History Case

According to Merriam-Webster, History is a chronological record of significant events (as affecting a nation or institution) often including an explanation of their causes. So now that we know what history is, why should we study it? According to James W. Loewen, we should study history because more than any other topic, it is about us. (Loewen 2) But just because you go to history class in school does not mean you are always being told the full truth. Textbooks like to "sugar-coat" what really happened to make our background prettier. In a Betrayal of History by Alexander Stille, he says that textbooks used to be sent to scholars for proofing but now are sent to Islamic, feminist, African-American, Asian-American, Native American and Christian Fundamentalist groups. (Stille 1) No wonder why it is so hard to be told the truth. During our readings about Christopher Columbus and the Pilgrims it was pointed out by Howard Zinn in chapter one of A People's History of the United States, that they were not coming into an empty wilderness, but into a world which in some places was as densely populated as Europe itself. (Zinn 21) They arrived in a land inhabited by many tribes of Indians and according to Loewen people from other continents had reached the Americas many times before 1492. (Loewen ___) From what I read in Lies My Teacher Told Me, it sounds to me like the Native American were not the savages but the Pilgrims' actions appear to have been much more savage than anything the Indians had done. There is no excuse in my opinion for stealing, brutalizing, grave robbing, and cannibalism. Loewen states over and over again that these actions took place while Columbus was "establishing" the New World. Things like this being left out of history textbooks do not make our history any better it only hides the truths. As Loewen said in his audio lecture," figures like Columbus are "made of paper-mache" without claying meaning without flaws." We all have flaws and history is full of them. That is how we learn from our mistakes and continue on. Slavery is one of those points in our history that we still need to be learning from. According to Loewen, the period of time that we consider the period of slavery in the United States lasted for more than two hundred years before emancipation. While slavery was legal in the United States it is estimated that more than fifty million Africans either died while being transported to America or were enslaved once they arrived. (Zinn 29) As if a life of servitude would not be bad enough. From the depiction of the capture and transport in the film Amistad, the transportation to slave was unimaginable. Africans being captured and caged was only the beginning. The long ship ride was horrific. Squeezed together like sardines in a can living in their own filth without slim to no food for months and months was customary for the voyage. (Zinn, page 28)

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