{"id":140461852,"date":"2024-01-10T13:30:51","date_gmt":"2024-01-10T13:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=140461852"},"modified":"2024-01-10T13:30:51","modified_gmt":"2024-01-10T13:30:51","slug":"a-little-history-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=140461852","title":{"rendered":"A Little History Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The hunger to unlearn what so many of us have been taught is pronounced” – Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, ‘An Indigenous People’s History of the United States”<\/h2>

Nazis unwelcome: here\u2019s my post about moving this blog off of Substack soon<\/a>. I might put this stinger on every post until then to try to irritate Nazi Sympathizer Hamish McKenzie<\/a>. I might forget\/get bored and stop. Not today though!<\/em><\/p>

Here\u2019s some information nobody asked for: I loved college. <\/p>

Mostly, I loved the constative facts of my college: an internally secluded campus both by a lake and a train station. Nature, city adventures, library, gym, lecture halls, food, bars, all my friends<\/em>\u2014these things were all a 10-minute walk. And yes, I included \u201clecture halls\u201d on purpose. <\/p>

Most lecture classes that are those big, 100-person Indiana Jones-style sermons are boring and impersonal, but if you get the right prof, they\u2019re incredible. Nothing\u2019s expected of you except sitting back and absorbing the information. I could spend the rest of my life taking pass\/fail lectures. It\u2019s part of the appeal of podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>

I can\u2019t do that, though. I have to take care of my kid and write to you all, my subscriber list of close personal friends. So I do things like turn my reading list into little mini-classes for myself, and then you all get to reap the pass\/fail benefits! Passing being \u201cclick the email open, they track those stats\u201d and failing being \u201ccome on, I\u2019m not actually gonna check.\u201d <\/p>

\"File:And<\/figure>

So not that anyone asked, but I\u2019m doing a little mini-class for the rest of January. This is less like my being your professor, and more like I\u2019m taking a class and these are my Blackboard posts. You! You lucky-so-and-so! You get to read my Blackboard posts! I told you no one asked for this!<\/p>

Speaking of things no one asked for: the United States! Let\u2019s read about its history. <\/p>

Who Wants To Read Some History!<\/strong><\/p>

The bare bones: I\u2019m going to simultaneously read A People\u2019s History of the United States<\/em> by Howard Zinn, Four Hundred Souls<\/em> edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, and An Indigenous People\u2019s History of The United States<\/em> by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. I\u2019ve divided all three books in rough sevenths (seven total posts left for January, including both Wednesday blogs and Friday Links). Do they completely line up together? Eh. I\u2019d post a full syllabus-style reading list, but frankly? I don\u2019t think anyone\u2019s going to follow along. If you\u2019d like<\/em> a syllabus, respond to this email and I promise to Fred Hampton that I will send you one.<\/p>

\"three<\/figure>

If I can figure out why colonialism and slavery happened even though tons of people didn\u2019t want those things<\/em>, can we figure out a way to stop climate change and AI tech and a fascist takeover of the US?<\/p>

\"File:People<\/figure>

Like anyone with a functioning brain, I get that US history cannot be understood without a Black and Indigenous perspective. Also, my parents got me Four Hundred Souls<\/em> Christmas 2022 and the bookstore near my house had an event for Indigenous People\u2019s History<\/em> a couple months back, and it kinda seemed like the stars were aligning, you know? Plus, not sure if you read the preceding paragraph, but Black and Indigenous people aren\u2019t exactly the ones responsible for what I think ails the world in 2024. <\/p>

Lastly, I\u2019m doing this because\u2014and I\u2019m sure this will be one of those things that comes as no surprise to anyone who\u2019s spent a second with me or my writing, but I have trouble admitting\u2014I\u2019m something of a recovering moralist. I think studying history, specifically history as told by people explicitly not<\/em> on the side of Empire, is a moral good. I think understanding the history of the land you live on is basic human decency, basic responsibility. And you cannot<\/em> understand the history of the U.S. if you don\u2019t get perspectives from Black and Indigenous writers, as well as a white writer who\u2019s sick of other white people. Read history! Then read some poets!<\/p>

Read This Week<\/strong><\/p>

A People\u2019s History of the United States <\/em>by Howard Zinn: \u201cColumbus, the Indians, and Human Progress,\u201d \u201cDrawing the Color Line,\u201d and \u201cPersons of Mean and Vile Condition\u201d<\/p>

Four Hundred Souls<\/em> edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain: Part One (1619-1659), Part Two (1659-1699), and Part Three (1699-1739)<\/p>

An Indigenous People\u2019s History of the United States<\/em> by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: \u201cIntroduction: This Land\u201d and \u201cOne: Follow the Corn\u201d<\/p>

Thoughts <\/strong><\/p>

Where to start with the beginning? Feels like I both learned a lot and didn\u2019t learn anything that wasn\u2019t already lurking in assumed knowledge somewhere. Details are striking, though. You can chart the linguistic evolution of oppression: \u201cterritorial organization\u201d becomes \u201cIndian removal.\u201d Slavehood status passed matrilineally, you can watch that be codified in legal documents. You can see whiteness<\/em> being defined\u2014I think maybe white people today think it\u2019s some sort of metaphor or sociology talking point, but really, you can see whiteness<\/em> as an allegedly superior yet corruptible concept being legally defined in this period. The first person publicly whipped for an interracial relationship was a white man who slept with a Black woman and had a Black son1<\/a>. The white man, per the charges, was guilty of dishonoring his own body and his community. <\/p>

Details are horror films, too: Zinn mentions a woman cutting the toes off an indentured servant, Herb Boyd in Four Hundred Souls<\/em> talks about a man arrested for participating in a slave rebellion having every bone in his body broken with a crowbar. Make no mistake, the colonizers brought no civilization and no god when they crossed the sea.<\/p>

\n

Why these books? Well, I should\u2019ve read Zinn in high school, like everyone else. I like the idea of a people\u2019s history<\/em>, a history divorced from \u201cGreat Man Do War.\u201d History should be a story for us<\/em>, and I often find myself wishing I could understand life in earlier eras. Not like, \u201chow\u2019d them pioneer women live<\/em> without washing machines?\u201d but more like, \u201cit really seems like things are bad and living in the 21st century is hard, what can we learn from the past?\u201d It\u2019s like what I mentioned last week with Working<\/em>\u2019s discussion of life being slower in the 70s, or like Zinn saying in the first essay that the people of Spain<\/em> sure didn\u2019t get rich off colonialism and we know Indigenous people didn\u2019t benefit from colonialism, so why\u2019d it happen? It\u2019s not remotely controversial to say the US is in crisis. 90 years after Hitler used the US\u2019s playbook on Indigenous genocide for the Jewish people of Europe, Israel is using Eichmann\u2019s playbook on the people of Palestine and Donald Trump\u2019s got Hitler\u2019s playbook on his nightstand<\/a>. I\u2019d like to learn something from the people who were on the opposite side of, say, the Virginia House of Burgesses. <\/p>