Brenda wrote:
>It's hard for me to specifically comment on this because I don't know
>what textbooks today contain - which is why I would love to hear from
>any teachers on the list.
I highly recommend James W. Loewen's book "Lies My Teacher Told Me"
(subtitled: Everything your American history textbook got wrong). He does a
critical analysis of the 11 major high school American history textbooks
and shows how horrible they are! It is a fascinating read.
For anyone who doesn't feel like they have a good sense of what the United
States has done abroad with its foreign policy and covert actions, try
reading Noam Chomsky's "What Uncle Sam Really Wants." You may not agree
with his conclusions (I happen to agree, but he is very radical), but all
of his evidence comes from the public record - largely classified documents
released 50 years later, as U.S. law requires. Nothing like Chomsky to make
you see the world from a different perspective.
Brenda, I've really enjoyed your posts on these issues.
For the record, I was also bothered by Bree's sentiments but I wouldn't
express it the way Nuriel did. I feel like many (though not all) of the
arguments on this list are caused by people expressing their ideas in ways
which demean or trivialize others. I am a pacifist, but even if I weren't
as extreme in my anti-war views I would still be bothered by the
nationalistic and aggressive rhetoric being thrown around by U.S. leaders
and then also segments of the population. It doesn't SURPRISE me - the
United States is a violent country - culturally this is how problems are
solved, often domestically (within the home, I mean), nationally,
internationally. I think that being an oppressor makes one violent - that
might be a necessary arm of an oppressive regime. And while we can have
zillions of discussions and arguments over whether the State oppresses
groups of Americans (I believe it does), I believe that a person with
information about U.S. foreign policy history cannot really argue with the
statement that the U.S. maintains a positionality of dominance over
countries of the South (=not-completely accurate terminology to replace
"developing" or "Third World" because why should we dictate what groups of
people should be developing towards, and who got to decide who is the
"First World"? Well, we did, of course). As I was saying, dominance over
Southern nations because we benefit greatly from their policies towards us
which enable our extracting labor and resources from them, our
exploitation. My impression is that this is undisputable, but I am sure
there are folks here who dispute it - I'd be interested in seeing how or why...
We in the U.S. live in a culture of violence. Of course, we aren't the only
ones. But we have elevated it to an art form and trained others in it. And
we who have been raised within it (ok, I wasn't entirely raised within it
because I grew up abroad, but I was distal to it) have to struggle to
awaken our critical consciousness so that we can recognize it and
understand it. That is my belief. I have a long way to go but still I struggle.
And I am against the war.
-Yael
