Shorter Mark Steyn: Nobody Here But Us White Guys

And what kind of a name is "Steyn" anyway? Matthew Yglesias muses on Mark Steyn's refusal to think of women, Blacks, immigrants, et cetera as real Americans:

Matthew Yglesias: American History: Mark Steyn offers some typical conservative complaining:

Mark K, while I was down in Australia a while back, they had a big Education Summit going on, and the then Prime Minister, the great John Howard, used a marvelous phrase to me about how they wanted to teach Oz history — as an “heroic national narrative”. We don’t do that. In fact, we don’t teach it as any kind of coherent narrative at all. We’ve taken Cromwell’s advice to his portraitist to paint him “warts and all”, and show our kids all but solely the warts — spreading disease to Native Americans, enslaving blacks, interning the Japanese. Any non-wart stuff is mostly invented out of whole cloth: the US Constitution has its good points but they all come from the Iroquois, and the first Thanksgiving is some kind of proto-Communist celebration of collective farming.

A few months back, my little boy came home from Second Grade and said to me, “Guess what we learned today?” I said: “Rosa Parks.” He said: “How did you know that?” I said: “Because it’s always Rosa Parks.” And, if you don’t learn it in the context of any broader historical narrative, it’s just a story about municipal transit seating arrangements.

I’m fascinated by how common this depiction of American education is considering that it’s 100 percent false. No doubt there are bad history teachers and bad history classes in the United States, but anyone who’s vaguely in contact with reality can tell you that U.S. history is very much taught as a heroic national narrative. But since contemporary American conservatism is eye-deep in racism, Steyn can’t quite seem to grasp that teaching people about Rosa Parks and so forth is part of the heroic narrative of the victory of American ideals over the worst impulses of human nature. Similarly, the much-bemoaned-by-rightwingers greater attention given in recent decades to the contributions of women and ethnic minority groups is about trying to expand the circle of people who feel invested in the national narrative.

I don't think this depiction of American education is common at all. It is found largely in the pages of National Review and other publications even further into wingnutland. And, as Matt says, Mark Steyn cannot read this as part of the heroic American narrative of opportunity for all because he does not believe in that heroic American narrative.

Comments

[tom s.]

Mark Steyn was not, of course, born in the US of A. But you are welcome to him.

[shah8]

There is an influential Atlantic Monthly article from the mid-90s that devolves into foaming-at-the-mouth anti-multiculturalism.
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/95dec/chilearn/chilearn.htm

People in general resist multiculturalism because they just don't really know all that much about non-white history and how it's important. It's thouroughly amazing how much of an impact this has. General surveys on topics as diverse as artillery, sailing ships, medicine and the like typically leave out important countries like the Ottomans, Indians, and China, even though they played a rather huge rule in the development in many ideas. Check out Amazon, it's a really common complaint about these books.

In US history, people have to go out of their way and read a bunch of "niche" books to really grasp how fundamentally multicultural the US has always been, from the start. People *say* that we've always been multicultural, but they don't *grep* it--mostly because actually understanding that multiculturalism leaves a pretty bad impression of white people.

Since people aren't really in touch with their history, the sort of response that Professor Delong percieves as only occuring in right-wing outlets occur everywheres. It typically comes in the form of older stories about righted wrongs, like slavery and aboriginal extermination (although never, ever revealed in its full malevolent glory), but the closer it comes to the modern day, the more shoved in the closet bad things are, and the more the heroic narrative is emphasised.

For instance, one of those books that get recommended out in econ circles--Power and Plenty, by Findlay and O'Rourke is great when it comes to a reasonably balanced survey of the historical relationship between political and economic power, to a certain point. However, the closer it got to the modern world, the more passively ideological it became. No real discussion on colonialism and its relationship to the then and now. No real discussion about the more political aspects of the Great Depression, such as the fad for autarky and increased xenophobia. No real discussion about the third world debt crisis or the internal economic arraignments and international alignments of the Soviet Bloc. All of these were pretty important to the current political and economic system we have now. Without such an understanding, you wouldn't understand why China is a major exporter with good infrastructure for a third world country and India focuses on exporting services with crappy infrastructure. You wouldn't understand why Subsaharan Africa, say, is a hellhole and most of SE Asia isn't. It just defaults to racism, usually.

[DrDick]

As someone professionally involved in Native American history, I can testify that it is almost impossible to get any serious consideration of Indian-white relations or their impact on the development of the republic in American history in public schools (and often in college courses as well). No mention at all of the role of the deerskin and fur trade or Indian slave trade in the capitalization of the Plantation system in the southern colonies. No mention of the impact of the Great Lakes and Midwestern fur trade on the development the mid-Atlantic and Northern colonies or western expansion into the Great Plains and Northwest. The fur and skin trades generated millions of dollars in profits and were the driving force of much early exploration of the west, but totally ignored in basic American history courses.

[wcw]

And, jeez, second grade? US history is nothing if not a heroic national narrative when taught to seven-year-olds. Lying about the big things to suit ideology is one thing, but lying about second grade? That's low.

[Bloix]

But if may indulge myself in that time-honored move of taking the right-wing position and flipping it into a left-wing attack: It IS always Rosa Parks. And MLK ("I have a dream," no more), and George Washington Carver, and Jackie Robinson - a bunch of heroic individuals who appear in two-dimensional glory, and there's never a hint of context. It's all Great Americans, one after another, in a parade of full color posters.

[Bernard Yomtov]

I don't get Steyn's complaint about Rosa Parks and "broad historical narrative."

Yes, one should teach about the context - segregation, oppressive and even murderous racism. But isn't that a giant wart on US history, and isn't the battle to overcome them, fought primarily by racism's victims, a heroic narrative, as Yglesias says?

Maybe Steyn's problem is that you can't really tell that story without identifying the villains as well as the heroes, and he doesn't want to do that.

[DrDick]

WCW & Bloix - It remains a heroic national narrative focusing on "great men" (with an occasional woman thrown in) throughout k-12 and all too often in college survey classes. In college survey classes you generally do start to see a bit more context, however. Full disclosure: I am a historical anthropologist, not a historian.

[DrDick]

Bernard - I think Steyn's problem, from what I have read of him, is that he identifies rather strongly with the villains of this struggle.

[Frank the sales forecaster]

To the southern conservative Rosa Parks represents a failure in our heroic narrative, and not at all "the victory of American ideals over the worst impulses of human nature." I would say they see it as instead a failure of American ideals over the worst impulses of human nature.

[Leila Abu-Saba]

This happily hybrid, multi-cultural American has a second-grader in the house. He already knows what the conversation is going to look like when the topic is Martin Luther King.

"Do you know that Dr. King wrote a letter to Grandma?"
"Yes, when she was in jail."
"And why did she go to jail?"
"To help Dr. King."
"To help America change so that the rules would be fair to everybody."
"I know that, mom. But did grandma really go to jail?"
"Yes, she did."

Jailbird Grandma would be his WASP Grandma with the family roots going back 380 years in Virginia. She was a 21-year-old senior at an elite Virginia women's college when she conspired and implemented the first integrated sit-in in the South. Front page headlines in all the papers including the Washington Post. A trial. A threat of expulsion from the college which the college president evaded. 30 days in the county clink for "felony trespass", commuted to 20 for good behavior. She emerged in time for her final semester in which she performed her senior organ recital, sewed her wedding dress, and got As in her religion and politics classes. People told her she would never get a job in the south but 15 years later she did.

We are darned proud of this family narrative that matches up with the larger historical narrative, and I bring it up every chance I get. My children have Anglo surnames (their father is Jewish on his mother's side, so in combination with my own half-Arab genes they are 50% Semitic but they look and are named utterly Anglo) so I feel it's exceptionally important that they understand how this heroic narrative is part of who they are, not just a story about "others."

I'm sorry that Mark Steyn thinks this story has nothing to do with him. With a name like Steyn he really ought to know better. The white supremacist WASP milieu out of which my mother arose did not look too kindly upon Steyns, either. Thank God we know better than to ignore or dismiss people's narratives, the tragedies as well as the triumphs. "Never forget" applies to all of us with our complex cultural and racial histories.

[Leila Abu-Saba]

Thank you, Shah8 for the link and your lucid comments: "In US history, people have to go out of their way and read a bunch of "niche" books to really grasp how fundamentally multicultural the US has always been, from the start."

This is true of California history, as well. The idea that this state has ever been fully white is just self-delusion. We were Native American, then mixed with mixed Spanish, African and miscellaneous for 75 years or so, then invaded by and mixed with Anglo-Euros along with imported Asian slave labor. That stew has been fermenting with regular infusions of new ethnicities and races for the last 160 years.

The poet Dana Gioia (a Republican I believe) has written how his upbringing in Los Angeles was Latin, not Anglo, as he was raised among Italians and Mexicans and educated in the Catholic Church. Etc. Straight-up Anglo-descended WASPs always have been a minority or arriviste culture in this state and need to remember that.

[Leila Abu-Saba]

A post with a picture of my mother at the lunch counter and another of her on her way to court:

http://bedouina.typepad.com/doves_eye/2008/01/my-mom-and-dr-k.html

[DrDick]

Leila Abu-Saba - On that note, another hidden narrative is the role of Lebanese itinerant peddlers in the settling of the American west. One of those families controlled one of the largest wholesale grocery supply companies in the central US in the 70s.

[Leila Abu-Saba]

Yes, the Arabs (Syrians/Lebanese) have a long history in the USA; it's most documented starting the 19th century but there are records of Arab immigrants in 18th century NYC. The World Trade Center was built on a block of streets that had been an Arab/Syrian/Lebanese district before it was cleared to build the twin towers.

Gregory Orfalea of Pitzer College has written a good scholarly history of Arab Americans, updated recently:

http://www.amazon.com/Arab-Americans-History-Gregory-Orfalea/dp/1566566444

And my neighbor, teacher and mentor Elmaz Abinader has written an amazing memoir, Children of the Roojme, which is out of print but can be obtained. She found two hundred years of family letters - in five languages - to document her memoir of her Arab-American family. Her father, who eventually settled in West Virginia, traded goods in a canoe on the Amazon.

[Leila Abu-Saba]

Also - your Hagar trousers... and Sammy Hagar - somebody still needs to do the definitive work documenting Arab-Americans of Texas and Louisiana.

[DrDick]

Leila - One of the surprising things I discovered in the course of my own research was the presence of large numbers of fairly prosperous Jewish families in the South (I am a Southerner/Border Stater by upbringing) in the 18th and early nineteenth centuries. Many of them were Sephardic Jews.

[Hedley Lamarr]

Becky Sharp was involved with a Steyn. That one was a bad'un as well.

[Bernard Yomtov]

DrDick,

Many were also German Jews. Lehman Brothers, for example, was founded in Montgomery in the mid-19th century.

[DrDick]

Bernard Yomtov -

Most of the German Jews arrived after the period I was looking at (1700 to 1840), arriving, as my paternal ancestors did, in the late 1840s.

[DrDick]

Bernard - You remind me of another interesting sideline. A friend of mine in graduate school (U or OK) was a Jew from Dallas. I assumed that, like most Jews in the region, his family had moved to Texas in the early 20th century from the Northeast or Midwest when eastern financial corporations moved in during the original oil boom. Turns out that his family had emigrated to Vera Cruz, Mexico, in 1848 and then traveled north to the Rio Grande. They settled there and established themselves as ranchers. In the early 20th century, they branched out and operated a mercantile business as well. In that capacity, they show up in the Bureau of Indian Affairs records for southwestern Oklahoma (with the names Julio and Fernando Wormser, they rather stood out). It seems they had developed a sideline running guns to the Villistas in Mexico, buying peyote and transporting it north to southwest Oklahoma to sell to the new Native American Church. The ranch was still operated by my friend's uncle in the 1970s, though they had shifted from cattle to produce. So my friend came from a long line of Jewish cowboys who played an important role in the development of the Native American Church.

[Bernard Yomtov]

DrDick,

Yes. It is true that the earliest Jewish Americans were predominantly Sephardic. Touro Synagogue in Newport, the first in what is now the US, is Sephardic, for example.

My impression, which you may feel free to confirm or refute, is that this is true of early Jewish settlers throughout the Americas, at least partly because of the Inquisition.

[DrDick]

Bernard -

That is my understanding as well and I know there are many in South America, though that is not my area of expertise (which is Native Americas with an emphasis on those of the American South).

An interesting situation exists in northern New Mexico where a large number of Hispanic families discovered that they were of Jewish descent when some used those online genetic testing services (they carry a high percentage of the Kohanim marker). Seems their ancestors had nominally converted to Catholicism during the inquisition, but they retained many Jewish customs. Many do not eat pork and light candles and play with dredles at Christmas.

[G'day]

The best way to annoy people who approve of John Howard's, "heroic national narrative," seems to be to refer to aborigines as Australians. Trying to work out how anyone could consider indigenous Australians as not being Australian is a rather mind blowing experience.

[Paul Camp]

It isn't an entirely inaccurate description (albeit with a wingnut slant) of a number of schools. My wife teaches K-5 general music in a school that is almost entirely black and another that is predominantly hispanic. When she introduces, say, Italian tempo terms and asks the kids if they know where Italy is, they invariably respond "Africa." Their fallback position is "Mexico." Beyond that, they don't know. They can tell you all about Crispus Attucks but nothing about George Washington.

Now clearly this school has gone overboard in the role model building game and the kids are acquiring a seriously distorted picture of the globe, as well as history. That isn't really doing them any favors in the long run. But the motivation is wildly different from what Steyn imputes.

[michael e sullivan]

Now clearly this school has gone overboard in the role model building game and the kids are acquiring a seriously distorted picture of the globe, as well as history.

Although, it is important to note, probably no more distorted than the picture pretty much all kids got in history classes until fairly recently and many (most?) still do.

Imagine the picture if Steyn and company had their way with the curriculum. It would probably make my fairly bog standard privilege blind, but moderately well-meaning white upper middle class American history course in the early 80s look positively multicultural. We actually talked about manifest destiny as problematic, and things like slavery, trail of tears and Jim Crow as stains on the American ideals of liberty and justice for all.

[ned]

Of course conservatives don't believe in a heroic American narrative. They don't believe in democracy; they talk and behave like people who believe in monarchy. The American Revolution passed them by, with its odd notions of equality. Heck, with beliefs like that, women, children and slaves could get quite uppity.

[johne]

Verging off-topic, perhaps DrDick, Bernard Yomtov, or someone else here could address the claim of a young German researcher I met many years ago in Central America: that there were a number of early Hispanic Muslim communities in Spain's New World, Mexico and Guatemala in particular. In his account, the settlers had arrived by skirting the regulations meant to favor "good" Castilians, and generally survived by keeping to themselves and maintaining a low profile. Nevertheless, he said that there was contemporary documentation that mentioned the Muslim settlements, and suggested that much of it had been ignored because it was in Renaissance Church Latin ecclesiastical records.