The silence of the ellipses: Why history can’t be about telling our children lies - kappanonline.org
Financed and approved by the state, history textbooks are less a reflection of the current state of historical knowledge than a collection of stories adults think will do children good, the educational equivalent of making the kids eat their peas.
Attucks’ appearance in textbooks is a relatively recent phenomenon. Eclipsed from memory from the 1770s well into the 19th century, he was resurrected in 1851 by William Cooper Nell, an African American journalist and historian, author of the <em>Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812</em>.
It wasn’t until the civil rights movement of the 1960s that Attucks became a regular feature in textbooks.
A review of seven textbooks published between 2003 and 2009 found that all but one featured Attucks in their narration of the Boston Massacre (Kachun, 2017).
I have to imagine that in editing John Adams’ words, <em>The Americans’</em> authors thought they were doing something noble: giving American children of all hues a hero who is a person of color. But the sly three dots of an ellipsis cannot erase the stain of racism any more than a bathroom spray can eliminate the stench of a skunk. Editorial subterfuge only forestalls a reckoning.
The goal of historical study is to cultivate neither love nor hate. Its goal must be to acquaint us with the dizzying spectrum of our humanity: lofty moments of nobility mixed in with ignominious descents into knavery. When history’s mirror intones a single phrase — that we’re the fairest of them all — it freezes us in childhood and stunts our growth. History that impels us to look at the past, unflinchingly and clear-eyed, does not diminish us or make us less patriotic. The opposite, in fact, is true: It makes us grow up. Understanding who we were allows us to understand who we are now. Only then can we commit to doing something about it.
