Dana Milbank, columnist at the Washington Post, has read several of the laws intended to remove “critical race theory” and “divisive concepts” from the teaching of American history in schools. Governors like Glenn Youngkin in Virginia and Ron DeSantis in Florida want to roll back the clock to a time when white children never heard anything that unsettled them about slavery, segregation, racism, and brutal attacks on people of color.
Milbank was able to obtain a copy of a history textbook used in Virginia’s schools from the 1950s to the 1970s. It contained a whitewashed version of slavery that would not make any white student uncomfortable but must certainly have been upsetting for black students. His column was titled “Glenn Youngkin’s No-Guilt History of Virginia for Fragile White People.”
He wrote:
So how would history sound denuded of anything potentially distressing for White kids? We don’t have to guess, because we’ve already been there. I have an actual 7th-grade textbook used in Virginia’s public schools from the 1950s through the 1970s — when Virginia began moving toward the current version of history: the truth.
I therefore present these verbatim excerpts from the textbook (“Virginia: History, Government, Geography” by Francis Butler Simkins and others), shared with me by Hamilton College historian Ty Seidule, author of “Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause.” Let’s call it “Glenn Youngkin’s No-Guilt History of Virginia for Fragile White People.”
“A feeling of strong affection existed between masters and slaves in a majority of Virginia homes. … It was to [the master’s] own interest to keep his slaves contented and in good health. If he treated them well, he could win their loyalty and cooperation. … The intelligent master found it profitable to discover and develop the talents and abilities of each slave. … The more progressive planters tried to promote loyalty and love of work by gifts and awards.”
“Many Negroes were taught to read and write. Many of them were allowed to meet in groups for preaching, for funerals, and for singing and dancing. They went visiting at night and sometimes owned guns. … Most of them were treated with kindness.”
“The tasks of each [house slave] were light. … They learned much about the finer things of life. The house servants took a great deal of pride in their comfortable positions. …The field hands … were given a rest period at noon, usually from one to three hours. Those who were too old or too sick to work in the fields were not forced to do so. … The ‘task system’ … gave them free hours after they finished their daily tasks. … The planter often kept a close eye upon [the overseer] to see that the slaves were not overworked or badly treated.”
“Each slave was given a weekly ration consisting of three or four pounds of pork and plenty of corn meal and molasses. To this food were added the vegetables, fruits, hogs and chickens which the slaves were allowed to raise for themselves. … When a slave was sick, tempting food was often carried to him from the master’s table. … At [Christmas,] extra rations and presents were given the slaves.”
“Male field hands received each year two summer suits, two winter suits, a straw hat, a wool hat, and two pairs of shoes. … Often the members of the master’s family would hand down to their favorite slaves clothing which they no longer needed. … [The slaves] loved finery.
“Every effort was made to protect the health of the slaves. … It was the duty of all mistresses to give sick slaves the same care they gave their own children.”
“The house servants became almost as much a part of the planter’s family circle as its white members. … A strong tie existed between slave and master because each was dependent on the other. … The regard that master and slaves had for each other made plantation life happy and prosperous.”
“[The slaves] liked Virginia food, Virginia climate, and Virginia ways of living. Those Negroes who went to Liberia … were homesick. Many longed to get back to the plantations. … It must be remembered that Virginia was a home as much beloved by most of its Negroes as by its white people. Negroes did not wish to leave their old masters.”
“Life among the Negroes of Virginia in slavery times was generally happy. The Negroes went about in a cheerful manner making a living for themselves and for those for whom they worked. … They were not worried by the furious arguments going on between Northerners and Southerners over what should be done with them. … The negroes remained loyal to their white mistresses even after President Lincoln promised in his Emancipation Proclamation that the slaves would be freed.”
There you have it. Historically wrong and morally bankrupt — but for tender White minds, discomfort-free.
“The house servants became almost as much a part of the planter’s family circle as its white members.” Not exactly, but thanks to rape, they often were members of the same family. Read “Slaves in the Family” by Edward Ball.
Or “The Slave Auction,” from Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States (1853). The auctioneers saved the bidding on the girls and young women to the end of the day because this is what those good Christian white gentlemen were most interested in.
And thank you, Ms. Watter. Nailed it.
And this short essay, “Venus in Two Acts,” by historian and professor of English (Columbia) Saidiya Hartman. Essential reading, but not for the faint of heart.
Click to access hartman-2008.pdf
Ugh. Definitely not for the faint of heart.
To my mind, this masterpiece by Dr. Hartman begins the work of evoking the enormity of the gaping maw of loss that the unspoken and unspeakable history of the victims of slavery presents to us. We must not allow the racists to erase what little is left of their history. We must honor their unspoken and unrealized lives in the struggle against these creeps who would rather we forget. The insistence that we forget is recapitulation of the violence these people were subjected to, and that insistence is unpardonable.
“Milbank was able to obtain a copy of a history textbook used in Virginia’s schools from the 1950s to the 1970s”
It explains a lot though doesn’t it? That up until say 1975 a huge group of people were indoctrinated into this cartoon, wholly fanciful version of US history. They would be in their 60’s and 70’s now. Tens of millions of Americans, probably a majority, because I’m not sure northern states were any better- Ohio certainly wasn’t.
My Texas classroom used the same US history textbook. The textbook publishers had a Northern edition and a Southern edition. We had the Southern edition.
an essential distinction
I used the Current, Williams, and Fridel when I was in high school.
This was certainly the history I learned in school in South Carolina. My mother was a history teacher and took her classes to museums and Fort Sumter. We were taught to be proud of our southern heritage, not what it was really like to be a slave.
And, there were people born into slavery who were still alive when these text books were being used.
A fascinating and important observation. This isn’t ancient history. Yo/u can reach back and touch it, and its consequences are very much alive right now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_last_survivors_of_American_slavery
There is an important corollary to this. This scrubbing of history is not just focused on schools. I recently read Leonard Moore’s incredible Teaching Black History to White People and was interested in what others on Goodreads or Amazon might have to say. On the Amazon site was an obviously racist person who gave it a low rating and then proceeded to rail against any interpretation of slavery as false before going on to repeat drivel about how Blacks owned slaves or fought for the South which, even if true, are episodic anecdotes at best. And that’s being pretty charitable. It can be found here, 5th comment down as of now: https://amazon.com/Teaching-Black-History-White-People/dp/1477324852/
Then, because I was interested in some early 19th century American history, I looked up a book by Alan Taylor I read about a while ago and found the same thing. It started with a Youngkin/Mace-like innocence, but then it got to the point pretty quickly. “In American Republics, Taylor characterizes western settlers as rapacious thieves of Indian lands–and many of them were–but others just wanted prosperity for their families, and the land that was available was to the west. Again we get the bad side but not the good side.” That’s a pretty good example. https://www.amazon.com/american-republics-continental-history-1783-1850/dp/1324005793
When I went to another of Taylor’s book, same thing. A lot of them have a bunch of likes, so it seems there’s some sort of support network disseminating and promoting this. It will seep into other places.
Don’t think it’s related to this, but we all know how newspapers are dying because of media and corporate profiteering. We have a new thing here. In-depth pieces done not by local reporters, but loaned out people from, wait for it, Report for America (https://www.reportforamerica.org). I don’t have to go into any detail here about what this means. But Gannett seems to love it. The dumbing down of America, an essential prerequisite for fascism, moves on and spreads. Intentionally and unabated.
I wonder if Report for America has Dana looking over his shoulder. His “lesser” colleagues sure are.
Check out the Amazon reviews for The 1619 Project or any other book critical of white racism.
Oh, I have! It’s become an occasional obsession. What is interesting to me is that it’s not just the usual suspects like The 1619 Project, but even fairly obscure books and films.
I’ve visited some former slave quarters still standing in Louisiana and Mississippi. The slave quarters were little more than crude cabins that provided minimal protection from the weather. They certainly didn’t appear to be happy places for anyone.
Yesterday I had to go an appointment in Pensacola. I noticed a huge amount of construction on the Pensacola Christian College campus. The college is building more dorms and adding space to its Abecka publishing company. They publish home school materials that are not only “whitewashed,” they are inaccurate. Business must be thriving for this right wing Christian institution.
I used to live under the shadow of Jefferson’s Montecello. Whenever I had visitors from elsewhere in the country, they would insist on going up there, and so, for this reason and out of plain interest, I went there many, many times, and the first thing I would do is take my visitors out back of the mansion to visit the quarters of the enslaved so that they could then compare these to the opulence with which Jefferson himself lived.
Yikes. Monticello
Monticello was also the place where I heard first about Sally Hemmings some years ago. A wonderful aftican-american lady took us through the garden and out buildings in a fascinating interpretation of its history. They were obviously trying to come to terms with the history and its reality.
This is much of what I learned during the Fifties as a Philadelphia public school student.
I cannot help sharing some local history from a family I know well. Like the majority of southern families, this family owned one or two slaves. Christmas was coming, so The owner told his slave that he could have Christmas off. It was ordered that the slave supply the hearth with a backlog. When that backlog burned up, he would have to return to work. The enterprising slave went down to the river and cut a sycamore tree. He then threw it into the river for a day or so before he brought it up to the house. For those of you who know wood and how it burns, you know how this turns out. Long after Christmas, the owner went down to the slave’s quarters to beg the slave to come back to work.
I think I learned this story from the family descended from the slave, and I think it was confirmed by the family of the master.
This story says nothing of slavery in general. You cannot generalize individual relationships and call it history. The Virginia history from the textbook mentioned above sins by doing this. One humorous anecdote does not qualify as proof of a generality in history.
The toleration, however, of one atrocity does say something about society. Slave states routinely tolerated violent behavior toward slaves, even as free states like California passed laws allowing citizens to be paid to kill its aboriginal people. We should never whitewash the harsh past. Our understanding of the violent past should strengthen our resolve to create a just society in spite of our past, perhaps because of it.
The right wing today is fond of suggesting that we cannot build a great nation by making everybody feel guilty. I would add that the only people who would really feel guilt for their past are people who have a deep understanding that they are themselves guilty of similar attitudes that produces the toleration of atrocity by modern standards.
Well said. Only by understanding past mistakes, can we go forward with the intentions of doing better in the future.
If the Republicans win the House and Senate in the midterms and hold onto these while winning the presidency in 2024, then the 1950s textbook will be a little preview of the 1776 curriculum to come in American schools.
Back to the future. Way, way back.
and the scary thing about back to the future is that this is the fascist playbook. Always was. Mussolini wanted to go back to the Roman Empire to find Italy’s future. Hitler looked back to the German mythology to create his own future. Back to the future is just back.
Roy sticks the landing!
The Russian Judge gave me a 2
Haaa!
There’s a lot of documentation about how, especially Himmler and the SS, tried to create a state religion that was based on a pre-Christian, pagan model. The Raiders of the Lost Ark (that bad guy looked suspiciously like Himmler) wasn’t history, but there was a slight thread of connection to some reality.
A Russian two is a Des Moines six or seven.
Why did they call the hero Indiana Jones? Sounds about as exciting as Deleware Bob
A slight suggested revision:
“There you have it. Historically wrong and morally bankrupt — but for racist White minds, it’s included with MAGA.”
And the canyon between RED and BLUE states grows wider.
I wonder if those fascist RED states will also force teachers to stop teaching about the Civil War as if it never happened.
You mean, ofc, the War of Northern Aggression
I visited Charleston, SC, about 20 years ago and toured some of the wonderful antebellum homes. I vividly recall the white Southern lady who introduced me to the term “the War of Northern Aggression.” I had grown up with “the War Between the States,” then called it “the Civil War.” This was new.
And then there’s “The Lost Cause”
And we’ve been fighting the Southern War of Regression ever since. “Bashed our head against the future, ever South.”
How the Lost Cause Was Won
“Let’s call it “Glenn Youngkin’s No-Guilt History of Virginia for Fragile White People.””
How about: “Let’s call it “Glenn Youngkin’s No-Guilt History of Virginia for Regressive Reactionary Snowflake Whiteys.”
Jan 6; “Normal political discourse ” The result of the failure of true accountability for sedition in 1865.
Those lines from the textbook enrage and frighten me. Being in a red state with a lot of “transparency” bills currently before the Legislature (at least four that I know of), this is the sort of garbage they will want us to teach kids. Makes me physically ill.
Here’s a letter-to-the-editor of the Roanoke Times, from a former social studies teacher, praising Virginia’s “newly elected governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general” who are, he claims, “all brilliantly aware of where our education system came from and how it was created.” Obviously, not true.
He bashes, repeatedly “liberal socialists” repeatedly, warning that they want to “control the thinking of our children to be anti-our nation and anti-God,” and that, thankfully, ” Virginia woke up last November and threw off the dark dictatorship foisted upon us by liberal socialists.”
https://roanoke.com/opinion/letters/letter-thankful-for-new-administration-in-richmond/article_efd2db2c-847c-11ec-8ed9-231e198bf6b8.html
You have to wonder how this guy taught history and government for forty years without understanding either discipline. And you have to wonder what kind of dogmatic tripe he foisted on his students.
“The house servants became almost as much a part of the planter’s family circle as its white members. …”
Well, in Thomas Jefferson’s case (and probably many other cases as well), the house servants were quite literally a part of the family circle — they were Jefferson’s children!!
“A feeling of strong affection existed between masters and slaves in a majority of Virginia homes”
Not sure about a majority of homes, but in many homes male slave masters like Jefferson certainly had strong sexual “affection” for their female slaves.
I somehow doubt the feelings were mutual, especially not in the case of masters raping children.
Is it possible to do this after much of the knowledge they want to ban is already out there?
can you put the toothpaste back in the tube?
No, you cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube. Everything the censors want to ban is available on the internet in cruder form. Young people do not grow up in a bubble.