Very few college professors want high school graduates in their history class who are simply "gung ho" and "rah-rah" with regard to everything the United States has ever done, have never thought critically in their life, don't know the meaning of the word "historiography" and have never heard of it. They think that history is something you're supposed to memorize and that's about it. That's not what high school, or what college history teachers want.
James W. LoewenThe antidote to feel-good history is not feel-bad history but honest and inclusive history.
James W. LoewenChristopher Columbus introduced two phenomena that revolutionized race relations and transformed the modern world: the taking of land, wealth, and labor from indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere, leading to their near extermination, and the transatlantic slave trade, which created a racial underclass.
James W. LoewenYou go to towns in Massachusetts, Greenfield, first settled in 1686. Wouldnโt it be cool if it said, โGreenfield. First settled c. 13,000 B.P. or approximately 13,000 Before the Present. Resettled.โ Maybe we could say even, โResettled by whites,โ Or, โResettled anyway, 1686.โ It would have a different impact. And of course it would help explain why the town is called Greenfield, because it was a green field and the fields were left by Native people who had already been farming them.
James W. Loewen