Bivens understands that what history is taught will shape how we will imagine the nation should be. Bivins historical memory is all about maintaining a pantheon of white heroes and of course there are no African American or white abolitionist heroes. But it is also about substituting hero worship in place of looking at the actual history of the United States and its issues. She is annoyed at lectures on share-cropping, anti-imperialism, origin of ideas in America, ideas leading to the New Deal, but rather the meeting being a series of lectures on American heroes. ******* Note on page 57 her reference that Southerners, “are as yet of almost pure descent from the first American stock.” The implication that the in other sections there is impure descent. Anglo-Saxonism, the idea that white people from Britain were racially superior, was a common idea in neo-Confederate writing. In her writing it is these origins, held to be “pure,” which result in Southerners possessing “genuine Americanism.” The implication is that other sections of the nation with their impure descents don’t possess a “genuine Americanism.”
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The author of this text owns over 30 American history textbooks. They vary from poor to appalling. Bring down the Confederate monuments and deracializing the landscape is important, but white supremacy is taught subtly in the American history text books. If it wasn’t for our American history textbooks the Confederate monuments would have been taken down generations ago. Many Americans are not fond of history and suspect that history that they were taught in the schools was full of patriotic lies. It might be if the history that was taught wasn’t patriotic fluff and was a history with both tragedy and triumph it might be of interest to students. If you wonder why that for many black lives don’t matter, look to the American history textbooks used in our public schools. We teach that black lives don’t matter.
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