Nations and societies hold together best when their populations collectively believe in those nation’s histories and national lessons.
During the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, through its public schools, museums and news reporting, the USA relentlessly fed the idea to its citizens that the USA was the best place to be. The USA was the ‘citadel on the hill” inviting the rest of the world to copy its successes.
That’s when the teaching of political science (civics), American history and the virtues of capitalism were at their peak for a post WWII generation counted on to continue the great success this country represented.
Now, however, that kind of relentless citizenship-building, that kind of super-patriotism, has waned, and it is expected, seemingly, that we’ll just all do our own thing, having been inundated with the greatness of America for decade upon decade. And, quite frankly, that laissez faire public attitude does not seem to be working well.
With the wide availability of guns for the public, people are simply shooting those — or at least shooting at those — they do not agree with more than they are agreeing to sit together to work out common solutions. Public uncivil behavior has become the common occurrence in this U.S. “best of possible worlds.”
What’s wrong? How did we get to this place where Congressional members are advocating open carry rules in the Capitol building, where there are relentless threats to commit physical harm being issued to both low- and high-level public officials daily, and police are too often becoming the assaulters rather than the protectors of the public.
Some religious leaders say these are simply the final days before the Rapture. A number of political leaders, drunk on the idea of seizing personal power, see this quandary as the perfect opportunity to stay in the ascendancy to lead us more astray. There is a continuing tendency in others to adhere to a history of White people being in charge of this country because they should be in charge.
These are definitely mean days of being. And they did not materialize out of thin air.
One very important progenitor of our current muddled existence is something called “The Lost Cause Thesis.” This is the idea, spread widely in many, if not a majority, of public school texts, that the South should not be seen as a failed slave area. Instead, it should be seen as the heroic land from whence most of America’s most important leadership derived, the area of the country that produced most of the wealth needed to jump start the great American economy, the area where happy slaves helped to build a beautiful landscape and southern gentility, and the place unfairly stigmatized as the crap-heap of the Republic.
Around the beginning of the 20th Century, the Lost Cause Thesis became the mainstay of American historical writing after the Civil War, and its tenets even reached back into the nation’s first battles with the British, lionizing the courage and tenacity of White soldiers while ignoring, or belittling, any contributions by Black soldiers.
According to the Lost Cause Thesis, America is, always was, and always should be, a White man’s country. For most of the past 150 years in this country, this predominantly Southern version of the War Between the States and Reconstruction after that war, with all its prejudices, overtones of racial superiority and view of Black people, has dominated American school curricula, American literature, American politics, and a lot of public entertainment, particularly American movies.
Backing up this current that runs through American history and public schooling has been the building and maintenance of tons of Confederate statues and monuments. There are reportedly still over 1700 Confederate statues and monuments in the U.S. in spite of the George Floyd protests, and over 50 American military bases named after Confederate soldiers.
Racism can never be eradicated in America without eliminating this radically skewed version of American history and development.
Professor David L. Horne is founder and executive director of PAPPEI, the Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute, which is a new 501(c)(3) pending community-based organization or non-governmental organization (NGO). It is the stepparent organization for the California Black Think Tank which still operates and which meets every fourth Friday.
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