General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: American education fails to teach us anything about American history. [View all]Manifestor_of_Light
(21,046 posts)LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME, by James Loewen. Basically he says that events are described in the third person, as if the causes are not known, in order to not offend any particular group, as if uprisings come out of nowhere and have no causes.
He also wrote LIES ACROSS AMERICA about biased Civil War and other historical plaques. And a textbook about Mississippi history that was upheld as accurate by the Federal Court of the Northern District of Mississippi (Loewen v. Turnipseed). And a book called "Sundown Towns".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W._Loewen
And also read A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES by Howard Zinn and A DIFFERENT MIRROR by Ronald Takaki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Different_Mirror
OVERVIEW from Wikipedia:
It deals with the subject of minority perspectives of multicultural America, incorporating quotes, folk songs, letters, telegrams, and photographs into the text. It deals with, in roughly sequential order, Native Americans, African-Americans pre- and post-slavery era, Irish, Mexicans, Chicanos, Chinese, Japanese, Jews, and ties up the book with a current (for the time the book was written) summary of where minorities are now. Each chapter talks about the history of a different ethnic group, and covers over a period of time public attitudes towards the minority, public policy, laws for or against the minority, and attitude of the minority towards their situation. Several groups are revisited at multiple points through their history.
One theme going throughout the entire book is the 'us against them' attitude that the ruling structure has towards the minorities, from the fear of the "giddy multitude" in colonial times, to the Chinese Exclusion Act being created to 'protect' white labor, to the modern day accusations that "Hispanics [...] tak[e] jobs away from 'Americans'"[1]
A related theme of the book is the pattern of capitalist owners pitting different immigrant groups against one another, as a strike-breaking tactic. For example, the book relates that the Order of the Knights of St. Crispin was unsuccessful in persuading Chinese workers to join the 1878 Chicago shoemakers' strike, when the latter were recruited as strikebreakers by shoe factory owners.
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The Warmth of Other Suns is also a good book.