Ever since I was a little boy, I’ve known that I live in a place that is rich in history.
I grew up seven miles down the road from a place called Fort Frederick,
which was an important outpost during the French and Indian War and the American Revolution.
Twenty miles in another direction from where I grew up sits Antietam Battlefield, the site
of the Battle of Antietam during the Civil War, the bloodiest day in American history.
I grew up surrounded by history, and all my life I’ve been told that I should be proud
of that history — the history of my region, my state, my country — my history.
Our history. A lot about the way I see the world has changed since I was a little boy,
but you know what? There are parts of that history that I am proud of,
still, to this day. However, I’ve also learned some things I didn’t know back then,
things I wasn’t taught — or at least, things about which I wasn’t told the full story.
And what I’ve figured out as a result of all that is, the question of whether or
not we Americans should be proud of our history doesn’t have a simple answer.
I mean, the answer is simple if you’re talking about the gift shop version of history, the
Fourth of July fireworks, John Philip Sousa, summer trip to Washington, D.C.
version of history where you’re standing on the top step of the Lincoln Memorial, gazing up in awe
at that giant statue of Honest Abe, and that’s as deep as you go. That’s not really history, though.
There’s this phrase I’ve heard over and over again, usually from people
who are trying to explain the popularity of fantasy franchises like Star Trek,
or Star Wars, or superheroes. They say these stories and characters and imaginary settings
inspire such emotional investment from their fans because, “We live in a world without mythology.”
I couldn’t even tell you how many times I’ve heard a guest
on a talk show or a talking head in a documentary say some variation of that.
And, I almost always think, “Do we?”
It’s not that we’re without mythology in our modern world.
It’s that we don’t call our mythology by that name.
We call it religion. And sometimes — a lot of the time — we call it history.
That’s the kind of history people who insist, aggressively, that we Americans can,
should and must be proud of our history are attached to. It’s not history at all,
at least not in the sense that it’s meant to represent what actually
happened. It’s the version of history where George Washington was first in war, first in peace,
first in the hearts of his countrymen, but the fact that he was a wealthy plantation owner
who held hundreds of people in slavery during his life is treated as an incidental detail;
where Abraham Lincoln was the Great Emancipator, but his personal moral and philosophical journey
from someone who disliked but tolerated slavery to someone who called for its total abolishment
and sought to empower Black Americans is all but ignored; where World War II was a righteous
crusade against fascism and genocide, but the persecution and oppression visited upon people
in the United States at the exact same time goes unmentioned; where racism was an unfortunate but
relatively minor flaw in the American system, which was corrected in the 1960s; and where
the accomplishments and sacrifices of indigenous people, Black Americans, women, queer Americans,
and all other marginalized groups are erased, as are the atrocities committed against them.
That’s not history. That’s mythology. Which is not to say there aren’t parts
of our actual history that we can and should be proud of. There are. One of my ancestors fought
in the Civil War — for the Union. I was very proud, and very relieved, when I learned that.
And there are larger pieces of American history I’m proud of, too: the civil rights movement,
the Moon landings; the creation of the polio vaccine, the telephone, baseball,
and jazz and blues and rock ‘n roll. And yes, of course I’m stirred by the bravery of the Union
soldiers who fought to defeat the Confederacy and end slavery,
and that of the Americans who landed on the beaches of Normandy in 1944 to begin the
Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. And yes, there are things about Washington, and Jefferson,
and certainly Lincoln, and other traditional American heroes that I genuinely admire.
But, I think it’s important to realize that taking pride in such things is an indulgence.
The more we do it, the easier it is to just focus on the parts of our history that make us proud,
and look away from the bits that make us uncomfortable.
I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with being proud of our history — but a
lot depends on what we’re proud of, and whether or not we’re allowing our pride to obscure our
view of our history’s more shameful passages, which are just as important, if not more so.
Another thing I’ve heard since I was a boy is conservatives complaining about “historical
revisionism.” Generally speaking, when they say “historical revisionism,” they mean history that
tells the stories of people other than white men, and that attempts to put the crimes of
some of those white men into a context that is less flattering and forgiving to white men.
The past few years, we’ve seen this reactionary alarmism
expressed in the form of the moral panic surrounding critical race theory, and all
of the things these fear-mongering jack-offs imagine to be critical race theory. They say,
“They’re teaching American children to be ashamed of their country!” And . . . I mean, you all . . .
. . . Not to tell you your business or anything — because I know you hate
that — but when it comes to parts of American history such as slavery, segregation, lynching,
forced relocation and mass murder of Native Americans,
persecution and vilification of immigrants, scapegoating of religious minorities,
subjugation of women, oppression of queer people and disabled people and mentally ill people,
exploitation of workers, violent opposition to the labor movement, and I could go on, and on,
and on — when it comes to bits of American history such as those . . . we ought to be ashamed. Right?
Maybe not in the sense of personal guilt, but in a way that brings home how essential it is
for us to not make the same mistakes, and to make right the injustices that continue
to affect our lives today — of which there are more than a few. That’s important. Isn’t it?
A lot of the same folks who insist on a glib, traditionalist, relentlessly positive view of
American history, and throw tantrums in response to anything they perceive
as revisionism, have adopted a cult-like devotion to the U.S.
Constitution. Which only proves my earlier point that their kind of history really has
nothing to do with anything that actually happened. Because the Founding Fathers
certainly didn’t think of the Constitution that way — and they, ya know, wrote it!
The framers of the Constitution regarded the document as flawed, and a few harbored deep
reservations about it. But, they also mostly agreed that it was the best they could do,
given the compromises necessary to come up with something that would at least be
acceptable to everyone. They didn’t think it was divinely inspired, and they didn’t expect
future generations to treat it with the awe and reverence normally reserved for sacred texts.
In fact, the Founders — deeply problematic products of their time though they were — even
admitted to the Constitution’s less than ideal nature in the document itself — they included a
mechanism for amending it, which they presumed — correctly — would be necessary from time to
time. And, in the first line of the preamble — the only part most people ever bother to read — they
describe the purpose of the Constitution as being to “form a more perfect union” — not
a perfect union, but a more perfect one — the Constitution itself acknowledges that it does
not establish, nor is it fit to establish, a perfect government — only a better one.
And because previous generations have also accepted its imperfection,
in the two-hundred-thirty-some-odd years since it was adopted, that Constitution has become better
still. It no longer tolerates the existence of slavery, when once it did. It guarantees the
right to vote regardless of race or gender, when once it did not. It gives more power
to the voters — requiring that U.S. senators be elected by popular vote, which wasn’t done before
1913 — and places greater constraints on the power of government — limiting presidents to two
terms beginning in 1951, and preventing members of Congress from voting themselves a pay raise during
the current session beginning in 1992, although that particular amendment had been pending since
1789. It took over two hundred years, but eventually it was ratified, and in its small way
it helped to make our union just a little bit more perfect than it was before.
That is the power of revisionism. That is the power of being able to see where we’ve gone wrong,
and try to make it better. Change is often slow and fitful, but it is possible. It can happen.
We’ve proven our ability to make it happen, time and time again. That’s a part of American history
we should all be proud of, and seek to carry on, for our sakes, and for the sakes of those
who will one day study the history we make — future generations who will look back,
hopefully from the vantage point of a more perfect union than this one.