The following essay is a critique of Howard Zinn’s historical interpretation of American history by a professor who willingly chose to use Zinn’s textbook as his best choice for undergraduate American history classes. This critique will be neither exclusively laudatory nor entirely defamatory, but rather will strive to strike a balanced approach that is frequently missing in the war of words over Zinn’s role and reputation as both reputable scholar and iconoclastic historian.
“Defamatory” may strike some as too strong a word but it is a fair indication of how fiery emotions are involved when Zinn’s views become the center of any discussion. At the risk of over-simplification, the two main camps line up in somewhat of the following fashion:
CAMP ZINN: DEFENDERS
1) In the first camp, we find Zinn’s legions of dedicated admirers and supporters, both lay readers and scholars alike. They admire Zinn and recognize that his most famous book, A People’s History of the United States, was a monumental breakthrough in the writing of American history. According to this view, Zinn’s popular book (1980) became a “game-changer” in that it marked the end of an era in which sanitizing, whitewashing, and glorifying American history “without objection” was commonplace, especially among school textbooks which typically neglected a more nuanced and critical account of people and events.
“Pax Americana” ruled the publishing seas of self-congratulatory and polite conformity to acceptable patriotic modes of expression.
True, many works preceded Zinn—especially in Labor Studies, African-American History, Women’s Studies, Native American Studies—that paved the way for him to show a darker side of American history. From the publication of ex-slave narratives and the works of Carter Woodson, John Hope Franklin, W.E.B. DuBois, Herbert Aptheker and many others, to the classics of labor history by scholars such as John R. Commons and Phillip Foner, a huge amount of material existed detailing the injustices and inequalities of American society, most especially as it concerned race and class. However, many of these works, though important contributions, were appreciated primarily in academic circles rather than by the general public at large.
Howard Zinn was not the first author to study and describe the many injustices in American society but he was one of the first to write in a manner that developed themes through a narrative style that made his book both informative and enjoyable to read: he broke “the popularity” sound barrier by penning a book with sufficient academic rigor to pass mustard as a college text and yet straightforward enough for the average person to read independently.
It thus must be noted that Zinn did something quite unusual: he crossed the threshold from the scholar’s enclave to the domain of a much wider audience. He not only produced a finely researched book that holds up well to the closest factual scrutiny but he wrote in an engaging style that made the “less well known” facets of American history accessible to anyone. What many students had long suspected—that much of the “history” taught them in school was woefully incomplete or selectively slanted–was now laid before them with breathtaking clarity and precision.
The same scholarly energy that had once been used by classroom textbooks “to prove” American superiority in every conceivable way was now being used by Zinn to poke beneath standardized interpretations to criticize and debunk—and he did more than poke! As a writer he attacked America’s idealized self-image as being tremendously flawed. In Zinn’s view, American historical story-telling reflected an arrogant and narrow-minded chauvinism that created self-serving apologia for nearly everything.
For too long many writers found ways to minimize the bloody horrors of America’s racial and class conflicts. They achieved these aims by ignoring, minimizing, or rationalizing violent acts of the most brutal nature, to say nothing of the ferocious exploitation and relentless oppression of minority groups and women within society. Angry enough at times at this long litany of injustices to reach the threshold of becoming overtly polemical in his denunciatory analysis, Zinn pulls back just in time to maintain his academic rigor and literary sophistication: yet the moral anger remains, bubbling just below the surface.
In schools across the country, American schoolchildren have met George Washington standing up bravely in a boat crossing the Delaware River but they seldom met George Washington, the wealthy slave-owner. They have often met Thomas Jefferson, the genius behind the Declaration of Independence; they don’t meet Jefferson the slave-owner who failed to free his slaves (with the exception of Sally Hemming, his slave mistress, and several of their children). At least Washington arranged for the manumission of his slaves after his death; Jefferson, who wrote “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” could not claim as much. He died deeply in debt and his slaves were sold off to meet the claims of his many creditors. (Not all the slaves Washington intended to free actually obtained their freedom, either).
Schoolchildren meet Christopher Columbus as the heroic discoverer of the New World. He is presented as though he were a demi-god who deserves to be worshiped or at the very least put on a pedestal (as he often was); they don’t meet Christopher Columbus the brutal overlord and cruel enslaver of the native peoples of the Caribbean Islands. He and his men enslaved, kidnapped, raped, mutilated, and murdered the Taino and Arawak people without mercy. They committed senseless sadistic acts of brutality repeatedly, their violent excesses reaching a sociopathic and genocidal madness in its intensity.
Most textbooks tread quite lightly here or skip it entirely; even today, most people do not know of the reign of terror of Columbus. Zinn, on the other hand, includes descriptive commentary by the Catholic priest Bartolome de las Casas, an author normally left out of regular textbooks, for a much fuller exploration of these character-damaging accusations against Columbus and his rather unpleasant “dark side”.
Are reputable historians, pledged to uncover and chronicle the truth, to proceed fearlessly even if it means overthrowing a well-established but largely mythic view of Columbus? Or is that too great a psychic blow for our level of comfort and complacency?
For Zinn, pursuing the details of what actually happened is inherently far more honorable than maintaining blindly a “tradition” that turns out to have been based on falsehoods and half-truths. At the outset, every reader of Zinn has to come to terms with this question of “truthfulness”: in effect, how much of it can we stand? Then begins an inner war of conscience: the struggle between wanting a “reassuring history” that affirms our heroic patriotism and makes us “feel good” to be Americans, contrasted with a new approach to the study of the American past that we neither like nor welcome.
Reluctantly, we may be forced to recognize the need to replace our customary tales with a new set of well-researched accounts—or at the very least place the latest discoveries alongside our old “popular” version of events which we still wish to treasure but which we should now realize cannot be maintained inviolate.
It’s relatively easy to concede that the story of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree as a lad is most likely apocryphal, but can we go no further in discussing certain Founding Fathers who spoke eloquently of “freedom” and “natural rights” while profiting from the unpaid labor of their slaves? Zinn does not seek to condemn without allowing space for recognition of differences between historical eras, but it would be helpful if readers could be given substantive truth—“the complete picture”—before wrestling with the more difficult questions posed by moral shock and repugnance.
Zinn’s writing forces us to make that choice: do we stick with a palatable version of America’s past to which we have become accustomed? Or do we face up to a history that is at times as disillusioning as it is shocking and yet which nevertheless is closer to historical fact than the child’s simplified version of American history taught in school?
Do we stick with falsehoods merely because they are the accepted versions of events to which we have become accustomed? If facts tarnish the halo of our heroes, can we amend blind adulation with critical reappraisal? Or have we become so indoctrinated with half-truths that it is impossible to even question historical viewpoints established long ago?
Should we go on approving the same old tales without taking into account the far greater scrutiny-of-scholarship available to us to today to prove or disprove, to verify or invalidate, our knowledge? Is it wrong to re-examine the “fundamental facts” of knowledge originally bequeathed to us in a questioning manner? Have we the strength to recast historical tales to reflect modern understanding?
If we seek to be truthful—as students, as teachers, as Americans—do we not owe it to Zinn to peruse his explanations of American history with an open mind, however uncomfortable this severely critical exposition of the story of America makes us feel? For make no mistake about it: Zinn’s approach can prove deeply troubling on multiple levels–it is not just a cerebral exercise but a visceral gut-punching experience to read Zinn. At times his narrative forces the reader to the brink with a stern admonition: choose now, reader! Traditional views well-sanitized . . . or the unvarnished truth!
It is not always an easy choice to make. Do we really need to spend time on Washington and Jefferson as slave-owners or be exposed to the racist language of Jefferson and Lincoln? Do we not already have our established images and interpretations of these men safely molded and guarded? Why disrupt our admiring opinions of them with new facts that will only cause us intellectual discomfort and emotional turmoil in the end?
All of us must come to terms with what their comfort level should be regarding toleration for historical revision not based on ideological bent but on deeper and more accurate research. In the final analysis, we must come to terms not merely with this or that occasional dark moment in American history.
As horrible as these stories are, most of us can survive emotionally the accounts of slave whippings, the massacres of Native Americans, and all the rest—extremely difficult emotionally and intellectually, absolutely, but survivable. Yet beyond this challenge, we must also grapple with Zinn’s overall interpretative viewpoint as well: that these bloody episodes of the past were not merely atypical and unfortunate examples of brutal excess committed by a few misguided souls, but rather they form the core of the American experience.
In other words, these “episodes” of brutality and oppression are not merely accidental or isolated by-products of an otherwise healthy socio-political organism we call America, but in reality they form the lion’s share of the true history of the country itself. Moreover, this unchecked violence was not limited merely to the America of yesteryear, but many of these same patterns of discriminatory and violent injustices remain with us, down to the present day. America not only has a violent past but it remains a nation where violence is commonplace.
Here Zinn challenges all of his readers in a new and unexpected way: certainly, he is asking the reader to come to terms with the reality of exploitation and oppression in our past (which even regular textbooks now address). Beyond that task, however, he is also challenging the reader to consider if these patterns are not a permanent part of today’s American landscape as well?
Psychologically, it’s not too hard to admit that “this or that” violent episode happened “way back then”: we can all cluck our tongues and say “tragic to be sure!” but “over and done with, thankfully!” It’s quite another matter to consider the notion that American violence is not over and not done with at all/
The astute reader is invited to recognize that this violence “of the past” casts a long shadow over the present—and that some significant measure of this violent past continues on unabated into our own day and time.
CAMP TWO: ZINN’S ATTACKERS
In this context Zinn becomes, unintentionally or otherwise, a moralist and philosopher as well as a historian; it is often these views—openly expressed or softly sublimated—that tend to anger his critics the most. From the second camp, that of his detractors, comes the rebuttal: namely, that Zinn himself is the one providing a one-sided version of American history based on over-simplification and narrow selection; that he is focusing on the worst aspects of our nation’s past to the exclusion of anything positive that would provide a much needed balance; that he distorts and exaggerates the American story to serve his intellectual bias; that he is a left-winger with a traditional Marxist-type antipathy to capitalism; that he panders to the emotional chip-on-shoulder attitudes of minorities; and that his narrative-style writing is little more than a concealed polemical attack on American values and institutions rather than a fair and balanced interpretation of the totality of American history writ large.
Now, in regards to the phrase “over-simplification”, it is not my intention to say these two camps are so diametrically opposed as to be mutually exclusive. In the camp of those who like and praise Zinn, you will find a range of admirers from those who think he is a saintly hero to those who conclude he is simply a good historian with something worthwhile to say. In the anti-Zinn camp, we can likewise find a range of critics, some of whom think his writings have occasional weaknesses (of interpretative consistency, of factual accuracy) to those who think he is a dangerous false prophet undermining our young people and denigrating American values; in short, they believe he is misleading college students with totally mixed-up vituperative nonsense.
Rather than believing a reader need choose one or the other approach to Zinn, this author believes there is merit to be found in both camps. To his mind, this strong dichotomy points the way to the existence of “a middle ground” well worth exploring. Still, it is necessary to note that Zinn’s writings do tend to have a polarizing effect on readers with the now familiar result that two distinct camps emerged over time and battled over the value of his writings and teachings. This is the response of yet another Zinn reader—myself–to join in that discussion, that battle.
While acknowledging that even facts can be manipulated, this author believes it is fair to point out that Zinn’s book—basically a history textbook, after all—gained such popularity that it has sold more than two million copies. Such a result, virtually unheard of for a history textbook, should strongly suggest to us all that the honesty of his approach to the retelling of American history has found an audience with whom his writing resonates. This is an important point since any history instructor needs to find ways to engage students—and this book engages them in ways traditional textbooks never equal. Students are fascinated by Zinn’s book and are awakened by it; no regular text used by the author ever came close to achieving this enlivening effect of Zinn, pure and simple. My students enjoyed reading it and allowed Zinn’s views to inform their own opinions when discussions became animated.
Nevertheless, the question can also be asked: shouldn’t any textbook purporting to describe American history be obligated to give a balanced view? Does Zinn get a pass in skipping over the positive because he has chosen another way to retell America’s story? Perhaps we can agree that some textbooks were once too one-sided in favor of America’s greatness, painted too rosy a picture, left out too much, eschewed the negative for the positive, remained super-patriotic at the expense of a more truthful picture of violent episodes of oppression, exploitation, mayhem, and murder. Yet, even while recognizing the need to correct this one-sided “positive” approach, are we any the less freed from the moral obligation to criticize a work that makes some of the same errors by going too far in the other direction by emphasizing the critical, the negative, and the shameful?
It is one matter to include episodes and events that frequently have been left out of a regular textbook, but it is quite another to make it appear that all the darkest chapters of this omitted material somehow form the real and only foundation of American history. Neither approach is entirely satisfactory. With that said, the hunt for “the middle ground” in teaching with Zinn–appreciating his contributions without forfeiting the moral right to disagree with his views—now begins.
Neither eulogy nor excommunication, this essay addresses the need to use Zinn’s writings productively and wisely while encouraging the right of instructor and student to maintain a healthy air of independent and critical thought for all ideas presented to them concerning American history–whether traditional, Zinn-based, opinions found in this essay, or in any other commentary yet to be.
The lesson for the student, to which I believe Zinn heartily would concur, is not to accept at face value what you read or are told but rather to think for yourself!
