fandomhigh | Lies Your Other American History Teachers Told You, Friday

"Welcome back," Tony said brightly to the class. "We will be continuing our trend historical figures who deserve far more criticism than they receive with President Andrew Jackson. You might know him as the man on the twenty dollar bill."

Steve nodded. "There have been 45 Presidents of the United States, give or take, depending on your universe of origin," he said, "and Andrew Jackson is generally a name people know, even if they don't know exactly what he's famous for or why he's on the twenty."

"He fought in the Revolutionary War, he's known as the liberator of New Orleans in the war of 1812, he seized Florida from Spanish control, making it a part of the United States... But none of those things are what we will be discussing about him," Tony added.

"The true core of Jackson's legacy in America," Steve said, "was his legalization, in 1830, of ethnic cleansing. You might have had it mentioned in other classes as the Trail of Tears. Compounding the crime against humanity was why he was forcing the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole west: so there could be more slave plantations in newly vacant Florida."

"While he took a more aggressive approach than the presidents prior to him, they were honestly no better," Tony said. "Their method of genocide was of the cultural variety 'encouraging' the native peoples to convert to Christianity and speak only English, civilizing them in the minds of the fathers of our nation. And don't think of this as a thing of the distant past. Forcible assimilation continued well into the 20th century."

"In large parts of the country, it's still not recognized as a thing we did wrong," Steve added.

"So, today we will discuss if we believe a nation built on theft and genocide is one worth being proud of. Or if we have moved past that era and should let sleeping dogs lie. What is our obligation here?" Tony asked.

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"I mean... if our success was built on the backs of people who suffered and people who are still suffering as a result, then we don't have anything to be proud of. We have a lot of work to do in order to right what we did wrong," Norman noted.

And he was going to stand by that. Even if he wasn't a kid who had first-hand accounts by people who had died because of these things, he wanted to think he'd stand by that.

"How can we make things right? Is it even possible?" Tony asked.

"It's not possible to undo all of the damage we did, no," Norman replied. "There are ghosts of what was done all across the country, people who died, people who lost everything. We can't fix it all. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying. Listening to the survivors who were left with that legacy wouldn't be a bad start, I think."

Tony smiled and nodded along with that. Hey, he liked when kids were thoughtful.

"What would be your first step forward if you were in charge of this country?"

Norman chewed his lip for a moment before saying anything. There were a lot of answers, here, but there were only so many right ones.

"Learn," he settled on. "Before I can make any steps forward, I have to shut up, pay attention, and do my best to understand. I have to understand what was done, I have to understand what's still broken, and I have to understand how to move forward not just in a way that I think is best, but in a way that honors the needs and the wishes of the people that were hurt. Especially in a way that honors the needs and wishes of the people that were hurt. And then I have to actually follow through. It can't just be lip service in the hopes that they'll move on before the job is done."

"Very smart amswer," Tony replied. "Do you think the continued disregard for this is based on guilt or lack of knowledge?"

Norman bit his lip for a moment.

"Lack of knowledge... maybe a little. But not guilt. Selfishness."

Norman had a very low opinion of people in general, but he figured he was pretty on the mark with that one.

"So, if we taught what was done here without flinching away from the details that it would change how people saw them?"

Norman sighed and shrugged his shoulders a little.

"I don't know," he admitted. "Not everybody, but at least some people. The good ones, I guess. There are always going to be the ones who don't care, because caring means they have to do something about it, and admitting guilt means that it's their job to step up to make things change."

Tony beamed at that because that was basically his thing. Ball of guilt that he was.

"How about at the end of the semester, we all come up with a way to make a difference in an area of your choice "

"That... that would be good," Norman said, blinking, and then smiling a little. "The world could use a little bit of change."

The hard part would be coming up with something that actually made a difference for the living. The dead were always more than willing to tell him the kind of difference he could make for them.

"Change isn't easy or fast, but it's worth it in the end," Tony said.

"Well, the right kind of change is," Norman agreed. "But I don't think there's anyone in this class who's looking for the wrong kind anyway."

Tip pointed at Norman. "Yeah," she said. "That. Reservations are still full of poverty and disease and most Americans who don't have direct contact with native people think of them as noble or tragic history, not actual people who are trying to keep their cultures alive in the face of the all-powerful white man."

Oh look! It was time for Tip's weekly rant.

"And let's not forget that the way these people first became famous was because people agreed with them. Andrew Jackson was lifted up as an American hero because white people really wanted everyone else to be subservient or just gone. And now, instead of actually dealing with that fact, we're all supposed to sweep it under the rug at best. I mean, we're probably all just lucky we don't have Trail of Tears reenactors to go with all the Civil War nuts running around."

But they were fun rants! Or, at least, showed she wasn't unaware of the world which was greatly appreciated by the teachers.

"History is written by the victors or those with power and, in this case, it ignores or softens the reality of what was done. But after thr Civil War there was essentially a campaign of Confederate scholars or sympathizers rewriting the reality until it became 'fact'. Do you think that it's the same here?"

Edited 2018-01-19 18:56 (UTC)

Tip considered that, and nodded. "Yeah. I think so. Like, in a more subtle way, maybe, since I guess the Trail of Tears wasn't as divisive at the time as the Civil War was. I'm sure there were whites who were sympathetic to the Native Americans, but they didn't fight a whole war about it, you know? As far as we know, they barely did anything. So, like, either the people who wrote the history of it were really thorough, or people at the time really mostly didn't care. And now . . . they still don't."

"There were indeed some white people who objected, but in the majority in a paternalistic way," he added. "And largely without any real effort put into it beyond hand-wringing."

Which was still par for the course on many subjects.

"So you mean just like most white abolitionists," Tip said. "Yeah, that sounds about right. And there wasn't as much money involved as in the slave trade, so they didn't have any real incentive to fight." She didn't do air-quotes on 'real', but it was a very near thing.

"There were some who took to arms there," Tony replied.even as he smiled at her. "Not nearly as many as the cause called for, though. Bleeding Kansas. John Brown's attempted insurrection. But the silent acceptance of the Trail of Tears could definitely be considered yet another emboldening moment for supporters of slavery."

Lies Your Other American History Teachers Told You, Friday

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