history of the United States of America Archives

Does History Have a “Presentism” Problem?

On 17 August 2022, Dr. James H. Sweet, a tenured full professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who is also the sitting president of the American Historical Association (AHA), which is the oldest and most prestigious association for professional historians in the United States and has the largest membership of any historical association in the entire world, published an essay in the official AHA newsmagazine Perspectives on History titled “Is History History?: Identity Politics and Teleologies of the Past.”

In the essay, Sweet declares that the massive problem of “presentism” is plaguing the historical discipline. He starts out with a halfway decent observation of the real problem of the relative decline in the number of historians studying pre-1800 historical topics over the course of the past few decades. Alas, he very quickly veers wildly off the rails into a reactionary tirade, in which he disparages scholars who study topics with contemporary political salience, such as “race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, [and] capitalism,” and spends the remainder of the essay complaining about things that have little direct connection to the work of professional academic historians, drawing multiple wildly irresponsible false equivalences along the way.

Naturally, this essay set off a veritable firestorm of controversy on social media, with many historians and other academics criticizing it. According to this article published by Inside Higher Ed, it also attracted hoards of Neo-Nazis such as Richard B. Spencer and other right-wing reactionaries, who have praised and defended the essay on Twitter and lambasted Sweet’s critics. For his own part, Sweet himself has issued a formal apology for “the damage I have caused to my fellow historians, the discipline, and the AHA,” but has not retracted any of the views he expresses in the essay. This post presents my thoughts about Sweet’s essay, including both criticisms and notes about issues he might have been better served to address if he is really concerned about “presentism” in the historical profession.

“Rewriting History” Is Not Inherently a Bad Thing

There seems to be something of a trend going on right now in politics where people have developed a habit of accusing their opponents of wanting to “rewrite history.” I’ve mostly seen conservatives accusing progressives of this, but I’ve also seen a few cases of progressives accusing conservatives of it without further clarification. In all cases, people who accuse other people of wanting to “rewrite history” portray this as something unambiguously bad.

The problem is that “rewriting history” is not inherently a bad thing. In fact, “rewriting history” is literally a historian’s job description. It is inevitable that each generation will rewrite history and there is really nothing anyone can do to stop it. It is, however, extremely important that the people who rewrite history do so honestly, using correct evidence and correct methods of interpretation. When we talk about “rewriting history,” what matters is not whether people are doing it, but how they are doing it.

Here’s Why ‘The 1776 Report’ Is Nonsense

On Monday, 18 January 2021, the Trump administration released a document titled The 1776 Report, written by the 1776 Commission, an advisory commission created by President Donald Trump on 17 September 2020 with the explicit purpose to promote “patriotic education.” The report attempts to portray Founding Fathers who owned slaves as abolitionists, attempts to portray Civil Rights leaders as conservatives, and attempts to portray “progressivism” and “identity politics” as dangerous threats to “America’s principles” on par with slavery and fascism.

Professional scholars of United States history of all political leanings immediately and universally denounced The 1776 Report as wildly inaccurate, jingoistic propaganda. It would be all too easy to dismiss it as not even worth debunking. After all, President Joe Biden signed an executive order which rescinded the 1776 Commission and removed The 1776 Report from the official White House webpage on his very first day in office.

Unfortunately, I fear that simply choosing to ignore The 1776 Report would be naïve. Tens of thousands of children across the United States who attend conservative private schools or are homeschooled are fed narratives identical to those presented in The 1776 Report through inaccurate textbooks published by conservative Evangelical Protestant book publishers, such as BJU Press and Abeka.

Supporters of these textbooks and the narratives they present will undoubtedly try to use The 1776 Report to legitimize their claims. They will try to portray it as a definitive account written by renowned experts working under the commission of the United States government. Therefore, in this article, I want to briefly talk about a few of the reasons why the report is wildly dishonest and untrustworthy.

Here’s What the Costumes and Flags on Display at the Pro-Trump Insurrection Mean

On 6 January 2021, a mob of violent, pro-Trump insurrectionists stormed the United States Capitol building in Washington D.C., forcing both houses of Congress to evacuate. These insurrectionists wanted to force Congress to overturn the vote of electoral college, which voted in favor of Joe Biden becoming the next president of the United States. Thankfully, after several hours of fighting, the rebels were eventually driven out of the Capitol. Congress has now ratified the votes of the electoral college, confirming Joe Biden’s inauguration on 20 January 2021.

Many of the insurrectionists at the Capitol were dressed in unusual costumes and carrying various flags. Many people are confused about why they dressed in this manner and what their costumes signify. Obviously, the real concern here should be the fact that these insurrectionists literally attempted a coup. Nonetheless, I think it is worth examining some of the iconography that was on display in order to get a sense of the kind of narrative that these people are trying to promote.

Why Does Donald Trump Like Neoclassical Architecture So Much?

On 21 December 2020, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order titled “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture,” which officially establishes the Neoclassical architectural style as the “preferred” style for all United States federal buildings. The same executive order disparages Modernist architecture as “ugly and inconsistent.”

In practical terms, Trump’s executive order doesn’t mean much, since it only establishes the Neoclassical style as a “preferred” style and does not outright ban other styles. Moreover, the executive order is almost certainly going to go in the paper shredder as soon as President-Elect Joe Biden assumes office on 20 January 2021.

Nonetheless, the fact that Trump apparently felt strongly enough about Neoclassical architecture to issue an executive order on the subject right before he leaves office raises all sorts of interesting questions about what Neoclassical architecture represents in a modern political context and why a man like Donald Trump would devote time to enshrine it as a “preferred style” for anything.

The Racist Mythology about the Pilgrims

For many Americans, Thanksgiving is a beloved national holiday. It’s a time when people get together with their extended families to have a large feast and talk about what they are thankful for. I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with people doing this; on the contrary, I think it can be good for families to get together and celebrate (maybe not this year, but generally speaking).

Unfortunately, the holiday of Thanksgiving as we know it today is inextricably entwined with a false mythology rooted in white supremacist thinking. The holiday continues to be abused by right-wing politicians to promote a very narrow and exclusivist vision of what sort of nation the United States is supposed to be. In this article, therefore, I want to debunk some false narratives about the Pilgrims and explain how these narratives are harmful.

When Does United States History Really Begin?

There’s a lot of controversy going on right now about when we should say that United States history begins. In 2019, The New York Times Magazine launched an initiative called “The 1619 Project,” which argues that the year 1619 should be seen as the true year when the United States was founded because that is the year when the first enslaved Black people arrived in the English colonies in North America.

In response to this, in September 2020, the Trump administration announced that it was creating a “1776 Commission” to promote “patriotic education” throughout the United States and to defend traditional narratives about American history against the claims made by the 1619 Project. I’ve already written an entire article about what a ridiculous idea I think this is, so I’m not going to talk any more about it.

What is interesting, though, is the way that both the 1619 Project and the 1776 Commission fixate on particular dates for the supposed founding of the United States. I contend that both of these proposed dates are fundamentally flawed. In fact, I believe that it is a mistake to try to pin down any particular date for the founding of the United States. This country has come into existence through a long, gradual process and focusing on exact dates and saying those dates matter more than all the others limits the ways we can think about American history and naturally tends to marginalize certain groups of people from the American story.

No, History Doesn’t Need to be “Mathematized”

On 12 November 2020, The Atlantic published an article titled “The Next Decade Could Be Even Worse.” This article, written by a staff writer named Graeme Wood, is primarily a profile piece about Peter Turchin, a Russian American entomologist-turned-pseudohistorian. It is also, however, to a large extent a full-on polemic against real historians, whom Wood portrays as obsolete curmudgeons who don’t really understand the past and are allergic to science.

As can only be expected, the entire article displays an absolutely flagrant ignorance of what the historical discipline is and what historians actually do. Indeed, it is full of all kinds of outlandish howlers, bordering on outright silliness. Unfortunately, many of the misconceptions that the article promotes are becoming more and more common as our society continues to devalue the study of history.

Donald Trump Is No Patriot

On 17 September 2020, President Donald Trump delivered a speech at the “White House Conference on American History,” an event at the National Archives Museum in Washington D.C. In this speech, Trump claimed that United States history teachers all across the country who are radical leftists and who hate America are using their positions to indoctrinate schoolchildren into what he regards as a dangerous and evil anti-American ideology, which he claims is causing “riots and mayhem” all over the country.

Therefore, he has promised to issue an executive order to “restore patriotic education to our schools” by establishing a “1776 Commission” to “encourage” teachers across the country to only teach American history in a way that inspires patriotism and makes students proud to be Americans.

In other words, Trump doesn’t want teachers to talk about any of the bad stuff that the United States has done. He wants real history to be thrown out of schools and a heavily sanitized, jingoistic narrative to be taught instead. The full transcript of Trump’s speech is available on the White House’s official website. Here is my response to some of the things he said.

No, We’re Not Tearing Down the Washington Monument—But Contextualizing It Might Be a Good Idea

If you’ve been following the news lately, you’ve probably heard a lot of hype about how the mayor of Washington D.C. supposedly wants to tear down the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial. That’s not even remotely true. Right-wing media outlets and conservative pundits have been blatantly distorting the truth and blowing things totally out of proportion.

Here’s what actually happened: Muriel E. Bowser, the mayor of Washington D.C., commissioned a research committee known as the District of Columbia Facilities and Commemorative Expressions Working Group to come up with a list of federal monuments in the district that they think the government should “remove, relocate, or contextualize.”

The committee itself has no power to actually do anything to any of the monuments on its list. All it has the power to do is make recommendations. Furthermore, when it comes to structures like the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial, it’s pretty clear that the committee isn’t advocating for the government to just tear them down; what they’re probably thinking of is something more along the lines of putting up a sign noting some of the less-than-savory aspects of Washington and Jefferson’s lives. That’s what “contextualize” means.

Unfortunately, Fox News and other conservative media outlets are so hellbent on portraying liberals as deranged, frothing-at-the-mouth communist radicals who want to destroy American culture that they’ve seized on this committee’s recommendations of contextualization and spun it into a wildly distorted narrative of “the evil liberals want to tear down all the monuments in D.C.!”