Applied History

King’s book was impressively straight-forward.  In line with his realistic approach, comes a pessimistic reality: even though there are impressive sounding federal laws, they fail to protect cultural, historical, and environmental sites in America.  I particularly liked King’s comments about the contractor’s approach regarding the EIS for building a parallel set of railroad tracks at Abo Pass, New Mexico.  The contractor felt that destroying historical and cultural sites would not have an adverse effect so long as they excavated and documented them beforehand.  King explains “If I burn your house to the ground, I’ve adversely affected it, no matter how well I may record it first.”  Obviously there is a disconnect in the formation of EIS documents.  Granted, this EIS did explain that specific pictographs would be avoided, but I am completely shocked that this is entire approach falls within the legal limit of environmental/historical/cultural preservation.  Similarly, the contractors failed to even consider visual effects, audible effects, the effects of railroad use in general…the list goes on and on.  This contractor is definitely going to get hired for future EIS formations; he plays the game to a tee!  He says all of the right things, contacts all the right people, and still ensures that the project can go on, all the while explaining how they are working to preserve the historical/environmental/cultural aspects of the site they intend to destroy.

King discusses the issue surrounding comprehensibility, and I wish he would have explored this problem with more depth.  Regardless of how deep he may have explored comprehensibility, I feel that it is a huge issue with grave implications.  If EIS, NEPA, NRHP etc. forms are fully comprehensive and taken completely seriously, nothing will ever get built.  If these forms are not comprehensive enough, nothing will ever be denied.  I have no idea where the middle road lies, but I would argue that a middle road needs to be developed and adhered to.  This links back to the issues between “bright green” and “light green” laws.  What is the point of having laws that are rarely able to be enforced?  While “light green” laws certainly look good on the books, appease environmentalists, and convey an environmentally friendly atmosphere to onlookers, they do little more.

Even “bright green” laws (and statutes) fail to be enforced on a regular basis.  King explains how the EPA systematically undercut its own standards in order to not have to deal with the Abo Pass railroad, automobile, gas etc. catastrophe.  If the EPA, the highest environmental agency in the bureaucratic mess that is Washington D.C. is purposefully finding ways to undercut its statutory responsibilities, I am afraid that I must agree with the author, saving historic, cultural, and environmental sites is a lost cause.  If I had to site a key problem, it would be the bureaucratic mess that exists.  King’s book is inundated with acronyms of government agencies; the whole thing reads like Campbell’s Alphabet Soup.  There are so many agencies with competing interests and varying degrees of oversight and legislative teeth that few things ever get done.  As King passionately explains, reform, restructuring, revision of laws, restoration of bureaucratic roles, and a widespread governmental clean up needs to occur.  King adds that the Constitution must also be amended.  While I (surprise, surprise) feel that this is overkill, I do concede that a constitutional amendment would fix the problem and ensure a feasible process to a beneficial solution.

I am currently working on developing curriculum regarding the intersection between politics and environmentalism.  One of the articles I am basing my lesson plans on is an impassioned speech by Richard Gottlieb decrying presidential elections and the lack of change they bring to the environmental arena.  King’s memo to Obama parallels Gottlieb’s hope for true change.  Unfortunately for King and Gottlieb, I am afraid that Obama, environmentally speaking, has followed most of his modern predecessors.  Save Carter (who actively fought to clean up the environment), Reagan (who actively worked to limit all aspects of government intervention, the environment included), and Nixon (who began his presidency as a staunch advocate for environmental change but ended his presidency wondering where his environmental hopes turned to governmental impediments) no president has done much of anything to truly alter the environmental scene.  While Obama has a few years to change my mind, he has, so far, failed to enact positive change with respect to the environment.

I want to be very honest here: I did not plan on liking Our Unprotected Heritage. In fact, I did not want to like it. Taken one level further, I wanted very badly to dislike the book. After reading it, I cannot say that I liked it, but I also cannot say that I disliked it. I believe the specific word to describe my feelings is “ambivalent.” In short, I don’t think King produced a book that said, or did, anything. Following are my thoughts.

First off, please note that I seek in my own life to resolve emotion, heritage, belief, knowledge and existence. That may be a tall order, but I believe that it can be done. What it almost inevitably leads me to is hypocrisy in my own life, and judgment and criticism of others. Such criticism leads me to the realization that, while another has created something, my criticism of it may well emanate from my own insecurity and inability to create. It’s all a vicious cycle. I express this only to clarify that while I am being critical in the following, I recognize that it may come from a position of insecurity. Basically, I believe that my criticism of King’s work might be accused of the very flaws of which I accuse him.

Let me begin with the cover and title of the book. I have expressed before that I react very harshly against things that smack of vogue, uneducated responses to any issue. While I do not mean to call King uneducated, because he has so much more knowledge on the subject than do I, I mean to make a judgment about the audience that I feel will likely pick up this book. This audience, I believe, have chosen their battle, they have become ever more entrenched in a system that seeks its own preservation to the ignorance (the culture, not the people within it) of the greater operation of the world. They are systems that are built upon process with little concern for a well-drawn philosophy. Though the philosophy exists, it is debated quite separately from the processes. It all becomes somewhat of a religion, the religion or preservation. Even the early preservation systems in our great nation were societies—clubs, or groups that met on a regular basis to discuss the conversion of the masses to their high-calling. The difficulty I have with this is the same struggle I have with a great part of the Christian world–or any other religion–it seems to me to be an uninformed following that reassures itself that its premises are right, moral, ethical and should be followed. I guess I am just jealous that I am not monetizing this faith. The point being that I feel that those who will read this book are those who want to reinforce their own perspectives an practices.

The cover, the title, by using terms like “whitewashing” and “destruction of our cultural…”—and even “Unprotected”—set the reader up for toking on preservationist pot. It immediately causes any person who believes himself to be informed to call up schemas of father communal property to save him from evil corporatism. And from word one in the book, the reader is not disappointed, for “Darkside Development Corporation” is at it again to raze every shred of evidence from the past. I knew right there exactly where the book was headed: these evil corporate Satans desire that nothing should be remembered and it is up to intelligent people to balance the scales. So with the help of some haphazard government intervention in the late sixties preservationists are at leading the charge to attack the developers and save that ramshackle shack that you grew up in. What I appreciated was that the line item preservationist mantra was not what King wrote.

Though King began the work with what might be considered standard preservationist arguments about heritage and environment, he did depart in that he chose the path of criticism of the very system that is usually touted as the salvation, or at least a primary tool of preservationists. To a degree I appreciated Ira Beckerman’s assessment in the Afterword. What I liked was that Ira indicated that there is a fundamental problem with the preservation systems at the cultural-philosophical level, rather than a problem immediately with the preservation systems. My appreciation for that assessment comes from the belief that there should be a strong philosophical underpinning to any process. And it was on that same level that I felt King’s argument failed. I struggled through the book to understand whether King thinks that the preservation systems (NHPA and NEPA in particular) should be used and revised, or abandoned altogether. I think that this feeling came from the fact that King himself is a little conflicted. While he seemed to praise the original construction and intent of the preservation systems, he was very critical of the processes that those systems use. He even identified himself as being a “fan of good process.” This conflict—that basically made the book unique—created a frustration for me as a reader when King would attempt to support the preservation systems and immediately u-turn and criticize them.

On a similar thread to his seeming two-faced presentation of the systems was the frustrating fact that even though he broached the subject of philosophy of preservation practice, there was little to no real discussion of its actual necessity. King’s argument, like so much within the preservation world, assumed that preservation is necessary and good, without explaining exactly why. Because of this, I would like to circle back to my prior argument of self-preserving groups—they usually attempt to keep followers busy with process and shield them from critical analysis of philosophy: “What you do is good and it has value because you are doing it.” There was a slight exception in the case of Our Unprotected Heritage and that came from King’s acknowledgement that preservation is not always the “good” thing when considering the human environment.

My last criticism of King’s book comes from the fact that it often read like a conspiracy theory. It was as if the Government and Corporations were/are working very closely together to destroy the natural environment of its people, at any cost. He talked about the blind “rubber stamping” of projects that maybe shouldn’t have gone forward without more criticism or more environmental assessments. But would follow up with things like, “It doesn’t take much imagination to guess” why they had not done those. One of the primary lessons that I have learned from academia is that conspiracy theorists are loonies that speculate about things that they don’t know and they can be spotted by their conspicuous use of phrases like “It doesn’t take much imagination.” (Maybe, but you do admit that it does take imagination). The point being that an academic worth his weight should be expected to stick to what is known and what can be proven. Journalistic speculation leads to innocent 17 year old high school track runners being plastered on the front of the New York Post as bombing suspects. There is room for interpretation, just don’t make yourself sound like a boob.

In the end, I didn’t really feel that King offered anything new. I felt the high points of the work were balanced by the lows, the valid arguments were offset by silly speculation, and his focus on process reform at the expense of philosophy equated to a wash. It was like I had read nothing. I couldn’t strongly like it or dislike it. It was not really new information, or even new interpretation. Ultimately, I am completely ambivalent toward it. From a critical standpoint it was like a chartreuse panel on a neon quilt, not off enough to make it stand out, not alike enough to make it blend in. Maybe that is a good thing. I really don’t know.

What I can say is that I am looking forward to discussion on the subject.

Chauncey DeVega’s article has to be the most biased piece of literature I have read in a long time.  According to DeVega, every conservative in America is a white supremacist racist or an idiot!  DeVega is sure to admit that there are a few “token Republican Negroes,” I wonder what DeVega would say to the descendants of a famous “token Repbulican Negro” like Martin Luther King, Jr.?  I had no idea that every American politician, including our current Black president, has sworn allegiance to a document steeped in white supremacy!? According to DeVega,  white supremacy is the “bleating heart” of the United States Constitution.  DeVega dismisses any view that doesn’t fall right in line with his own.  As for conservatives, Tea Partiers, Republicans, and other members of the New Right (most of whom are old, resentful, racist, frightened, and possessed according to DeVega), they deserve the right to have their views, just like DeVega has the right (ironically because of the very Constitution he so despises) to espouse his distasteful comments about individuals he clearly does care about (even if states otherwise).  As for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, they are striving to maintain cultural ties to their ancestors.  These individuals have the right to celebrate their culture just as the rest of America has the right to celebrate their culture.  I would charge DeVega to read the Constitution, in particular the Bill of Rights which lists rights of all citizens, not just individuals DeVega agrees with.

As for school textbooks, I think every historian should get a hold of a California-based US history book and a Texas-based US history textbook.  During my undergraduate career, I studied secondary education, I compared these textbooks and felt like I was reading about two completely different nations.  Reading a California-based text book, one will realize that diversity is pushed so far that key individuals in history (that happen to be white males) are replaced by less influential individuals simply because they are female or minority.  Reading a Texas-based text book, one might wonder how many “founding fathers” there really are, I for one had never heard of half of them.  California-based text books stress white oppression against all other individuals throughout America’s history, to the point that I wonder how a white student is able to read this history and still maintain a sense of pride in their nation.  Texas-based text books utilize terms like discrimination and division in society rather than slavery as much as possible, to the point that I wonder how an African American student with slave ancestors will be able to truly understand the history of their ancestors in America.  I could go on and on, but these two text book variations are the result of intense politicization of the educational process, a sad reality in an increasingly bureaucratic nation.  Why do we allow politicians, on either side of the aisle, to dictate what our children learn?  Why aren’t historians more involved in the process of curriculum development?  These problems will only be exacerbated with the use of the Common Core Standard.

I found Larry Cebula’s letter to be both hilarious and very sad at the same time.  Anyone reading this article will see the humor in the stories, but the fact that this many misrepresentations are being advanced at one location is disheartening.  I sincerely hope the individuals that received the letter begin to advance a fuller, more accurate explanation of the property they take care of.  Education outside of the classroom is just as important, if not more important, than education inside the classroom.  While I found parts of the return letter to be ironic, I do feel that the author has some fair points.  While we need to teach an accurate history of what happened in America, we also need to create citizens that are able to be proud of the nation they live in.  American children should know that slavery happened, that slavery was terrible, that the Civil War was directly tied to slavery, and that there are still things being done to try and right past wrongs (affirmative action…); but, Americans should also be taught about all of the great things in American history.  Educators and public historians should strive to present history in a manner that is true, but also in a manner that does no purposefully demean the United States time and time again.

Jeff Robinson brings to light very important questions for historians, scientists, politicians, civic leaders, and educators.  Robinson asks “How do we bring both the diversity of opinion and the question of specifically politicized values into our public history work, especially at sites and discourses where energy development, climate change, corporate exploitation, and agricultural shifts are prevalent?  In the case of my hometown, do we side with the activists using history-tactics, among other methods, or do we side with the majority that supports fracking?  Is it possible to belong in the middle?”  As a citizen, I have the right to my own opinion, and I have the right to come to that opinion how I so choose.  As a historian, I feel compelled to look up the facts as well as the general ideas of both sides of the conflict.  As an educator, I feel compelled to present both sides of the issue to my students; moreover, I feel compelled to encourage my students to assess the issue themselves before making an educated decision to side with one side or the other.

After reading about the National Museum of the American Indian and it’s not-so-perfect presentation of Native Americans, I find myself at a standstill.  I truly believe that anytime someone is exposed to something historically and/or culturally significant, this is a wonderful opportunity for discussion and education; therefore, a true learning experience exists in this museum.  I do feel that the museum should work towards to better representing Native Americans as they continue to exist and as they have existed historically.  While most social scientists contend that African Americans are the most oppressed racial group in American society (these social scientists reference slavery, institutionalized segregation, Jim Crow laws and Plessy v. Ferguson) the plight of the Native Americans is even greater than that of the African Americans.  Native Americans have been oppressed physically, spiritually, emotionally, sexually and culturally since the first white settlers “discovered” America.  Moreover, racism, oppression and genocide against Native Americans have been institutionalized for centuries and continue to plague Native American society as well as American society as a whole.  The greatest injustice befalling Native Americans lies in the continuous and overt neglect of the United States government, which has oppressed Native Americans externally and internally.  While the National Museum of the American Indian has great potential, I certainly hope they add to the museum in order to ensure people gain a more accurate understanding of the rich history that surrounds Native Americans.  As an aside, I fully intend on visiting the museum when I am in D.C. this summer.

 

 

As I get older, it seems that the ethical dilemmas in life become more confusing and seem to border on the absurd.   The issues that have to deal with presenting history correctly and accurately have gone the way that the Dodo has gone.  It can in part be blamed on the internet and all the pseudo histories and conspiracy theories that are being touted of.     The other part is our own ineptness of trying to keep historical places, institutions and events in their proper place and with historical accuracy.   The need to keep things accurate has to be preserved.  We, as future public historians can’t afford to be labeled as liars. The facts have to be presented in the best historical context given, and all politics should be moved to the wayside.  The Sons of Confederate Veterans need to really get their facts straight and say that the information that they have presented in no ways reflects that slaves actually fought for the South.  Unless it is a political institution, politics should never be insinuated and the institution should try to be as politically neutral as possible.

The thing that raised my ire the most was the article about the man presenting how the framers of the Constitution were, the types of men that this man thought they were and how religiously motivated they were.   It is truly amazing how the facts can be skewed in the name of religion.  One name that was not mentioned was that this guy was a member of the John Birch Society.  They are one of the main groups trying to give education about the Constitution, but it is their skewed version.   It is truly amazing how, older, male white men, in their 60’s, who probably never were in the Military or fought in Vietnam can try and educate our youth on how the Constitution works.  Enough soapbox, but it is very galling to say the least.

These articles did open my eyes to how narrow some peoples take on historical events and places happened.  I am so glad the blinders have fallen and that the truth can be shown on real names and events.  I am glad the writer of the letter called out the false inaccuracies in the “Munchhausen House”.  It was very appropriate to name this house after the man who was the biggest liar in the world.   That article made me look at even when people are given the facts, they will still tell their version of a skewed truth.

I would like to say that I had the time, and length of page to fully develop all of my thoughts and feelings on the subject of ethical quandaries in the practice of public history. I would like to say that I agreed with one or the other side, or that I felt it my passionate responsibility to correct others’ misinformation and misunderstandings. If only I could understand the community mindset that drives the academic practice and educational process, perhaps then I could say I agreed with something, anything, whole-heartedly. But the fact for me is that I do not. For myself it seems just as dangerous to toe the line of academic communally agreed upon knowledge as the right-wing nut-jobs that still insist on a White House conspiracy causing the nine-eleven attacks. The immediate argument on the academic side is to hedge bets, to err on the side of caution, to go where the evidence leads, to trust the convergence of evidence. On the other side there is the terribly persuasive—if not a little sexy—“How do you know that they are not all in collusion to lead you astray?” Now, aside from the questions of collusion and who “they” are, I must plead guilty to a inquisitive spirit that does not like to let a question be. What I mean by that is that even after academic history as an institution has thoroughly vetted a question and considers it answered, I will remain, firmly, stubbornly planted to any question that I do not feel has been fully and satisfactorily answered. I think that this behavior is relatively common among historians, but not absolute as this week’s readings indicated.

Typically, my issues with the readings were not so much with the immediate content, but with the philosophies that I see entrenched behind the content. It would seem that within the corporate world—what many would refer to as the “real world”—white, male, middle-aged humans hold the power and create relationships and groups that prop up their status and position in an effort to make more money, gain more power and ultimately have more control over things and people. It would also seem that these men are heartless at times and without concern in dealing with the starving human condition in which those in their employ exist. Nor does it appear that they care for the environmental impact of where their decisions lead. Because of this general appearance, middle-aged, white men become an easy target—often too easy a target—at whose feet may be laid the general grievances of society. The avant-garde of this army of grievance expressionists is another group, a group that attempts to be balanced, but who too often find themselves mired in almost the exact same self-preservation system, just on the opposite side of the coin: the academics.

Perhaps I’ll start with the extremely accurate quote of the Native American woman: “We’ve been trying to educate the visitors for five hundred years; how long will it take to educate the visitors?” I found this quote particularly interesting because it expresses the frustration in the education process, as well the rigid inability of education to adapt meaningfully to change. It seems to me that what is present in our society is not so much a problem with misinformation, as it is a complete lack of internal reflection on either party mired in the frustrating battle between money and knowledge. When I look at the education system, I see nothing more than I see among white middle-aged men vying for power, it just happens to be an internal struggle for who gets to corner the market on knowledge rather than money. The economics are the same, only the currency has changed. Ultimately, the educational system would have itself as the ultimate power, controlling who gets what through a system of knowledge exchange. Is this not the purpose in using history to stop fracking? Is it not the purpose in perpetually taking issue with a relative minority that believes the Civil War was over state’s rights? Is it not the case in trying to educate on American internal colonialism? While I will be the first to agree that there were horrible things that were done to indigenous, as well as exogenous people, and that certain attitudes persist, I am enormously critical of any system that seeks change by inversion, particularly when that system ultimately seeks the same thing that its antagonist does: power.

To me it seems that what we have is two identical systems each trying to raise its flag higher and higher while slinging mud at the other in a war to determine who rules. In such a ridiculous and juvenile engagement, I feel it is best to ally with neither. If that makes me a defector, a rat, or a double agent, I am okay with that. It’s not my battle. Even as a historian it is not my battle to correct every error I run across, I can’t. This is the reality that I live in, a reality that recognizes that people are people, they will draw their beliefs and emotions into any situation, that is what makes them human. For me to activate those emotions and beliefs in an effort to twist and warp them to seeing “my side” seems to me the greatest unethical practice. It is no different than playing their material greed to get them to carry out my material will. Ask yourself after reading each of the articles this week whether you agreed with them or disagreed with them merely because of evidence, or if it was because it was presented in an emotionally warping manner? For me, there was a lot of philosophical errors in the articles, they made huge assumptions about the power of education and purpose of history, issues which were not addressed. For these reasons I choose neither to unite with those historians, nor declare them an enemy.