Rescuing American History: Essay Reviews (1)
On the occasion of Labor Day, 2021 and of the recent start of a new school year - - to the extent that a school year is possible in the pandemic era - - this blog post will review the first three essays in a recent book (2021) about American-history education in the U.S. The book under examination is titled “Red, White, and Black” and subtitled “Rescuing American History from Revisionists and Race Hustlers.” The editor of this volume is Robert L. Woodson, Jr.; the publisher is Emancipation Books (An Imprint of Post Hill Press); and the ISBN number is 978-1-63758-261-9.
The Woodson book’s Dedication page recognizes that there are countless millions of patriots seeking to live in peace “at a time when many are trying to pull us apart by stoking grievances and sowing discord.” The essayists in this volume believe that the overwhelming majority of Americans remain devoted to our founding principles - - or at least would be so devoted if the educational system did its job without recourse to the latest recycled theories of class struggle. Rising to the current historic occasion, the essayists have done their duty in opposing these theories. The essayists have elaborated upon Woodson’s “1776 Unites” project. “1776 Unites” was launched in order to counteract a diametrically opposed project - - as advertised by a certain notorious, de facto Marxist newspaper - - in which the dating of U.S. history is based on the year that the first slaves arrived in North America, in preference to other, notably favorable years, such as the years in which the slaves were emancipated or in which voting rights were established.
The forward to the Woodson book states that “these essays in Red, White, and Black brim with the agency, initiative, and aspiration of ordinary black Americans, telling stories that inspire precisely because they illustrate the success within any American’s reach, if only he or she believes.”
The introduction to the Woodson book mentions a contemporary American historian who maintains that “what America is confronting today, with the dominance of race grievance and identity politics, has had, since its inception, an even more sinister purpose: to maintain the power of the landlord merchant class.” Here, we might take issue with this historian’s opinion that the class involved with “race grievance and identity politics” is that of “landlords and merchants” - - it is just these classes, after all, that lack political power and that have done poorly in the time of pandemic-induced free rent and cratering businesses. Instead, the present writer would say that the maintenance of power has occurred in the class of the wealthy, who are accustomed to running government, issuing decrees, and escaping ill-effects of said decrees while ensconced in gated communities.
Essay (1), appearing on pages 3 – 10, is titled “A Positive Vision: The Agenda of ‘1776’.” The author, Wilfred Reilly, subscribes to the view that a country does not need to be utopian in order to be good: “The U.S. is a flawed but very good country, where it is not terribly hard to succeed, given hard work and personal responsibility.” Reilly’s theses are that the claim that the contemporary U.S. is “systemically racist” is false; that many primary social problems are completely disconnected from historical racial conflict; that some individuals are not responsible for the sins of others in some group that includes both; and that basic skills training in schools would do more for minorities and working-poor whites than any amount of training in the recitation of grievance theory.
In support of the first of Reilly’s theses, the present writer would mention that Jackie Robinson faced obvious racism; that such racism is now absent to the extent possible in a non-utopia; and that relabeling absent racism as “systemic racism” is a rhetorical flourish that one would expect in a Marxist diatribe. There is no doubt that the contemporary U.S. is not “systemically racist.”
In support of the second of Reilly’s theses, that many primary social ills are disconnected from historical racial conflict, one need only cite the problems ensuing from the breakdown of families (i.e., the problems stemming from the increase in illegitimacy) across all racial groups in the contemporary U.S. In 2010, illegitimacy stood at 28.6% for non-Hispanic whites, 52.5% for Hispanics, and 72.3% for blacks. (These are Reilly’s cited statistics.)
In support of the third of Reilly’s theses, that some individuals are not responsible for the sins of others in the same group, Reilly offers the observation that “a Caucasian individual whose ancestors were serfs in Sicily or Russia in 1864 [has] nothing to do with the peculiar institution [slavery].” The notion that someone is condemned today because his or her great-great-grandparents did not fight hard enough against slavery centuries ago is itself morally repugnant. Reilly notes that poor whites, the so-called deplorables so denigrated during the 2016 Presidential campaign, are the most downtrodden segment of society, because affirmative-action programs are not available to them.
In support of the fourth of Reilly’s theses, that basic skills training in schools would do more for the working poor than any amount of rhetorical training in grievance theory, one need only mention that “calling [for] ‘bourgeois norms,’ as charter schools often do, will do far more to move working-poor Americans toward success than will teaching them … the Swahili word for ‘racism’.”
Essay (2), appearing on pages 11 – 15, is titled “The Moral Meaning of America: Two Parallel Narratives.” The author, Jason D. Hill, states that Americans are the first non-tribal people in the world. (The two parallel narratives in the essay title seem to refer to people who are either tribal [non-U.S.] or non-tribal [U.S.].) “By making foreigners and strangers into Americans, the republic has made them citizens of the world by undermining and de-ratifying the spirit of seriousness grafted onto lineage and blood identity.” Furthermore, “America encourages human beings not to search for their origins, but, rather, their destiny.” One notes in passing that the existence of the website, genealogy.com, seems to belie this assertion. One also wonders why a certain ambiguity in the concept of America is not more widely noted: Does the land of non-tribalism itself require borders and immigration rules for its very existence?
Essay (3), appearing on pages 17 – 22, is titled “Acknowledging Slavery’s Limits in Defining America.” The author, John Wood, Jr., reminds us that then-Presidential candidate Barack Obama said that “words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage … [or to grant them] their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States.” But to overemphasize the effects of slavery and historical racism is to overlook the success that black Americans have achieved in their culture. “The relative deterioration [of that success] in the aftermath of the Great Society is arguably the most salient threat facing black America.” Moreover, overemphasizing the lingering effects of slavery in the U.S. fails to account for the fact that ethnically similar people have succeeded at wildly different rates in the U.S. (Wood cites a study by Coleman Hughes of the educational and economic outcomes for immigrants from the West Indies and for native-born black Americans.) Wood concludes that what we choose to emphasize in our history will determine how we relate to our country.