Some of the stuff, at least on the surface, is reasonable. Friedman and Hayek have had a very strong influence on modern economics, regardless of whether that influence was positive or negative. The Black Panthers and other black nationalist groups were also significant in the civil rights movement.
There's stuff skewed by politics:
He also won approval for an amendment stressing that Germans and Italians as well as Japanese were interned in the United States during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism.
While that's true, a far greater percentage of Japanese-Americans were "interned" than Italian- or German-Americans. I won't say it was motivated by racism, but it was certainly helped by it. It's far easier to identify a Japanese-American on sight than a German-American. Of course, the relatively low numbers of Japanese-Americans were easier to segregate than the vast numbers of German- and Italian-Americans. Also, most of the Germans and Italians that were interned were not US citizens, while that was not true of the Japanese population. That said, there were Japanese that had been living in the US for decades that were prevented by law from becoming US citizens because of their place of origin.
Then there's other stuff that has no basis beyond politics:
He also made sure that textbooks would mention the votes in Congress on civil rights legislation, which Republicans supported.
“Republicans need a little credit for that,” he said.
So his argument is that you need to promote a political party in classroom texts? Are there also vote counts divided by parties on other important legislative efforts?
Anyway, I'm going on too long. It's ridiculous that politics is playing this great a role in determining history. There always has been and always will be a bias in teaching history, but this is the first time I can think of an open push for it.
Previous Topic
Index
