A Bias Against Western Civilization and the United States of America - Textbooks

     Last week, I received an email from a friend who pays a considerable amount of money to send her child to a reputable Christian school. She and a few other parents at the school were worried that the high school’s American history book was anti-Western Civilization, anti-Christian, and Socialist. Sadly, they were correct. The school leaders, like many in the United States of America, have chosen an anti-American American history book. It is unknown if the school leaders realized this when they chose the book, or if the teacher had the authority to use the text. To assist in trying to make the school leaders stop using this book, I reviewed the first few pages. Included below are my initial notes on the book.
Eric Foner’s American history book Give Me Liberty, An American History, in its first few pages, attempts to show that the European discovery, exploration, and colonization of the New World was a travesty and that Western society in North and South America was built on slavery, misogyny, a Christian religion that was a tool to use to justify mistreatment, and the subjugation of the great majority of people. Foner oversimplifies, generalizes, and cherry-picks anecdotes to fit his narrative while at the same time ignoring historical truths that contradict his story. To put it simply, in the first 13 pages, Foner shows Europeans as bad and Indians of North and South America as good. Europeans are portrayed as greedy, women-dominating males eager to exploit the social-minded, family-loving, and gentle American Indians. Foner’s book is less history than a tract promoting a Socialist interpretation of Western society. Foner portrays European actions and thoughts as aimed only at subjugation and dominance over others, and, he shows European society as one based on class, privilege, and gender. He writes about Christianity only as if it existed to support the political, economic, and social goals of Europeans and distinct from any real religious or spiritual meaning. Foner attempts to downplay any positive role Europeans had in North and South America and tries to show that Europeans did not enjoy any freedoms or liberties that were better than what Indians experienced at the time the two cultures met. At all times, Foner ignores any negative aspects of Native American societies, twists the meaning of private property, falsely portrays the history of slavery, belittles the development of individual liberty in western societies, and ignores the gender inequalities in Native societies.
            Examples:

1. Page 1: Foner belittles Columbus’ discovery of America by stating “Historians no longer use the word ‘discovery’ to describe the European exploration, conquest, and colonization already home to millions of people.”  This is false. Many historians use the term discovery. Foner attempts to destroy Columbus’ positive role in bringing Western Civilization to the Americas, and it starts with Columbus’ first act of discovery.
2. Page 1: Foner writes that “No society represents a single culture or people” and attempts to write that there actually was not a separate European culture at the time of Columbus. He tries to belittle the historical fact that Europe, from Columbus’ time on, was the dominant continent in the world in terms of political, social, and economic influence. He never tries to answer the question, “Why was Europe dominant from the 15th through the 20th centuries?”
3. Page 3: Foner falsely equates the development of freedom with the development of slavery in the New World. He writes, “The conditions that enabled millions of settlers to take control of their own destinies were made possible by the debasement of millions of others.” This is a false and historically inaccurate understanding of history of all people throughout time. The existence of slavery has existed throughout history. American Indians practiced slavery. But to claim that the European-American society was based on slavery is reductionist and incomplete, and the argument could be made that EVERY society was based on slavery until Great Britain began the movement to end slavery in the world in the 19th century. Slavery, as practiced in North and South America, was not unique in the world and therefore does not represent something unique. However, the development of liberty in America was unique in the world. Nowhere else could so many vote, speak freely, write what they wanted, and more. The development of freedom in America was exceptional. America’s practice of slavery in the South was common. Foner’s focus on slavery when it serves his purpose to denigrate the development of history is disingenuous.
4. Page 4: Foner writes, “History in North and South America did not begin with the coming of Europeans.” He is historically inaccurate. History means the written recording of human events. Before this is called prehistory. In North and South America, only the Mayas had a written language, a hieroglyphic system of 800 symbols. For all of the other Native Americans, history began in the New World with the Spanish.
5. Pages 1-10: In all of Foner’s explanation of the natives of the New World, there is nothing negative. There is no mention of the American Indian practices of human sacrifice, cannibalism, wife-stealing, polygamy, neglecting of children by fathers, destruction of the environment, lack of scientific knowledge of health, rape as common for prisoners of war or for slaves, abandonment of the elderly, theft as a form of ritual into manhood, etc. While Foner writes that it was simple for Spain to enlist other tribes to fight the Aztecs, he does not explain the horrific way the Aztecs treated those they conquered. The reader understands no historical context in learning about Native Americans and Europeans and is left to believe that the natives were good and the outsiders were bad. Students will not be able to understand the complexity of history when societies are misrepresented so simplistically.
6. Page 5: Foner writes, “Indian societies had perfected techniques of farming, hunting, and fishing” but he does not explain what he means by perfect. He writes about the Indians “perfecting” a number of things. The reader is meant to assume that no other society had learned how to farm, hunt, or fish better than the Indians. But, at many levels, this is false. Europeans were able to grow more crops in greater abundance, feed more amount of people, sustain a longer life expectancy, hunt more animals and fish quicker, and were more able to manage animal population much better than Native Americans. In the early 1500s, Europeans lived longer, were physically bigger and stronger, and had a wider selection of diet than Native Americans. When nomadic Indians overused an area of land, they moved on, leaving behind their waste. Europeans struggled to find ways how to remove and treat waste so that it would not be a detriment to their lives. Though not perfect, Europeans had better hygiene, better health care, better diet, and lived longer than Indians. Foner never attempts to discuss this.
7. Page 9: Foner cherry-picks the attributes of Indians in order to show them in the most positive light. He writes, “The most striking feature of Native American society at the time Europeans arrived was its sheer diversity. Each group had its own political system and set of religious beliefs,” but also, “Generosity was among the most valued social qualities, and gift giving was essential to Indian society.” Foner attempts to paint Native Americans as having completely unique societies, but at the same time, he tries to write that all Indians valued gift giving as a way of achieving or maintaining power. He gives no specific examples of this claim of gift giving. While gift giving was important among Indians of the Northwest, for Indians of the Northeast and the Plains, essential was a warrior’s and hunter’s prowess, not gift-giving.
8. Page 10: Foner writes, “Under normal circumstances no one in Indian societies went hungry or experienced the extreme inequalities of Europe.” He then cites one colonist’s quote to support his argument. However, Indians owned slaves who experienced depravities that Antebellum American society would believe as barbaric and inhumane. Indians of the Northeast and the Plains terrorized, raped, and murdered those they deemed as enemies or conquests. In addition, the Indian society Foner writes about consisted only of a number of families. If we compare that to prehistoric times of Western man, we could also make the argument that European prehistoric clans did not experience great differences in wealth. Everyone was equally poor and existed in poor conditions all the time. Foner’s comparisons between Indians and Europeans are between a prehistoric, nomadic people, and a pre-industrial, medieval society. He points out the differences only when it shows the Indians in a good light.
9.  Page 12: Foner writes, “Buying and selling of slaves was unknown.” This is historically false. Native Americans practiced slavery, bought and sold slaves, and gambled with slaves before and after Europeans arrived. No serious historian doubts this fact.
10. Page 13: Foner writes, “One conception common throughout Europe was that freedom was less political or social status than a moral or spiritual condition. Freedom meant abandoning the life of sin to embrace the teachings of Christ.” Foner attempts to belittle or destroy the idea that Western Civilization is the home of liberty. He completely ignores the European, and especially, English, concept of political rights, the development of individual rights in western society, the Magna Carta, and the development of the corporation in England in late medieval society. It is hard to understand how Foner could write about European freedom and not mention the political development of independent rights, limiting the power of kings, rights of noblemen, rights of serfs, and development of the free enterprise system. The only conclusion that can be made of Foner’s interpretation of European history is that Europeans did not enjoy greater rights and freedoms than Native Americans, but enjoyed a “different understanding” of rights. Under Foner’s understanding, neither society had a better experience of freedom, and the spread of European culture in the Americas did not mean the spread of freedom across the two continents. Foner’s anti-Western culture perspective is apparent in his misunderstanding and misrepresentation of liberty in the west.