Banning History

Spectator

By Stephen Tuttle | Feb. 12, 2022

There are now at least 11 states — Idaho, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Arizona, North Dakota, Arkansas, Florida — that have passed legislation banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in their public schools. 

That's sort of ironic since CRT is not being taught in any K-12 public school in any of those states, or in any other states for that matter. They've decided to ban something that doesn't exist, a preemptive strike against a myth.    

The problem here is the conservative legislators in these states, and others considering walking down similar paths, have cynically and erroneously connected CRT to any discussion of race or slavery. They then use that false connection as an excuse to avoid difficult discussions on difficult subjects. Florida has even introduced legislation that makes it illegal for public schools to teach subjects that cause “discomfort” to white students.   

CRT is a specific academic exercise, designed to be discussed at the college and university level, which posits our country, constitution, laws, and institutions were designed specifically to disadvantage minorities, especially Black minorities, to the benefit of the white people who created those laws and institutions. It has never been part of a K-12 curriculum anywhere. 

Our history, however, is and should be part of K-12 curricula. And we cannot teach early American history without taking a deep dive into the egregious sins of both slavery and our treatment of those who were already here when we Europeans started showing up. If that causes some discomfort for poor, sensitive Brittany and Justin, good — because that part of our history must be told along with our lofty ideals and successes. If the truth of our history makes today's students uncomfortable, maybe they'll work a little harder to make sure those horrors are not repeated.       

Florida trying to sugarcoat our history is especially noxious since it was at the vanguard of both slavery and mistreatment of indigenous people.

In 1539, Hernando de Soto brought the first African slaves to what is now Florida. (The first to arrive in the U.S. came in 1526, brought by Spaniard Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon to what is now Georgia.) de Soto was also the first to enslave local people. When native Timucuan tribesmen resisted de Soto's efforts, he murdered about 200 men, women, and children, the first recorded massacre of native people by Europeans. It was only the beginning. 

In fact, slavery was part of the foundation on which our early economy was built and the engine that then drove it, particularly in the South. In 1775, the colonies had a population of about 2.5 million, but we already had nearly 85,000 slaves. By 1860, there were nearly 4.4 million enslaved people here.

And though slavery ended in 1865, it took a civil war and its 700,000 deaths to do so. Even then, the lingering impact of slavery continued to fester. The Ku Klux Klan was formed the same year we constitutionally banned slavery; segregation, lynchings, financial discrimination like red-lining, and Jim Crow laws proliferated. All of that is an important part of our history, and if sharing those truths with this generation of schoolchildren causes them angst, so be it.

Our teaching of our treatment of those already here when the “explorers” came calling has always been lacking in reality. And those intrepid pioneers who headed west, aided by our military, were less honorable than we've been previously taught.

In 1491, the population of North America might have been as high as 50 million, and about half of them lived in what is now the United States. There were cities with tens of thousands of inhabitants, significant farming, governments, treaties.

A century later, 90 percent of that population had been wiped out, mostly by the inadvertent transmission of all manner of diseases for which indigenous people had no immunity. Those we didn't accidentally kill, we murdered or moved. Our policy of “manifest destiny”  was an idea conjured up by a magazine article, not some divine instruction. We either eliminated by lethal force or relocation those who were in our way. 

Our early economy at least partially depended on slavery, which was accepted by our Constitution. We'd have not been able to expand beyond the East Coast had we not overrun those who were already here. That's part of our historical reality we should be teaching.

We presumably already teach the upside of our history: an idealistic and egalitarian country willing to take on a grand experiment in governance. That we are still a work in progress is testament to the resilience and stamina of that experiment. 

But banning any part of our history, especially for what is primarily cynical political advantage, does a grievous disservice to our current students and our future.