Noem and Other Imperialists Try to Erase American History and Ideals

[markwbradley]

5. An American history teacher's perspective

As a teenager growing up in Northern California in the 1960’s, I was taught the “virtuous saints who crafted the Constitution without a thought to their own private interests” version of U.S. history, sans women, sans minority participation, sans racism, sans ethnic cleansing. It was boring, it was irrelevant to my life, and, worst of all, it was literally unbelievable! But when I started my college career at Chico State in 1968, no one could ignore the maelstrom of real events that required us to decide “which side are you on.” Every social science or history class I took my freshman year was a crash course in the “fierce urgency of now.” Every cherished assumption I had arrived with was being summarily torn open with a rusty knife and dumped on the carpet for further analysis. We read Eldridge Cleaver’s “Soul on Ice”, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, the “Port Huron Statement” (the manifesto of the Students for a Democratic Society), and Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique.”

Suddenly, history was alive with possibility, its fabric rich in color and textures I had never imagined. But best of all, when narrated by people whose background and experience was so very different from mine, it became understandable, and even (heaven forbid) believable! The icons of White virtue I had learned about in high school were shown to be human beings with flaws, vices, glaring blind spots in their judgments, and, yes - sometimes - brilliant ideas.

That’s when I decided I wanted to teach history. The right way!