Loewen Chapters 5-8

James T DabbagianCSU Long Beach

Gone with the wind

The interpretation of slavery in textbooks

CHOCOLATE RAIN

Most of our popular culture is blended with race in some form

Question One

How is this examination of this chapter ethnographic in a sense?

Question Two

Does Ethnocentrism play a role? If So, how?

Abraham Lincoln and John Brown

The disappearance of Anti-racism in

textbooks

Sane

INsane

Several textbooks from 1890 to 1970 treated John Brown as insane

Abraham Lincoln

Anti-racist

I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon

principle, and making exceptions to it: Where will it stop?

Not a one.

Most of Lincoln’s anti-racist remarks are left

out by authors.

Questions?

• Does Ethnocentrism play a role in leaving out Brown and Lincoln? If so, how?

• What does the portrayal of these individuals in these textbooks say about our culture?

The Land of Opportunity

Social Class

Misrepresentations of the poor and working

class

The middle class has only gotten better.

We’re all part of the middle class!

Bull.

Social class is still present

But history writers don’t write about it.

Cultural Materialism

How does it work?

Watching Big Brother

The same state as 1789

Morality Play

America: Protector of liberty, Truth,

Democracy, and the world.

Business Influence gets left out

Halliburton

The Oil industry

The tobacco industry

Nonexistent in high school classes.

US is the good guy, bad parts go blank.

Questions

• Ethnocentrism plays another role here. Why?• Is it Americentric?

General Questions

• What are these chapters? Are they positivist? Interpretive?

• Is the writing itself guilty of bias?• Are textbook writers postmodern? Do they

integrate ideas of race and other issues well? Why?

• If not postmodern, what are they?