Class notes
U.S. History to 1877 Ch. 1 Class Notes
Notes on history 008 U.S. History to 1877, notes from the instructor, and personal notes. Discussion post examples from weeks 1 and 2.
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Zinn chapter 1 - Post 1:Describe Zinn's major points
in regards as why telling history is
important. Post 2: Use specific examples from Zinn’ s first chapter to address the above points
that he made
-Points:
Zinn ar gues,
if historians ignor e or underplay
Columbus’ s genocidal crimes—and
the other human rights abuses in American history—they implicitly justify Columbus’ s
deeds.
As a result, ordinary people may come to accept
violence as basic parts of history , and,
perhaps, of the present, too. This kind of passivity is “deadly .”
-Proof:
●
“the frenzy for money that marked Western civilization and its first messenger to the
Americas, Christopher Columbus.”
●
Outright lying or quiet omission takes the risk of discovery which, when made, might
arouse the reader to rebel against the writer . To state the facts, however , and then to bury
them in a mass of other information is to say to the reader with a certain infectious calm:
yes, mass murder took place, but it's not that important-it should weigh very little in our
final judgments; it should af fect very little what we do in the world.
●
To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers,
and to de-emphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice
●
. It serves- unwittingly-to justify what was done. My point is not that we must, in telling
history , accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a
useless scholarly exercise in morality . But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a
deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save
Western civilization; Kronstadt and Hungary , to save socialism; nuclear proliferation, to
save us all)-that is still with us
●
One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass
of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth. We have learned
to give them exactly the same proportion of attention that teachers and writers often give
them in the most respectable of classrooms and textbooks. This learned sense of moral
proportion, coming from the apparent objectivity of the scholar , is accepted more easily
than when it comes from politicians at press conferences. It is therefore more deadly
●
The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks)-the quiet acceptance
of conquest and murder in the name of progress-is only one aspect of a certain approach
to history , in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors,
diplomats, leaders. It is as if they , like Columbus, deserve universal acceptance, as if
they-the Founding Fathers, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy , the leading
members of Congress, the famous Justices of the Supreme Court-represent the nation as a
whole. The pretense is that there really is such a thing as "the United States," subject to
occasional conflicts and quarrels, but fundamentally a community of people with
common interests. It is as if there really is a "national interest" represented in the
Constitution, in territorial expansion, in the laws passed by Congress, the decisions of the
courts, the development of capitalism, the culture of education and the mass media.
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