Get Howard Zinn Out of Our Schools!
By • 9/12/08
Since one of the goals of White America is to encourage pro-white activism, I would like to recommend an activist project that anyone with children in school can undertake: protesting anti-white, or leukophobic, bias in history textbooks. A friend of mine is currently doing just that. He is complaining about the use of Howard Zinn’s egregious A People’s History of the United States in an Advanced Placement history class at his local school. Such protests are likely to prove fruitful, as school materials are perhaps the most powerful evidence of the anti-white bias that pervades our society.
Susan Sontag’s charge that “the white race is the cancer of human history” perfectly sums up the spirit of A People’s History. Zinn presents American history as one long series of outrages committed by whites against non-whites and by the rich against the poor. White Americans do not have a single thing to be proud of, as all of our supposed accomplishments turn out to have been mere pretexts for the heartless persecution of the have-nots. In case you think my view is radical right hyperbole, consider that the liberal New York Times Book Review’s assessment of the book is quite similar to my own.
So inherently evil is Zinn’s America that the only appropriate response to it is revolution. Zinn expresses keen disappointment that neither the socialist movement of the early 20th century, nor the radical leftism of the 1960s led to a revolution against the capitalist system. In a chapter called “The Coming Revolt of the Guards,” he hopes that in the future “a new kind of revolution” will take place in which “demonstrations, marches, civil disobedience; strikes and boycotts and general strikes; direct action to redistribute wealth” and so forth will lead to the overthrow of “the giant corporations, the military, and their politician collaborators” who currently control America.1
The degree to which this epic of bile has become ensconced in the American education establishment is proof of a society gone mad. It is commonly used as a textbook in high school and college history courses. The College Board recommends A People’s History for use in AP courses in American history. The book is among the most popular histories of America ever, selling more than 100,000 copies per year. The Hollywood elite loves the book, and a star-studded cast is working on a documentary version right now.
Zinn’s take on American history is rooted in the myth of the Noble Savage. Western culture is an unnatural aberration that has made whites into greedy, capitalistic, authoritarian monsters. Primitive societies, by contrast, are Utopian communes, where people live in harmony with each other and with nature. Zinn says, for example, that America before the arrival of Columbus was a place where “human relations were more egalitarian than in Europe, and where the relations among men, women, children, and nature were more beautifully worked out than perhaps any place in the world.” Zinn emphasizes the Indians’ propensity for “hospitality,” “sharing,” and their “mild and pacific temperament.”2
Western settlers, by contrast, were inspired by:
the frenzy in the early capitalist states of Europe for gold, for slaves, for products of the soil… These were the violent beginnings of an intricate system of technology, business, politics, and culture that would dominate the world for the next five centuries.3
Western greed led to the intentional “annihilation” of the Indians as well as the establishment of an exploitative and violent society.4 Modern history and anthropology have, however, discredited Zinn’s simple-minded fable of good versus evil. Lawrence Keeley’s overview of warfare in primitive societies, War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage, has established that Indian societies were extremely violent. Indian men were far more likely to die in intertribal warfare than white men ever were in European wars. Rape and cannibalism were also quite common.5 Far from living in peaceable harmony with nature, the Indians were well on their way to exterminating the buffalo herds of America before whites showed up and finished the job.6 The research of Guenter Lewy has debunked the claim that Americans intentionally annihilated the Indians.
In Zinn’s account, victorious Western culture in America has created nothing but misery, unrelieved by any positive accomplishment, up until the present day. If you think the establishment of the first modern democracy is an achievement Americans can be proud of, think again. Rather, the American Revolution was a mere pretext for the confiscation of British and Indian land by the wealthy and the unrestrained pursuit of their own class power.7 Zinn gives American capitalism no credit for the invention of electronic appliances and lighting, the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, the radio, and so forth. All Zinn sees in the history of American business is the exploitation of workers, whose poverty and misery he describes in endless detail.
We are not even to be proud of the defeat of the Nazis in World War II. Zinn asks at the beginning of his chapter on the war whether the United States represented something “significantly different” from Nazism.8 A quote from the contemporary radical leftist Dwight MacDonald, with whom Zinn is clearly in agreement, implies that the answer is no:
Whether the mask is labeled Fascism, Democracy, or Dictatorship of the Proletariat, our great adversary remains the Apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier or the battlelines…, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves.9
Similarly, Zinn’s portrait of race relations in America is one of unremitting persecution and exploitation. Whites are simply incapable of treating blacks generously, or even humanely. Zinn’s animus against white America is particularly evident in his description of the Civil Rights Era. One might have thought that a historian who so passionately desired to better the lot of black Americans would have regarded this period as a time of progress. But not Zinn: rather, he regards civil rights laws as a meaningless sop thrown to blacks to derail black revolution. Through civil rights legislation:
the federal government was trying—without making fundamental changes—to control an explosive situation, to channel anger into the traditional cooling mechanism of the ballot box, the polite petition, the officially endorsed quiet gathering.
Zinn thinks Martin Luther King betrayed black Americans by accepting the passage civil rights laws as victory. Rather, Zinn sides with Malcolm X. This “powerful,” “eloquent spokesman” was “closer to the mood of the black community” when he denounced King for “selling out” and called for “revolution.” Malcolm was not using the term revolution in some innocuous metaphorical sense. After all, he said elsewhere:
There’s no such thing as a nonviolent revolution… Revolution is bloody, revolution is hostile, revolution knows no compromise, revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in the way.
Zinn’s veneration of Malcolm and his hostility towards white America causes him to lend credence to conspiracy theories surrounding the “martyr’s” death: “in a plan whose origins are still obscure, he became the martyr of [the Black Power] movement.”
Zinn’s treatment of the Black Panthers, who succeeded King as the “new heroes” of black America, is just as adulatory.10 Zinn conveniently ignores the intense racial hatred that motivated the Black Power movement and its bloody history. One would never know from A People’s History that the Black Panthers were responsible for shooting 15 law enforcement officers or that Malcolm X believed that whites were devils created by an evil sorcerer.
Zinn’s enthusiasm for figures who preached violent revolution against white society is profoundly irresponsible. Indeed, it is effectively an endorsement of violence against whites.
While most history textbooks used in American classrooms are not as over the top as A People’s History, they do reflect the same leukophobic biases, as we saw in The Inverted World. 48 Liberal Lies About American History (That You Probably Learned in School), a recently published book by Larry Schweikart, history professor at the University of Dayton, is a useful exposé of leftist bias in contemporary history textbooks, including Zinn’s. Schweikart debunks the cliché of the Indian “Noble Savage” and exaggerations of white racism. For example, he notes that the third most common photograph in textbooks’ presentation of 20th century American history is some depiction of the KKK, despite the fact that the group had little influence after the Reconstruction period.11
Protesting the use of leukophobic textbooks is likely to be one of the most effective forms of pro-white activism. Resources like this website, Schweikart’s book, and Diane Ravitch’s The Language Police, which was discussed in The Inverted World, make it easy to spot anti-white bias in textbooks. Moreover, you will find that mainstream America is on your side. A large section of the white public, probably even the majority, understands that textbooks present a far left perspective on history. In fact just today, the Fox News Channel aired a highly favorable interview with Dr. Schweikart (scroll down the page and click “Leaning Left”), accompanied by this article. In the future, I will post action alerts with advice on how to best go about getting Howard Zinn and his minions out of our schools.
- Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present (New York: Harper, 2003), 639-40. ↑
- Ibid., 1, 6, 21. ↑
- Ibid., 12. ↑
- Ibid., 16. ↑
- Lawrence H. Keeley, War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage (New York: Oxford University Press), 83-97. ↑
- Larry Schweikart, 48 Liberal Lies About American History (That You Probably Learned in School) (New York: Sentinel, 2008), 169. ↑
- Zinn, 84, 86. ↑
- Ibid., 408. ↑
- Ibid., 420. ↑
- Ibid., 457-61. ↑
- Schweikart, 2. ↑
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Mark,
If A People’s History shows up on the curriculum of a school, I don’t think it’s appropriate to demand that his perspective be balanced by a conservative one. Rather, you should demand that Zinn be removed from the curriculum on the grounds that A People’s History both fails as a history of the US and is morally pernicious.
Zinn’s book fails as a history because it simply ignores essential elements of its subject matter. Major topics in American history are absent: the creation of a middle class society in the 20th century and the American tradition of technological innovation, for example. A People’s History fails to address American culture as well: how can a history of America omit substantial discussions of the Transcendentalist movement and the worldview of the Puritans? How can it omit any discussion of the American national character? How can it devote only one paragraph to the Bill of Rights, one of the most influential documents in human history?
Above all, Zinn doesn’t discuss what is distinctive about American society. In his effort to debunk American nationalism, Zinn makes it clear that he sees no meaningful distinction between America and the British empire that proceeded it in the 18th century or between America and Nazi Germany in the 20th. Since all of these states were class societies in which the rich exploited the poor, they were all the same from Zinn’s perspective. But how can a history of America that fails to make basic distinctions between the American democracy and other styles of government be taken seriously? It’s like serving a dinner without any entrée.
Beyond these failings, Zinn’s book is morally pernicious. By glamorizing the Black Power cult of violence and hatred, Zinn excuses, if he doesn’t actually encourage violence against and hatred of white people. Furthermore, Zinn presents discredited slanders of America as truth, thereby encouraging disrespect for country. For example, Zinn maintains that the nuclear bombing of Japan was an unnecessary slaughter motivated by Truman’s desire to impress the Soviet Union through a display of military force. As Larry Schweikart reveals in 48 Liberal Lies About American History, however, the Truman administration, after close consideration, chose to use the nuclear bombs because they would result in far fewer casualties than a conventional invasion of Japan would have. Moreover, Zinn encourages disrespect for country by focusing exclusively on what is negative in American society and ignoring the positive.
So, when it comes to Zinn, you shouldn’t demand that his perspective be balanced by a conservative one—there are, of course, no pro-white textbooks. Rather, you should explain to them that Zinn does not offer a legitimate perspective to begin with and should, therefore, simply be removed from the curriculum.
Howard Zinn: A Legacy of Heinrich Graetz
Howard Zinn in all his writings has emphasized a defamatory view of the diverse white American peoples that follows in the footsteps of Heinrich Graetz who set out the pattern for this kind of written assault for the first time in Germany in 1868 when he announced he would scourge and flog the majority ethnicity in his home country. (That’s almost half a century before the first world war.)
See: www.ResistingDefamation.org/sub/g29.htm
Since that time we have seen Noel Ignatiev at Harvard, the late Susan Sontag, and numerous others compete with the historical Heinrich Graetz to out-do his level of vitriol and destructiveness.
These writers seek out nuggets of disgrace (which exist) and whip the majority demographic with scathing attacks. While adults are able to sort out truth from lies, and to judge proportionality in weighing the good and bad of history, our children are the ones affected so strongly and so wrongly. In a way, Zinn is really a child abuser, guilty of molesting the minds of children, and playing false with their right to a decent sense of self-respect. Zinn’s crimes against children are of the sort that will not be easily forgotten, either here or in judgments to come.
What To Do?
Re-stating the problem is not, of course, a solution to the problem so I’m wondering if this could be an action item. To make it work, we would need these things.
1) The email addresses of the board and top administrators at the school. (Not the teacher…no one should directly write the teacher.)
2) Perhaps five whole paragraphs that seem self-evidently erroneous and that we can draw quotes from and arguments against.
3) A contest for the five best emailed arguments sent to the board and administrators asking that the Zinn book be relegated to a much older age of student or to be matched with a more balanced view. If we send blind copies to the web master here, he can make such a determination.
It’s Probably The Law
In California, there is a statutory procedure required when a text is questioned that requires lots of people brought together. The temptation by all parties at such a conference will be to insist that the complainant provide names of authors and texts that give an alternate view. Take a lesson from other demographics…it’s not your job to find texts, it’s your right to criticize until they find a good text. Don’t be trapped into suggesting another text, that’s their job.
I was forced to read this in school, but like an above poster suggested, I was also forced to read a more “pro-American” book. The moral lesson of the history class was to show that history can be shown through different viewpoints.
Wow! Oh poor white people. How tough it is to have to hear what really happened in history. We white people do suck, not because of our skin but because of how our ancestors have behaved and how we continue to behave today. We need to accept our history and actually try to learn from it rather than sweep it under the rug and continue to live in denial. Study the book instead of cherry picking and taking things out of context, perhaps you’ll learn something.
“How tough it is to have to hear what really happened in history.”
Begged question. Whether Howard Zinn’s footnote-free book is an accurate account of history is what is at issue.
“We white people do suck …”
Speak for yourself.
“not because of our skin but because of how our ancestors have behaved and how we continue to behave today.”
Why, then, are non-whites from every third-world pesthole running over one another to get to white nations? Must be the welfare, racial preferences, subsidized everything, and other evil white things. Exactly what sort of misdeed is unique to whites, by the way?
“Study the book instead of cherry picking and taking things out of context, perhaps you’ll learn something.”
A crudely funny kind of irony. You might consider reading something other than Zinn.
Lance:
You are the typical self loathing white liberal whom I detest. Most non-whites would not even be alive today if it were not for the medical genius of white people. And what the hell makes you think people of color are morally superior?
“We white people do suck, not because of our skin but because of how our ancestors have behaved and how we continue to behave today. We need to accept our history and actually try to learn from it rather than sweep it under the rug and continue to live in denial.”
Lance, remember that mankind has a particularly violent history and modern institutions have actually reduced violence.
http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/20070319_New Republic.pdf
The people’s history of the US is primarily history viewed from the stand-point of the people. In this regard, it is written differently compared to other history books, whether in the US or elsewhere, that are written from the standpoint of the rulers. In one of the early chapters, Zinn makes a quote which has always stayed with me — “The cry of the poor is not always just. But if you don’t hear it, you will never know what justice is”
SM:
I have actually read this book, which is why I am so dead set against it, even though I found some parts of it very interesting. I believe an author can discuss the struggles of poor people and relate to how they were affected by the dealings and affairs of greater men and events, WITHOUT trashing white people and making them appear to be the only ones guilty of tribalism and hatred. While Zinn blames white people and capitalism for everything bad in America, he never gives them credit for anything good. In any event, it does not belong in public schools, UNLESS it can be balanced by an EQUALLY PROVOCATIVE, pro-white book.
Concerned EdConcerned@live.mail
To deny that white people have profited greatly from inflicting misery upon others is to deny the dominant trend in history for at least the past 500 years. Even if Caucasian people were of purple skin tone, it would be the same story.
At the same time, many of the advances and discoveries in of the past several centuries that have allowed the frontier of human knowledge and science to expand have also been made by white people. Many white people have given their lives for the idea that a human being should be judged on the basis of their individual merits and not on the basis of race.
So let us not be stupid and thing that “race” is the defining factor in whether a person is worthy to co-exist with us or not. This is intellectual laziness at its highest degree.
I deny that what your teleology dictates to be the “dominant trend in history” is any such thing. Misery inflicted by whites is matched by misery inflicted by others. I also deny that the last 500 years is a more legitimate frame of reference than any other.
If you have some way of getting the various races to coexist peacefully, I’m all ears.
I think people have mistaken Zinn’s distaste for government actions as a hatred towards white people. I think that this book is a portrait of the poor and otherwise oppressed (which frequently includes poor white laborers and white women in the book) and their relationship to the government and its policies. The entire purpose of the book is to tell the story of those who have been oppressed in our history. This is not a balanced book, it does not tell the entire story of our country, and does not intend on telling the entire story of our county. It does tell the story that it sets out to tell. I disagree that this is “not a legitimate perspective” to begin with… why not? Nobody has disputed whether the events chronicled in the book happened or not. As far as I can see, people are not claiming that Zinn has fabricated the facts, but that they don’t like the conclusions that he has drawn about the significance of these events. Why can’t the author have a perspective on these events? I think the issue here is that this is not a definitive history of our country. You have to read other books too… a lot of other books if you want to try to get a more complete picture. This does not mean that this book should be entirely dismissed. It’s a legitimate perspective. Read more legitimate perspectives. Expose yourself to as many different viewpoints as you can. Don’t be tempted to ban books. Don’t look to find the “actual truth” from either “A Patriot’s” or a “People’s” history. But use them both to try and get closer to a more complete understanding.
I don’t think the “intruders” were necessarily white people. They were simply more technologically advanced. In all of history, those who were more technologically advanced eventually prevailed against those who were less so. And it seldom happened gracefully or courteously.
Probably most of the people making comments here, yea or nay, are white.
It is a known fact—ask any serious history student—that those who write are the ones who “make” history. Much of what we learned in schools is slanted towards the rulers, the privileged (i.e., those who could read and write, or had scribes). The views of the common people were seldom recorded. It’s hard to imagine now. One thing that struck me in Zinn’s book was the atrocious spelling of most of our early national leaders. We already have a leg up on them, because here in the 21st century, America enjoys a 99% literacy rate. We also enjoy true freedom of speech (viz. to wit., this website), something unprecedented in the world, really, especially with so many of us literate.
In my own experience, formal reports of events I attended didn’t always get the story exactly right. Perhaps we should use Howard Zinn’s work as an opportunity to wake up and investigate some aspects of our provenance ourselves—and perhaps, in the end, to take a sort of average of accounts, weighing what seems most in keeping with the human character.
Let’s face it. We are lucky to be white and living in this country. Lucky to think that others care about our opinions on this topic. Rather than be defensive about this, let’s see what good use we can put our vantage point to.—and celebrate our good fortune while keeping our eyes open.
Here’s to our continual evolution.
Ian please! You seem like an intelligent man. Zinn is looking through the lens of the poor and oppressed people of the Americas. You know that their/our voice is suppressed by the corporate pigs that run this country and you know who runs/owns the media, that pushes the corporate agenda, are white hyper-wealthy blue bloods that are not about to let their “America” change any time soon. You might be able to get some these slack-jawed “tea-baggers” to believe in your hyperbole but, most rational human beings would see through yours and that dolt Lewys ridiculous attempt at revisionism.
I am currently being “forced” to read a Zinn novel in my private-university English course, and while I don’t agree with several of the arguments Zinn makes, it has certainly provided me with an alternative perspective to that which I was taught in school. Ian, you claim that there are “no pro-white textbooks”, but considering my own education, I disagree. The information provided by Zinn may be extreme at times, but many of the stories he describes are portrayals of historical events that I, a middle-class white female, had never been taught in my predominantly white classrooms, lead by mostly white men.
Oppressive governments banned and burned book to keep people down, and your suggestion that Zinn should be kept out of our education system comes from a similar school of thought. Zinn’s works obviously leave out quite a bit of important historical information, but the truth is that the vast majority of US textbooks are disturbingly “pro-American”, which often translates to “pro-white”.
You also fail to account for the agency of the student; we are not passively absorbing everything we are taught in school. If a student is unable to read the material presented to them, do research on their own, and form opinions based on a multitude of sources, they are better off forgoing a formal education for trade school anyway.
Excellent article Ian! But let me ask you this - if educators will not remove the book, but instead offer to provide a balanced perspective, just what type of pro-white book is needed to neutralize Zinn’s blatant leukophobia?