A long time ago I wrote an editorial in the Billings Gazette attempting to defend the National History Standards from conservative criticism. The Standards were, according to the conservative columnist George F. Will, waging “a war of aggression against the Western Political tradition and the ideas that animate it.” According to Lynne Cheney, the Standards “make it sound as if everything in America is wrong and grim.” Backed by academic historians, the creators of the National History Standards were shoving aside famous and important Americans who students ought to learn about in favor of people and topics that were, in the language of the time, “politically correct.”
At that time, I wrote, the promoters of the National History Standards had been “too timid” in their defense of their work. The conservative critics, I wrote, were not arguing in good faith. They had “not focused on scholarship, and the canons of argumentation and proof that accompany this pursuit, but on the very subject matter of much of the recent historical writing.” They could not prove that the history was wrong, so they announced that they did not like the content. Theirs was, I said, “a knee-jerk, intolerant, and culturally insensitive response to the recognition that people of all races, cultures, colors and creeds contributed to what we now recognize as a complex American past, and that no understanding of that past can be achieved without examining the role played by all Americans.” Calling something “politically correct,” like calling something “woke” today, I wrote, “has become a conservative smear to be employed against anyone who calls for a more inclusive, complex, and truly democratic portrayal of the past.”
That editorial appeared in January of 1995, a bit over thirty years ago. Think about that. I have been at this for a long time. The words I wrote then are still applicable today.
And as tired as I sometimes feel, it is as important now as it was then to resist, to engage with those who hate and fear what we do without truly understanding the nature of our work.
Just last week, President Trump issued another of the unconstitutional pronouncements that he alleges are “executive orders” with the force of law. Aiming his ire at the Smithsonian Institution, Trump declared that “over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” These historians, he said, have sought “to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.” Instead of “fostering unity and a deeper understanding of our shared past, the widespread effort to rewrite history deepens societal divides and fosters a sense of national shame.”
The president cited some examples. The Smithsonian American Art Museum, he said, had challenged, in Trump’s words, “the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct.” (If you want evidence of the virulence of Trump’s racism, well, there you go). A Fascist, Trump is angry that the museum asserted that “race is a human invention.” It’s incredible, really. We who resist are fighting a battle that has been going on for ages.
That is why I love the statement from Loyola Marymount University in defense of its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
We practice diversity, equity, and inclusion because we are Catholic and our faith and the First Amendment protect our right to live out these values. Efforts to restrict DEI are in opposition to Christ’s teachings or radical inclusion and love. Loyola Marymount University will continue to champion academic freedom, social justice, and human dignity not as politics, but as moral imperatives required by our faith.
It is direct, defiant, and unapologetic. Historians should take note. Trump is going to do enormous damage to our work. Hours before I wrote these words, I learned that a fantastic, NEH-supported project at Brown University examining the enslavement of Indigenous New Englanders had its grant revoked. Friends worked for years on this monumental project that answers important questions about the American past. Trump and his thugs killed the program.
They will hurt us and they will score points. They will please the racists. So much of what they do, after all, is about protecting and upholding white supremacy. But in other ways, they have already lost this fight. That is why reasoning with them can be like talking to a caged rat. They won’t listen to truths they are afraid to confront. But to teach that race and racism are hard-wired into the Nation’s founding documents, after all, is hardly a revolutionary insight any longer. That race, as a nefarious social construct, has wielded enormous power for evil in America’s past is a basic statement of fact. That New York, where I teach now, became the Empire State through a systematic program of Indigenous dispossession that at times and places violated the laws of the United States, is hardly controversial at all. Its a fact. Our efforts, in other words, have already carried the day. Even as the textbooks lag behind, we have done the work. Our students know that an uncritical and celebratory history of the United States is bullshit. They know that history matters, and they expect that it will include stories that connect with their own, and that explore—and explain—the enormous gap that sometimes exists between the way things are and the way they ought to be.
Some of you who read these words are college professors. I am willing to bet that you have been approached by a student, probably many times over the course of your career, who told you how they could not believe they were never taught this stuff in high school. You want to teach a kid to not respect this nation’s history? Lie to her about it.
But that is what our amoral leader is calling for. An angry and unlettered old man, he will do his damage. He will try to destroy the archives and the libraries and museums that bring this inclusive and complex history to more and more people every year. He will, and already has attempted to, ruin the lives of those who do this work. He will try to silence museum workers, archivists, librarians, writers and teachers who know at the very marrow of their being that it is not their job to tell students comforting stories about the past, but rather, to teach them to ask questions about the past and insist on reasoned, reasonable and evidence-based answers. If things are this way, why could they not have been another way, and so on—we play a role in unleashing the revolutionary capacity of an inquiring mind. Trump will promote charlatans and whores like JD Vance who will say anything, even when they know better, to win the approval of the amoral leader. They will continue to beat up on the weakest people they can find, the refugees, the immigrants, the poor and the marginalized. But they cannot suppress the stories we tell about the past. Not entirely. Let those of us who are privileged in these dark times to be able to do this important work, stand tall in defiance of these dangerous and unthinking enemies of justice and free thought.
