Textbooks And Bias

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Amanda Griffin History 1301.091 Textbooks and Bias The reading for this week included three excerpts about European settlement in America. These excerpts also dealt with the Native Americans who first inhabited the land that the Europeans and Americans fought so ferociously over. One theme that I see woven throughout each of these stories is of the enormous impact of John Smith. Though each story showed different bias to the races concerned (which will be addressed later), they all seemed to echo that John Smith was a crucial element in making sure that every colonist worked for what he had. A huge difference in the selections, however, was the impact of Pocahontas. The first excerpt never even mentions Pocahontas; the second gives her credit almost backhandedly as the text points out that this “dusky” Indian never really saved John Smith’s life as he so “dramatically” retells(14); the third gives full credit to Pocahontas, calling her an “intermediary(17) ” and giving her credit for “saving” John Smith (16). In reading these excerpts that are so spaced out in history (1927, 1966, and 200) it is important to note that there are several “red flags,” or bias, in the authors’ writings. The first red flag that stuck out to me was the terminology used to describe the Europeans and Native Americans. It is interesting to look at these red flags while comparing them against the other excerpts. The most drastic difference in this instance is between the first excerpt and the third. In the first excerpt, the Indians are talked about in a very derogatory manner. They are referred to as “copper-colored barbarians and savages (11)” and said to have “contributed almost nothing to the making of America” while the European settlers are talked about as saviors of sorts, bringing “civilization to the new world (11)” bringing tools and skills to the Indians. The third excerpt actually tends to lean more on the side of the Native Americans as it states that the Europeans arrived thinking that “humans had dominion of the earth and with technologies to alter the very

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face of the land (16).” Another red flag I see in the articles is the period of time in which the authors’ were writing these selections. The two articles that must be looked at concerning this point is the second excerpt (1966) and the third (2000). It is important to first note that the second excerpt leans more towards the first as far as terminology goes. In this article the Indians were thought of as “heathens” who needed to be “turned to Christianity.” The ‘60s and ‘70s were a time of drastic change for this country in the area of race. 1966 was a very important year in this effort because it was a year in which a man by the name of James S. Coleman published a study called “Equality of Educational Opportunity” which led the way to forced integration and bussing. Knowing this, it is easy to see that American’s were still, at this point, not able to see beyond ourselves. We truly believed that we were the superior race—that we had it all right and that anyone who looked or appeared different than us were “heathens.” If we look at the 2000 excerpt, however, we see that the Native Americans were given much respect (said to have “endowed nature with spiritual properties (16).”) and victimized rather than and that the culprits of the society—“They were blissfully unaware that the historic isolation of the Americas was about to end forever (16).” Europeans were actually being criticized somewhat (John smith “whipped the gold-hungry settlers into line (16).”) This shows that in the 21st our views of race are very different. It seems as though we have gotten knocked on our backsides just enough times (still not enough for some) to realize that we are not the superior race, and that everyone has contributed and will continue to contribute to what America is today.