damn low, but to deny the possibility is to succumb to a restrictive kind of ideology that I find repellent. (Blah blah... sorry for all the verbiage, but this is something I feel strongly about.)
posted by languagehat at 3:11 PM on August 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
I understood your comment that way, but I hope you really mean "not 100% convinced" and that's not just a bit of litotes indicating that you're actually 100% convinced those marriages were all patriarchal/colonialist/imperialist fakes that hide a reality of hideous subjection and exploitation. I exaggerate a bit for effect, and I don't actually think you think that, but I've known people who absolutely do apply the most rigorous of contemporary ethical/cultural standards to the past and assume pretty much everybody was evil but Sojourner Truth and it was completely impossible to have a "real" marriage between people of different races, social strata, etc. Of course I understand where those ideas are coming from, and it's perfectly in order to react against the romantic/ignorant idea that such marriages were happily-ever-after pairings of souls, but I still bristle, because the kind of overreactions I'm mocking overlook the complexity of human lives and loves. The fact that there were a whole lot of horrible marriages (and "marriages") doesn't mean they were all that way, and I'm sure that some of "those arrangements" actually were as good as marriages got in those days. It's fine to say the chances of that were pretty damn low, but to deny the possibility is to succumb to a restrictive kind of ideology that I find repellent. (Blah blah... sorry for all the verbiage, but this is something I feel strongly about.)
posted by languagehat at 3:11 PM on August 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
"I'm not 100% convinced that those arrangements were actually "marriages", in any conventionally-understood sense of the word."
What would have been conventional then, what about now. I'm highly suspect of narrative but it has its place in historical study. Take the case of the trader Bolieu (Kasegans) who settled around Flint Michigan circa 1790s. He married a Chippewa and they had many children, one who was claimant to one of the County Reservations.
Funny, Washington Irving used the word Gothom to describe an empire period New York. Perhaps he knew about Gothom England...funnier still, I'm watching a re-run of 'Gothom', on Fox.
posted by clavdivs at 5:20 PM on August 7, 2015
What would have been conventional then, what about now. I'm highly suspect of narrative but it has its place in historical study. Take the case of the trader Bolieu (Kasegans) who settled around Flint Michigan circa 1790s. He married a Chippewa and they had many children, one who was claimant to one of the County Reservations.
Funny, Washington Irving used the word Gothom to describe an empire period New York. Perhaps he knew about Gothom England...funnier still, I'm watching a re-run of 'Gothom', on Fox.
posted by clavdivs at 5:20 PM on August 7, 2015
Languagehat - you do make a fair point, but do you grant that the odds are that amicable relationships between European colonizing men and Native American women were the minority?
What I was reacting to was what looked like the assertion on feral goldfish's part that fur trappers should be absolved of a bad rap because "look, some of them intermarried". As strongly as you feel that we shouldn't trash on European colonists and cast them in an ill light across the board, I feel just as strongly that we aren't always able to escape the society in which we were raised, and so we can't always assume that such marriages were always a DANCES WITH WOLVES type of situation, where the white man is won over to the ways of the noble savage or anything.
Did it happen? Sure, why not. Was that sort of thing the rule, as opposed to a trapper entering into something out of convenience for the easy sex or the extra set of hands, only to leave her behind in a few years and go home? I'd wager the latter.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:37 PM on August 7, 2015
What I was reacting to was what looked like the assertion on feral goldfish's part that fur trappers should be absolved of a bad rap because "look, some of them intermarried". As strongly as you feel that we shouldn't trash on European colonists and cast them in an ill light across the board, I feel just as strongly that we aren't always able to escape the society in which we were raised, and so we can't always assume that such marriages were always a DANCES WITH WOLVES type of situation, where the white man is won over to the ways of the noble savage or anything.
Did it happen? Sure, why not. Was that sort of thing the rule, as opposed to a trapper entering into something out of convenience for the easy sex or the extra set of hands, only to leave her behind in a few years and go home? I'd wager the latter.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:37 PM on August 7, 2015
As a side note, the Au Sable river is nice this time of year.
posted by clavdivs at 6:23 PM on August 7, 2015
posted by clavdivs at 6:23 PM on August 7, 2015
A few years ago I read a book by Susan Sleeper-Smith that argues Native American women were generally pretty successful at negotiating productive relationships with French trappers. It's been awhile, but I'm pretty certain a key part of the argument was that women were the gatekeepers of Great Lakes trade networks, which were only accessible to French trappers through intermarriage and positive family relationships. French institutions like Catholicism were absorbed and used to strengthen Native American/French kinship relationships with stuff like godparents, while Native American women were able to continue their farming practices largely uninterrupted because French men were so interested in trapping. The second half of the book gets fuzzy, but I think she argued that once the French gave up Canada to the British European/Native American relationships declined considerably because British policy was far more hostile to Native Americans.
That last part is the sort of historical nuance that's missing in the new AP US history framework. The original revision included learning objectives such as "Unlike Spanish, French, and Dutch colonies, which accepted intermarriage and cross-racial sexual unions with native peoples... English colonies attracted males and females who rarely intermarried with either native peoples or Africans, leading to the development of a rigid racial hierarchy." Another one was about how England's agricultural colonies with large populations created "relatively hostile relationships with American Indians." The new framework acknowledges that intermarriage was an important tool for the French & Dutch, but changes the British portion to "these colonists focused on agriculture and settled on land taken from Native Americans, from whom they lived separately." Because explaining that the British colonists had "hostile relationships" with Native Americans while the French often did not is apparently too controversial these days.
posted by lilac girl at 8:57 PM on August 7, 2015 [2 favorites]
That last part is the sort of historical nuance that's missing in the new AP US history framework. The original revision included learning objectives such as "Unlike Spanish, French, and Dutch colonies, which accepted intermarriage and cross-racial sexual unions with native peoples... English colonies attracted males and females who rarely intermarried with either native peoples or Africans, leading to the development of a rigid racial hierarchy." Another one was about how England's agricultural colonies with large populations created "relatively hostile relationships with American Indians." The new framework acknowledges that intermarriage was an important tool for the French & Dutch, but changes the British portion to "these colonists focused on agriculture and settled on land taken from Native Americans, from whom they lived separately." Because explaining that the British colonists had "hostile relationships" with Native Americans while the French often did not is apparently too controversial these days.
posted by lilac girl at 8:57 PM on August 7, 2015 [2 favorites]
Ah, interesting. I think I was responding more from having read about Spanish and English colonist's actions, to be fair.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:35 AM on August 8, 2015
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:35 AM on August 8, 2015
That doesn't fit the criteria of empresscalysicos thesis at all.
posted by clavdivs at 3:37 AM on August 8, 2015
posted by clavdivs at 3:37 AM on August 8, 2015
"I think I was responding more from having read about Spanish and English colonist's actions, to be fair."
I think your reacting and justifying and back peddling which does history at great disservice. I have a few links on other colonial/native relations but I won't bother. The Dances with Wolves analogy is sad and false. The whiteman was in the majority then, were as the time period we talk of is much older when whites were not in the majority which indicates a pattern which indicates people are putting forth data and discussing, we do that here from time to time.
posted by clavdivs at 3:57 AM on August 8, 2015
I think your reacting and justifying and back peddling which does history at great disservice. I have a few links on other colonial/native relations but I won't bother. The Dances with Wolves analogy is sad and false. The whiteman was in the majority then, were as the time period we talk of is much older when whites were not in the majority which indicates a pattern which indicates people are putting forth data and discussing, we do that here from time to time.
posted by clavdivs at 3:57 AM on August 8, 2015
Clavdivs, I realized I was working from a limited pool of evidence and acknowledged that. Can you explain why you call such a thing "back-pedalling"?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:13 AM on August 8, 2015
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:13 AM on August 8, 2015
> Languagehat - you do make a fair point, but do you grant that the odds are that amicable relationships between European colonizing men and Native American women were the minority?
Well, sort of, I guess, except that I don't actually know, and neither does anyone else here. I mean, the current theories we've all absorbed would indicate that, but the past is a different country and it's really, really hard to see it as it was without too much interference from our own preconceptions.
> What I was reacting to was what looked like the assertion on feral goldfish's part that fur trappers should be absolved of a bad rap because "look, some of them intermarried".
There I definitely agree with you; "some of them intermarried" is about on a level with "some of my best friends..."
posted by languagehat at 9:18 AM on August 8, 2015
Well, sort of, I guess, except that I don't actually know, and neither does anyone else here. I mean, the current theories we've all absorbed would indicate that, but the past is a different country and it's really, really hard to see it as it was without too much interference from our own preconceptions.
> What I was reacting to was what looked like the assertion on feral goldfish's part that fur trappers should be absolved of a bad rap because "look, some of them intermarried".
There I definitely agree with you; "some of them intermarried" is about on a level with "some of my best friends..."
posted by languagehat at 9:18 AM on August 8, 2015
Argh, no. I'm not saying the fur trappers weren't kinda sleazy or violent or didn't take advantage of cultural and gendered imbalances of power insofar as these existed at the time. (Or maybe some of them were sweethearts. Who knows? My frivolous comparison was to Ted Nugent, not Dances with Wolves, FFS.) What I'm saying is that fur trappers weren't Thomas Jefferson. They didn't take collective action to institutionalize a crushingly powerful white supremacist order. (The French fur trappers, anyway. Fitzpatrick did help negotiate treaties; Du Sable could have wound up enslaved.) This is an extremely significant nuance that lilac girl lays out much more eloquently and eruditely and thread-relevantly. In this discussion, "some of them intermarried" doesn't mean "they held no prejudicial notions." It means that relations of power were partially mediated through indigenous cultural institutions, and that fur trappers seem to have accepted that situation happily enough.
posted by feral_goldfish at 12:11 PM on August 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by feral_goldfish at 12:11 PM on August 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
Heh; I have the feeling that we should all just say "in conclusion, History is a land of contrasts" and just shake on it and all just get a beer or something.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:40 PM on August 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:40 PM on August 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
Passing you a calumet.
posted by feral_goldfish at 2:16 PM on August 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by feral_goldfish at 2:16 PM on August 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
"The second half of the book gets fuzzy, but I think she argued that once the French gave up Canada to the British European/Native American relationships declined considerably because British policy was far more hostile to Native Americans. "
And even that's a gloss that's missing an important point: The British policy toward Native Americans became much more hostile as a result of the French-Indian Wars, since most of the Native American nations backed the French against the English and the English won. (One of the reasons why many of the nations backed the French was because the French tended to just want trade rights, whereas the English wanted territorial rights, and in places like the Ohio Valley, the English were starting to force native nations further west.)
"That last part is the sort of historical nuance that's missing in the new AP US history framework. The original revision included learning objectives such as "Unlike Spanish, French, and Dutch colonies, which accepted intermarriage and cross-racial sexual unions with native peoples... English colonies attracted males and females who rarely intermarried with either native peoples or Africans, leading to the development of a rigid racial hierarchy." Another one was about how England's agricultural colonies with large populations created "relatively hostile relationships with American Indians." The new framework acknowledges that intermarriage was an important tool for the French & Dutch, but changes the British portion to "these colonists focused on agriculture and settled on land taken from Native Americans, from whom they lived separately." Because explaining that the British colonists had "hostile relationships" with Native Americans while the French often did not is apparently too controversial these days."
Well, and that's a bit misleading too — both the French and the Spanish (especially the Spanish) had really rigid racial hierarchies. One of the most common themes of Colonial Spanish painting is basically guides to the 16 or so different racial categories that they had, all of which had different rights of inheritance and property ownership. That going to the colonies was basically how Spanish dregs became Hidalgo meant that they were pretty keen on working out systems that codified that as much as possible. There was more interbreeding because there were far, far fewer Spanish women than there were English women (and even those were of a lower percentage than men in the immigrants).
posted by klangklangston at 3:53 PM on August 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
And even that's a gloss that's missing an important point: The British policy toward Native Americans became much more hostile as a result of the French-Indian Wars, since most of the Native American nations backed the French against the English and the English won. (One of the reasons why many of the nations backed the French was because the French tended to just want trade rights, whereas the English wanted territorial rights, and in places like the Ohio Valley, the English were starting to force native nations further west.)
"That last part is the sort of historical nuance that's missing in the new AP US history framework. The original revision included learning objectives such as "Unlike Spanish, French, and Dutch colonies, which accepted intermarriage and cross-racial sexual unions with native peoples... English colonies attracted males and females who rarely intermarried with either native peoples or Africans, leading to the development of a rigid racial hierarchy." Another one was about how England's agricultural colonies with large populations created "relatively hostile relationships with American Indians." The new framework acknowledges that intermarriage was an important tool for the French & Dutch, but changes the British portion to "these colonists focused on agriculture and settled on land taken from Native Americans, from whom they lived separately." Because explaining that the British colonists had "hostile relationships" with Native Americans while the French often did not is apparently too controversial these days."
Well, and that's a bit misleading too — both the French and the Spanish (especially the Spanish) had really rigid racial hierarchies. One of the most common themes of Colonial Spanish painting is basically guides to the 16 or so different racial categories that they had, all of which had different rights of inheritance and property ownership. That going to the colonies was basically how Spanish dregs became Hidalgo meant that they were pretty keen on working out systems that codified that as much as possible. There was more interbreeding because there were far, far fewer Spanish women than there were English women (and even those were of a lower percentage than men in the immigrants).
posted by klangklangston at 3:53 PM on August 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
EmpressCallipygos: “What I was reacting to was what looked like the assertion on feral goldfish's part that fur trappers should be absolved of a bad rap because ‘look, some of them intermarried’. As strongly as you feel that we shouldn't trash on European colonists and cast them in an ill light across the board, I feel just as strongly that we aren't always able to escape the society in which we were raised, and so we can't always assume that such marriages were always a DANCES WITH WOLVES type of situation, where the white man is won over to the ways of the noble savage or anything. Did it happen? Sure, why not. Was that sort of thing the rule, as opposed to a trapper entering into something out of convenience for the easy sex or the extra set of hands, only to leave her behind in a few years and go home? I'd wager the latter.”
Well, there are a couple of things here.
The first thing is that people keep calling these folks "colonists," which imputes to them (I think) an altogether more rational and thoroughgoing project than anything they were engaged in. As far as I can tell, the majority of white people in the West in period from 1800 to 1840 had no interest whatsoever in building any kind of colony or of carving out a piece of the wilderness beyond whatever suited them personally. I also am not sure if "leave her behind in a few years and go home" was the situation, either – most of the people didn't have a home to go to, but just wandered around, so it was often more to the effect of "leave her behind in a few years and go on to the next one."
It's probably worth pointing out that there really were prominent whites who married Native women and actually stuck with it. Probably the most prominent and most historically important was William Bent, who with his brother Charles founded the famous Bent's Fort in present-day Colorado. William Bent had four children with Owl Woman, a Cheyenne he married in 1835, and eventually became successful enough to follow the Cheyenne tradition and marry her two sisters Yellow Woman and Island as well. The Bents were traders, living full-time in Colorado with trips to Santa Fe and St Louis, and as such they ended up by necessity forging stronger and closer relationships with the Native nations than any settlers or even the trappers. Many marriages between citizens of the Native nations and europeans were mere dalliances, but William Bent's marriage was clearly not.
(As a side-note, this doesn't excuse the actions of any europeans, but interestingly the plains nations dealt with these dalliances better than europeans societies might have, because the plains nations all had traditions that offered a fair amount of autonomy to women in marriage. Most importantly, divorce was solely at a woman's discretion among the plains nations; if a woman wanted to walk away from a marriage, there was absolutely nothing a man could do to stop her. It took a few centuries before we europeans caught up on that score.)
William Bent's life was, in fact, a life between worlds, and I think it illustrates nicely the complexities of the Western frontier and the racial politics of that era. The Bent brothers were of course not saints; but it was simply in their best interest to keep things the same. They wanted to preserve a world where the West belonged mostly to the Native nations, since the Bent family made its money as liaison between the Native nations, the United States, and Mexico, trading back and forth and supplying outposts with necessary goods. William Bent discovered he had a knack for negotiation, which served him well in trade, and this allowed him to set up the Great Peace of 1840 uniting the plains nations.
But in 1846, the Bents stood alongside the Native nations and watched white people stream over the mountains rushing headlong toward gold in California and wherever else they might find it, driven on by greed and selfishness and opportunism. Within two decades, it became clear that this was not a fad but a trend – the West really was going to be filled up by white europeans – and William Bent was alarmed to note that certain people in the U.S. Army with political aspirations were moving to make their reputations as "Indian-killers" by heading West and fighting in the "wars" to defend the thieving european interlopers.
In 1864, even as William Bent was working in Washington to build a peace by convincing Congress that peace with the plains nations was not only possible but highly desirable, his two half-Cheyenne sons were forced to watch helplessly when a vile and contemptible coward named John Chivington, a colonel in the U.S. Army, brutally slaughtered 150 unarmed Cheyenne women and children, ordering his men to "Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice." The Sand Creek Massacre was one of the most hideous events ever perpetrated in the American West, and the younger Bents knew it; William's son George, though educated back in St Louis, abandoned his european roots at that time and swore a completely understandable oath of vengeance on all europeans, including his father.
William Bent wanted peace; he tried for peace; but the blood thirst of white europeans was too great for him to achieve peace. We simply couldn't hold back our greed and our lust for genocide, even in the face of the pleas of one of our own. William Bent wasn't even that nice of a person, really – he just wasn't a genocidal maniac. There were true heroes of the time, I think, people like Black Kettle, the Cheyenne chief who spent decades trying to help William Bent put together his treaties and forge peace.
Sorry this has been so long, but it's an interesting subject to me. Most of this I gathered from reading the spectacular book Bent's Fort, by David Lavender, a book which is very well-written but which I can never finish without heaving it across the room angrily with tears of rage.
posted by koeselitz at 5:26 PM on August 8, 2015 [3 favorites]
Well, there are a couple of things here.
The first thing is that people keep calling these folks "colonists," which imputes to them (I think) an altogether more rational and thoroughgoing project than anything they were engaged in. As far as I can tell, the majority of white people in the West in period from 1800 to 1840 had no interest whatsoever in building any kind of colony or of carving out a piece of the wilderness beyond whatever suited them personally. I also am not sure if "leave her behind in a few years and go home" was the situation, either – most of the people didn't have a home to go to, but just wandered around, so it was often more to the effect of "leave her behind in a few years and go on to the next one."
It's probably worth pointing out that there really were prominent whites who married Native women and actually stuck with it. Probably the most prominent and most historically important was William Bent, who with his brother Charles founded the famous Bent's Fort in present-day Colorado. William Bent had four children with Owl Woman, a Cheyenne he married in 1835, and eventually became successful enough to follow the Cheyenne tradition and marry her two sisters Yellow Woman and Island as well. The Bents were traders, living full-time in Colorado with trips to Santa Fe and St Louis, and as such they ended up by necessity forging stronger and closer relationships with the Native nations than any settlers or even the trappers. Many marriages between citizens of the Native nations and europeans were mere dalliances, but William Bent's marriage was clearly not.
(As a side-note, this doesn't excuse the actions of any europeans, but interestingly the plains nations dealt with these dalliances better than europeans societies might have, because the plains nations all had traditions that offered a fair amount of autonomy to women in marriage. Most importantly, divorce was solely at a woman's discretion among the plains nations; if a woman wanted to walk away from a marriage, there was absolutely nothing a man could do to stop her. It took a few centuries before we europeans caught up on that score.)
William Bent's life was, in fact, a life between worlds, and I think it illustrates nicely the complexities of the Western frontier and the racial politics of that era. The Bent brothers were of course not saints; but it was simply in their best interest to keep things the same. They wanted to preserve a world where the West belonged mostly to the Native nations, since the Bent family made its money as liaison between the Native nations, the United States, and Mexico, trading back and forth and supplying outposts with necessary goods. William Bent discovered he had a knack for negotiation, which served him well in trade, and this allowed him to set up the Great Peace of 1840 uniting the plains nations.
But in 1846, the Bents stood alongside the Native nations and watched white people stream over the mountains rushing headlong toward gold in California and wherever else they might find it, driven on by greed and selfishness and opportunism. Within two decades, it became clear that this was not a fad but a trend – the West really was going to be filled up by white europeans – and William Bent was alarmed to note that certain people in the U.S. Army with political aspirations were moving to make their reputations as "Indian-killers" by heading West and fighting in the "wars" to defend the thieving european interlopers.
In 1864, even as William Bent was working in Washington to build a peace by convincing Congress that peace with the plains nations was not only possible but highly desirable, his two half-Cheyenne sons were forced to watch helplessly when a vile and contemptible coward named John Chivington, a colonel in the U.S. Army, brutally slaughtered 150 unarmed Cheyenne women and children, ordering his men to "Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice." The Sand Creek Massacre was one of the most hideous events ever perpetrated in the American West, and the younger Bents knew it; William's son George, though educated back in St Louis, abandoned his european roots at that time and swore a completely understandable oath of vengeance on all europeans, including his father.
William Bent wanted peace; he tried for peace; but the blood thirst of white europeans was too great for him to achieve peace. We simply couldn't hold back our greed and our lust for genocide, even in the face of the pleas of one of our own. William Bent wasn't even that nice of a person, really – he just wasn't a genocidal maniac. There were true heroes of the time, I think, people like Black Kettle, the Cheyenne chief who spent decades trying to help William Bent put together his treaties and forge peace.
Sorry this has been so long, but it's an interesting subject to me. Most of this I gathered from reading the spectacular book Bent's Fort, by David Lavender, a book which is very well-written but which I can never finish without heaving it across the room angrily with tears of rage.
posted by koeselitz at 5:26 PM on August 8, 2015 [3 favorites]
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heaven forfend
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:57 PM on August 5, 2015 [28 favorites]