The sheer capacity of harm done by Colombus and the Spaniards itself is overwhelming, but the fact that history books tell a completely different story demonstrates one of the biggest flaws today. Not only was the violence and brutality skimmed over, but scenes were painted about Native Americans that painted them as less than human, less than civilized: glorifying colonization Zinn’s comment that “the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress that is still with us” really struck me as pure truth. This quote is a truth that reveals itself in history books, in many of the holidays we celebrate, and especially in the things we don’t talk about.
There are so many examples of this acceptance of atrocities: the treatment of the mentally ill, the story we tell about Thanksgiving, the land taken from Native Americans. And even further are things we attempt to completely leave out. I was 19 years old when I learned about the United State’s sterilization efforts. Our time of Eugenics only ended in the 1970s. My parents were just out of college then.. American history books completely leave out the fact that America was huge on the sterilization of disabled people and was called to Germany to teach their methods… We talk about the holocaust, it is too large of an atrocity to accept, but that detail that America not only played a part initially but also participated in the sterilization of peoples without their consent is left out of the modern-day history textbook.
it is mind-blowing how little we know of our true history. Just thinking about how this is true for most countries, painting completely different pictures of who the victims are, hiding away the dark side of the past. This is where biases begin to form: when we are just beginning to learn in school. This creates negative biases around nationalities, religions, cultures of others, preventing genuine human connection cross-culturally. And few people have the opportunity to read things like this to gain awareness and work toward unraveling these biases and looking for that wider truth. So not only are people reading romanized histories of their own societal past (which I would argue hunters true human progress), but this creates dividing lines as we romanticize ourselves and falsely demonize others.
You make incredibly interesting points about the hiding of our history. Your example of American sterilization of the disabled truly points this out, as I was entirely unaware of a U.S. connection to Germany in their pursuit of a more able population. This shows how hypocritical it is when we trash other countries for censoring their history. For example, Americans found the hiding of the Tiananmen square massacre to be disgusting, yet we hide our history to an extreme extent
Thank you for bringing up eugenics! I recently learned about that particular topic in my LDST 101 class this semester and it blew my mind. We always blame Hitler for “brainwashing” the Nazis or pardon the Nazis for simply following orders, but we ignore our part of birthing the science of eugenics. We also forget that it didn’t take much for Hitler to convince his followers. In that era, believing in superior genes and that certain populations were lesser were notions accepted world-wide. Hitler simply manufactured the process in an atrocious and historical way. Nobody teaches that in the history books.
I like your comments about biases. I am especially starting to think about how this could impact how we view other countries like you states above. My research project is on the Israeli Palestinian conflict and I am starting to see parallels between this reading and how the US (and other countries) view Israel. I went to Israel a few summers ago and before I went, so many people made biased comments to me about how dangerous, unethical, and violent the country was when that is simply not the case 24/7 in Israel. Therefore, it is important to understand how our history can be shaped differently because it can impact how we view other countries.
This quote stuck out to me too and you give some really good examples of accepted atrocities. Its crazy how much history is hidden from us.
I really appreciated how Zinn actually analyzed the lack of human progress resulting from those sacrifices, making such atrocities unethical from a consequentialist perspective. As a non-consequentialist, this makes me feel like we should always approach things from a non-consequentialist perspective, because we can’t guarantee the outcome will be what we want.