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Igel

(35,296 posts)
3. I've lived long enough
Sat Aug 8, 2015, 02:06 PM
Aug 2015

around colleges and universities to have the following observation.

Back when history was more "American exceptionalism", at least the undergrad version at lesser colleges, you'd hear the following:

"There is no unbiased history. It's a narrative, a way of viewing things. You pick your facts to build your story, and your story largely dictates which facts are important and the interpretation you give them. There are multiple views of history, and it's important to see what purpose each narrative serves, because together you get a better picture than any one narrative could provide."

This often accompanied cries from the right about revisionism in history. But this pablum served to justify the inclusion of other voices and views in the curriculum, to get a place at the table for opposing views.

Since then you hear the following:

"We need to keep our unbiased, objective history to properly understand the role that the US has played in a Western imperialist hegemony and the ways in which voices have been muted and oppressed. We cannot allow a revisionism that serves to mask history."

"Revisionism," now, is often asserting in 2015 what was originally written the 1940s. That the view has changed from inclusion to exclusion makes the claims made in the '60s and '70s and even '80s seem not only specious but duplicitous. Get in the gate under cover of "inclusion," but once inside you insist on the former occupants' exclusion.

Kto kogo. "Under capitalism, man oppresses man. It's much better under Socialism, where instead man oppresses man."

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