Sometimes how a cultural element works is more important than whether it is true or false. The $24 myth has at least two important effects. Students readily come up with both. First, it makes Native Americans look stupid. Twenty-four dollars won’t buy a postage-stamp-sized plot of land in Manhattan today. Those idiotic Indians! They didn’t know what they were doing! Second, it legitimizes the taking. We can infer that we didn’t really take the land or invade the continent. We bought it, fair and square (it didn’t cost much, either). Thus, the $24 myth sets us up to accept the idea that acquiring Native lands was never very problematic. In reality, how European Americans got the country remains very problematic. The U.S. and its predecessor colonies took other people’s lands, uprooted their cultures, and moved them hundreds of miles in some cases, in the process killing and enslaving some tribes. Then it kept them from acculturating and succeeding in our society. It’s hard to face these facts. We find the $24 tale much more comforting.
Surely these functions and the sense of entitlement and moral and intellectual superiority they engender help explain why the story still gets passed on, even though it’s so obviously absurd. At this point, however, it’s important to consider who is “we” in the previous paragraph. Literally, it is everyone but Native Americans. They cannot possibly embrace this anecdote. An experience resulting from the very first classroom use of Lies My Teacher Told Me shows their response to this kind of history. In the fall of 1991, while working on that book, I taught a special topics course at the University of Vermont titled “The Sociology of Social Studies: Lies My Teacher Told Me.” Doing so allowed me to get undergraduate and graduate student feedback on chapters of my book, which I handed out in draft form. Unbeknownst to me, one student—we’ll call him Bill—who planned to be an elementary school teacher, used one chapter as the basis for his practice teaching that semester. He was observing a class of 3rd graders taught by a master teacher in Swanton, in the northwest corner of the state. Later in the semester, under her supervision, he was to teach the class himself for a week. Intrigued by the chapter in the book titled “The Truth About the First Thanksgiving,” and knowing it would be late November when he took over the class, Bill decided to make that chapter the basis for his practice teaching unit.
He ran the idea past his coordinating professor at the university. Shamefully, that person advised against it: “Too likely to draw parental complaints.” Then Bill brought the idea to the teacher he was working under in Swanton. She saw no problem, so he went ahead and planned his unit. November came. Bill took over the class. As soon as he announced the topic of his unit, one pupil, seated toward the back of the room, put his head down on his desk and clamped hands over both ears. Bill walked over, seeking to learn the source of the boy’s manifest alienation, only to elicit the following sentence: “My father told me the real truth about that day and not to listen to any white man scum like you!” The boy looked white but was not—he was a member of the Abenaki nation. Luckily, Bill was not teaching the usual Thanksgiving claptrap and could explain this to the pupil and bring him back into participation with the class. But that episode shows how the usual tripe that we teach about Native Americans, such as the $24 myth, offends them. Indeed, I think stories like these put off everyone who is not in the in-group. The alienation of non-Indians is more subtle, to be sure, but real enough. It helps explain why nonwhites and nonaffluent white students perform so much worse in history than in other subjects.
OVERT RACISM?
At this point, it’s useful to peel one more layer off the onion. The $24 story is obviously false—a polite way of saying “a lie.” Students can think about whether telling it makes teachers liars, and if so, are they lying on purpose? As I recall, Miss Elliot, my 2nd-grade teacher, taught me the story. Why did she do so? Because it is true? No, the story cannot withstand a moment of thoughtful scrutiny, so that cannot be the reason.12 Did she teach it to convince her pupils—25 white children in central Illinois—that they were smarter than Native Americans? Did she wake up one October morning and ask herself, “How can I make them more white supremacist today? I know! I’ll teach them that $24 myth!” My audiences don’t think she had any such motive, at least consciously. Asked this way, students readily suggest that Miss Elliot—and their own 2nd-grade teachers—were just thoughtlessly passing on something they had learned.
After the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, followed by the American Indian Movement in the 1970s, overt white supremacy has gone out of style, in education as elsewhere in society. Many textbook authors used to imply that Native Americans were less intelligent than Europeans. Only a handful still do. Now they tell of a tragic misunderstanding. Native Americans no more imagined that people could buy or sell land than that they could buy or sell air. Air is for us all, of course. Our in-taken breath is our own, of course, but only while we are using it; then we expel it and it is everyone’s again. So it is with land.
This claim turns out to be bogus as well. Native Americans held roughly similar views about land ownership as European Americans. They thought they could keep all their land, keep part of it, or sell part or all of it. They did not think members of their tribe could do this individually, but a village or tribe could do as it wished. Natives also thought they could retain certain privileges when they sold land, such as the right of free passage. So did European Americans. Until very recent years, for that matter, access to undeveloped land was usually considered public, within limits of good conduct. Even today, the public still can walk, hunt, and fish on undeveloped land, unless clearly posted otherwise. Moreover, tribal negotiators often made sure that deeds and treaties explicitly reserved hunting, fishing, gathering, and traveling rights to Native Americans.13 There was no tragic misunderstanding.
Before we completely absolve Miss Elliot and textbook authors from the charge of racism, we do need to define the term. Racism means treating people unfavorably because of their racial or cultural group membership. The dialect that Margaret Mitchell uses for black characters throughout Gone with the Wind provides a classic example. We all speak in dialect. Most of us use the term “Iminna,” for example. You might say to a friend, “After I finish this chapter, Iminna have a beer.” We never write English like that, however, not even when writing dialogue. In an essay, novel, or memoir, we would probably write, “After I finish this chapter, I am going to have a beer,” even though no one has ever pronounced that sentence so well. To connote informality, we might write, “After I finish this chapter, I’m going to have a beer.” Not Mitchell—not when she is dispensing black speech. Here is Mammy, berating Scarlett:
“Is de gempmum gone? Huccome you din’ ast dem ter stay fer supper, Miss Scarlett? Ah done tole Poke ter lay two extry plates fer dem. Whar’s yo’ manners?”14
This is almost unreadable. But is it racist?
The answer is, yes. Years of residence in Dixie taught me—indeed, just a few days sufficed—that people from a given area usually talk a lot like others from that area. Most Southerners, both black and white, do say “tar” when they mean “tire,” for instance. But Mitchell subjects only black speakers to the indignity of dialect. Southern whites seem to talk just fine. Mitchell even goes so far as to have her black characters say “wuz” for “was”—“I wuz awful tard,” for example, instead of “I was awfully tired.” Not only would a white Southerner also say “tard,” all Americans say “wuz” for “was.” “Was” is correctly pronounced “wuz.” To write it that way for blacks, but not for whites, is a perfect example of treating people unfavorably because of their racial or cultural group membership.
Sociologists identify three types of racism: individual, institutional, and cultural. Most Americans are familiar with the notion of individual racism. For example, as Chapter 4 told, while enrolled at Smith College, an infuriated Margaret Mitchell got herself transferred to another history class because her first class included a black student.15 Individual racism does not require such an element of racial animus, how
ever. William Levitt’s firm, Levitt & Sons, was by far the largest homebuilder in America after World War II, building perhaps 8% of all postwar suburban housing. Levitt flatly refused to show or sell to African Americans. Huge suburbs like Levittown on Long Island wound up all-white as a result. Yet Levitt claimed he was not racist. He only maintained his all-white policy to avoid offending white buyers; it was all strictly business. He even kept Jews out of some of his developments—and he was Jewish!16
Institutional racism—unfavorable treatment by a social institution of a group of people, based on group membership—often not only has no racist animus behind it but sometimes has no element of intent at all. That would be true for the SAT, which discards items that are favorable to African Americans by a statistical process, as Chapter 2 showed.
Perhaps most deep-seated of all, deeper even than the psychic racism of a KKK leader like David Duke, is cultural racism. This is the ideology that one race is superior to others, expressed in etiquette, religion, law, in terms built into the language, and in countless other elements of our culture. The $24 story is an example. Soft-pedaling the invasion intrinsically entails making fools of Native Americans today. At the very least, how could Natives lose their continent to such nice folks? Specifically, how could they be so stupid as to haplessly welcome the Pilgrims? Or throw away Manhattan for $24 worth of beads?
Retelling the $24 myth to children today exemplifies cultural racism. Note that I do not use the “r word” to smear Miss Elliot. Any of us could be Miss Elliot. Rather, students need to come to three realizations: first, our culture contains elements of ongoing white supremacy. Second, these elements typically (always?) involve bad scholarship. And third, learning more accurate history gives students tools with which they can change our culture to make it more just and more factual.
Happily, most U.S. history courses are scheduled so that students can confront the $24 myth and other misinformation about Native Americans early in the school year. Students should leave the $24 myth aware that it stands for a larger class of misinformation. Until recently, for example, textbooks provided unreasonably low estimates of Native populations before Columbus arrived. “It was a virgin continent,” went their phrase. As with the $24 tale, low estimates make for a more genial account of how “we” won the continent. Spending time deconstructing the $24 myth can help students see through all the rosy accounts our textbooks provide. Thus, it pays dividends throughout the year.
ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS
Coupled with the problems discussed in the two prior chapters, students can now appreciate that all history education—not just that about Native Americans—is drenched in inertia. The $24 myth exemplifies a class of tales that teachers and textbooks usually pass on without checking their truthfulness or understanding their hidden agendas. If teachers are comfortable with them and do not question them, they are likely to pass on stories with no basis in fact. This is especially likely if the material is in line with our national ethos. Thus, the next generation may grow up racist and ethnocentric even while trying not to.
Sociologists teach us that education is largely socialization, especially in the early grades. Socialization is the process of passing on the culture so children can take part in society. It is so basic as to include toilet training—a requirement in any society—as well as “The Star-Spangled Banner.” There is nothing wrong with socialization. On the contrary, the well-being of society and the individual depends upon it. Some conflict persists between the goals of socialization and education, however, at least as the latter is usually defined. Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, for example, defines education as the “process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.” Teaching and learning the $24 story fits uneasily under such a heading, especially since it is not true.
Perhaps “mature life” offers a useful way out. Students relish being treated as mature. When informed that in their earlier schooling they have been told fantasies and partial truths, but now they are old enough to find out the true story for themselves, they jump at the chance. In a meta-conversation about the learning of history, students rarely say that if they learn about bad past acts of the U.S., they will become disloyal citizens. On the contrary, they aver that such learning motivates them to make the U.S. better. The $24 story can trigger that meta-conversation. Students may also find useful the distinction between patriotism and nationalism that was drawn in the first chapter. A true patriot rebukes rather than excuses a nation for its sins. A nationalist rebukes anyone who points out the nation’s sins. Learning the $24 story may help create blind nationalists but cannot produce thoughtful patriots.
Regarding Native Americans, the antiracist idealism that can result from deconstructing the $24 myth will wither away if the only outlet students can see for it is to give Manhattan back to the Weckquaesgeeks. That’s not going to happen. As poet Maya Angelou put it, “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived.”17 History is not a movie that we can reel backward. Redress must come in the present, from this point forward. Much of what we teach and learn in elementary school social studies every October (around Columbus Day) and November (Thanksgiving) amounts to a continuing canard against Native Americans. Stopping that deceit is an important first step toward redress. At the very least, students will want to let their younger siblings in on the new information they’re learning about Native Americans, Columbus, and so forth. They may want to challenge their elementary school teachers or a textbook that they now find inadequate.
Other acts students can take include questioning nearby high school or professional sports teams for their use of Indian names and symbols as mascots and logos. Students can also work to change names on our landscape that disrespect Native peoples, like Squaw Mountain or Heathen Meadows.18 If a nearby historical marker presents bad history about Native people, perhaps because of its ethnocentric use of terms like “discover,” “settler,” “massacre,” or “half-breed,” students can agitate for a corrective.19 Students can also examine library books on Native Americans intended for younger readers, suggest better books for librarians to buy, and insert in existing books critiques of them by Beverly Slapin, Doris Seale, or others.
When they take steps like these, students are using what they learn in their history course to engage in civic patriotism. No longer will they assert for a moment that history is irrelevant, a waste of time, or boring.
FOCUSED BIBLIOGRAPHY
In Through Indian Eyes (Berkeley, CA: Oyate, 2006, www.oyate.org), Beverly Slapin and Doris Seale review children’s books and find many that display inhumane and incorrect portraits of American Indians.
CHAPTER 8
Teaching Slavery
ONE OF THE 30–50 TOPICS IN A COURSE IN U.S. history must be slavery. However, giving workshops at several plantation sites convinced me that many Americans of all races are uneasy teaching about slavery. Especially in middle school, teachers can find it hard to bring up. They don’t want to embarrass their black students; they don’t want to make white students feel guilty; so they just mention it in passing.
Unfortunately, minimizing slavery is treating slavery, and treating it incompetently. It implies that slavery is unimportant and can be underplayed without damaging our understanding of our nation’s past. That is not true. Worse yet, we have seen how sugar-coating the European invasion of America amounts to ongoing racism against Native Americans. Similarly, downplaying slavery amounts to racism against African Americans and helps maintain white supremacy today. To avoid that, teachers have to teach slavery, regardless of their own racial background or that of their class.
RELEVANCE TO THE PRESENT
Every topic in a history course needs to be relevant to the present. Slavery certainly is. The cover of U.S. News and World Report for November 9, 1998, furnishes students with a nice way for them to see the relevance of slavery toda
y. (True, 1998 is in a different millennium, but few students will claim that it is really a different era from the present.) Whether our third president and his attractive house slave did or did not have sex and produce children provided the lead story of a national newsmagazine two centuries later. That fact itself shows that slavery is relevant today.1
The cover also may point toward a deeper significance of slavery today. Asked “Is there anything wrong with this cover?” students usually stare silently for a while. Someone may suggest, “It has his picture but not hers.” I reply, “Well, maybe that’s defensible. After all, he was the third president of the United States. She wasn’t. Besides, no image of her survives.”
What’s wrong with this cover?
Sooner or later, someone notes the use of his last name and her first name. “Exactly,” I reply. “Why doesn’t it say ‘Tommy and Sally’?” Students titter. “‘Tommy’ is disrespectful to the third president of the United States,” I continue. “But if it’s disrespectful to him, why isn’t it disrespectful to her? To put this another way, Sally Hemings is one of the few African Americans of the eighteenth century whose last names we know. So why didn’t the editors of U.S. News and World Report have the cover say ‘Jefferson and Hemings’?”
Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History Page 22