"Lies My Teacher Told Me" is a book recommended to me by my friend, Glenn McCrea, on Facebook. Much of what is on Facebook is unutterably depressing in one message after the other about how to feel better about yourself all of which aggregate to sing again from The Beatles: "All the lonely people, where do they all come from." Intermingled with those are one message after the other about belief in God but, obvious to anyone but the contributors of such messages, no-one would need them if any of them really believed anything. However, through all that chaff comes the stuff Glenn contributes and I've found this book particularly important.
It's from "Lies My Teacher Told Me" that I learned Helen Keller was a dirty Communist. I have no interest in slandering the lady as everything I ever heard about her was pretty good and what do I care if she was a Communist anyway. What's fascinating to me is why there was such a concerted effort to cover up her socialist / Communist beliefs, particularly given the way Senator McCarthy destroyed so many others simply on the basis of their political views.
Another thing I've found intriguing has been the universal whitewash of Christopher Columbus and his sons given the extraordinary savagery they showed to the native people of America. He was the first to institute a slave trade with Europe and he was also the first to instigate large-scale genocide, particularly in Haiti with the decimation of the Arawak Indians. The Spanish did it first but the French later did it too as did the English after that, all of which amounted the most sweeping cultural destruction the world may have ever seen and all of which has been whitewashed in terms of 'manifest destiny' and other such arbitrary absurdities promoting nothing more than white supremacy. Even today many Americans view the destruction of the native American cultures as 'evolution in action' rather than deliberate genocide.
The whitewashing of this history is travesty enough and there wouldn't be much of a reason to continue such content too long except for Loewen's point that the history textbooks used in American high schools continue to present a wholly false view of the country's history. His purpose isn't simply to bash America but rather to question why history is taught as dogma rather than scientific inquiry. The result of the dogmatic approach is you get a huge America, Love it or Leave it crowd but they don't really know what they love as what they have been told is, to a quite large extent, false.
A substantial part of the discussion regarding Columbus is about how many other cultures reached America long before he did. Part of that discussion uses the Colossal Heads sculpted by the Olmec Indians of Mexico. (WIKI: Olmec colossal heads) Loewen observes these present substantial proof of African visits to the Americas long before Columbus. In viewing the heads, you will discover their facial characteristics have many Negroid features but their eyes also have epicanthic folds which are typical of Mongoloid people.
Note: I'm aware that the word 'Negro' is regarded as insulting today but identification of the races of man still uses the descriptors I have shown above (e.g. Negroid, Mongoloid, Caucasoid, etc).
While Loewen presents the Colossal Heads as close to clear proof of African visitation, he is also insistent that the way to make history interesting for students is to encourage inquiry. That's something I like to do anyway so I looked it up and there is not universal agreement as to these Colossal Heads representing such African visitation but they do provide an intriguing basis for discussion. As George Carlin said, "Don't just question authority, question EVERYTHING!"
The opening paragraph may have seemed a gratuitous slam of Facebook but rather its purpose is to demonstrate how so many people really don't feel too good about themselves and I submit a large part of this is due to not really knowing who they are because they have been taught one lie after the other. Glenn is proud to be a good fisherman, he's proud to be a black man, he's proud of being a musician, a photographer, and other things and the summary of all that is he knows who he is and he shares that.
Just as Loewen has a great many things to teach, so does Glenn McCrea.
It's from "Lies My Teacher Told Me" that I learned Helen Keller was a dirty Communist. I have no interest in slandering the lady as everything I ever heard about her was pretty good and what do I care if she was a Communist anyway. What's fascinating to me is why there was such a concerted effort to cover up her socialist / Communist beliefs, particularly given the way Senator McCarthy destroyed so many others simply on the basis of their political views.
Another thing I've found intriguing has been the universal whitewash of Christopher Columbus and his sons given the extraordinary savagery they showed to the native people of America. He was the first to institute a slave trade with Europe and he was also the first to instigate large-scale genocide, particularly in Haiti with the decimation of the Arawak Indians. The Spanish did it first but the French later did it too as did the English after that, all of which amounted the most sweeping cultural destruction the world may have ever seen and all of which has been whitewashed in terms of 'manifest destiny' and other such arbitrary absurdities promoting nothing more than white supremacy. Even today many Americans view the destruction of the native American cultures as 'evolution in action' rather than deliberate genocide.
The whitewashing of this history is travesty enough and there wouldn't be much of a reason to continue such content too long except for Loewen's point that the history textbooks used in American high schools continue to present a wholly false view of the country's history. His purpose isn't simply to bash America but rather to question why history is taught as dogma rather than scientific inquiry. The result of the dogmatic approach is you get a huge America, Love it or Leave it crowd but they don't really know what they love as what they have been told is, to a quite large extent, false.
A substantial part of the discussion regarding Columbus is about how many other cultures reached America long before he did. Part of that discussion uses the Colossal Heads sculpted by the Olmec Indians of Mexico. (WIKI: Olmec colossal heads) Loewen observes these present substantial proof of African visits to the Americas long before Columbus. In viewing the heads, you will discover their facial characteristics have many Negroid features but their eyes also have epicanthic folds which are typical of Mongoloid people.
Note: I'm aware that the word 'Negro' is regarded as insulting today but identification of the races of man still uses the descriptors I have shown above (e.g. Negroid, Mongoloid, Caucasoid, etc).
While Loewen presents the Colossal Heads as close to clear proof of African visitation, he is also insistent that the way to make history interesting for students is to encourage inquiry. That's something I like to do anyway so I looked it up and there is not universal agreement as to these Colossal Heads representing such African visitation but they do provide an intriguing basis for discussion. As George Carlin said, "Don't just question authority, question EVERYTHING!"
The opening paragraph may have seemed a gratuitous slam of Facebook but rather its purpose is to demonstrate how so many people really don't feel too good about themselves and I submit a large part of this is due to not really knowing who they are because they have been taught one lie after the other. Glenn is proud to be a good fisherman, he's proud to be a black man, he's proud of being a musician, a photographer, and other things and the summary of all that is he knows who he is and he shares that.
Just as Loewen has a great many things to teach, so does Glenn McCrea.
7 comments:
Good post! After over 30 years in Hawaii, I've heard many visitors refer to the U.S. mainland as "back in the States", only to be corrected by someone laughing that Hawaii is a state too. Well, fact is that culturally, Hawaii is much more like another country than another state. And after conferring with native Hawaiians, they feel like they're an illegally occupied sovereign nation, not another state. After looking into the actual history of how things came to be, I have to agree with them. How Hawaii became a U.S. territory, then a state is a complete travesty in keeping with our long history of disrespecting indigenous people all over the planet. I think I'd like to read the book you refer to. Thanks.
An image runs on Facebook quite a bit and it shows an American Indian saying, "You're troubled by illegal immigration, huh? That must really be a bitch!"
Thank you for those kind words. I try...
Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
Had to start with ine of my favorite Assasins creed quotes from their 'code (its a video game, somewhat historically based)
Anyway. I totally agree. Studying history in college as a history major taught me a great deal, little of it 'real world' applicable from my position but still useful I think. Especially a quote from one of my american history professors. 'welcome to history ---, history of america from 'discovery' (she used her fingers to make sure quotes) till the civil war. here is where we fix everything your high schools screwed up or lied to you about'. Further silas u should look into south american sites. I sadly forget the name of the site but what I do recall is that its in the middle of the s. American coast. The site is the oldest in the americas. Predating any in the north. Its quite significant because while we know some native ancestors came via the russian/alaskan land brite and others came via boat from europe ising the glacial shelf during the Ice age. There are many theories about this sure. The one I prescribe to being the aboriginal bravery of canoe on ocean island to island and finally to s. America. All you have to do is view a map to see the peril because there r areas they would have been cruising hundreds of miles of open sea for days on end to reach the next island, and in their mins hopeing another came. But I digress. I believe history needs to b fixed n america. The 'knowledge' that your average american high schooler graduates with is borderline useless and for the history portion, unless your teacher was exceptional, are out right lies, myths, and propaganda. Opps did we discover the problem? American school is nothing but a massive propaganda tool. Oh dear. Peace love and flow and (advertisement alert) as my new company/fire troupe tag line says...Burn the fabric of reality!
Well I had typed out quite a lively comment but signing in has deleted it all :(
Will have to try again on the morrow
Burning the fabric of reality is an interesting challenge when that which is portrayed as real has little to do with actual facts. "Lies My Teacher Told Me" emphasises pretty strongly the highly-racist perspective the book is selling insofar as white Europeans can do no wrong. Columbus is sold as an unsung saint whereas he was actually one stone evil bastard and was one of the first to initiate large-scale genocide against Indians of the Americas. You can see racism running rampant in the U.S. and to what extent is the teaching in high school, although seemingly benign, responsible for it. What they teach is much more than propaganda and is overtly dangerous. You, personally, were always taught to question and that's the best lesson you ever got.
Whoops ... 'the highly-racist perspective the HISTORY BOOKS ARE selling'
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