A return from Spring Break brought us a discussion of history and historical preservation. As a history major, I take this very seriously.

We learned about the example of a museum exhibit on the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. The exhibit was knowingly improved so as not to show the truly horrid conditions people suffered under. I would call this outright fraud, a falsification of history. Something cannot be presented as true when it’s not. The exhibit should have been closed immediately, the creators fired, and it redesigned to be historically accurate.

Then we went into a discussion of Black Confederates, and I was very vocal in my thoughts. To not reiterating what I lamented on in class, while individuals that could be described as “Black Confederates” existed based on anecdotal evidence, to say as a general truth that there were Black Confederate soldiers would be historically dishonest.

Class ended with Professor O’Malley agreeing that in his view the Civil War was over slavery; an interpretation that I do disagree with because I think it’s an oversimplification. It’s important to separate the issue of secession from the issue of war. The secession of the southern states did not necessitate war, and one did not have to lead to the other (which people at the time debated and acknowledged). The Deep South, which left between Lincoln’s election and his inauguration, seceded almost singularly because of slavery. They thought that Lincoln would be hostile to slavery, the foundation of their political-economy, and seceded because of that (which they freely admitted). The war started because the Lincoln administration was willing to wage war to prevent secession–they did this because of economic reasons (tariffs on southern exports provided a majority of government funding) and ideological reasons (the perverted idea that a union–originally understood as a voluntary contract between states–was somehow an unbreakable bond of nature). The war was northern driven and was over secession and conquering the southern states. Only after the war began in April did the Upper South secede and join the Confederacy. They did this in response to Lincoln’s call for troops and his aim to make war. They thought this was both illegal and immoral, so they seceded. Could the motivation for the Upper South’s secession be described as a defense of states’ rights? I think so. So what you have is 3 separate events: the secession of the Deep South (over slavery), the start of the war (over union and preventing secession), and the secession of the Upper South (over states’ rights). They were unique events that happened in chronological order, and to summarize that period as saying “the war was over slavery” I think is oversimplification to the point of glaring inaccuracy.

After an (enjoyable) introduction to the Ohio Players, the class discussion moved on to a fundamental issue of what is American and who is an American?

I fully disagree with the idea so often put forth that the United States is a “proposition nation.” A nation is defined by the people who live in it. A proper nation is formed around a coherent set of people, typically tied together by similar race, religion, language, folk heroes, history, and social values. The United States, like any other nation, is tied by by those rules. This idea of American exceptionalism, that the U.S. transcends what defines every other country in the world and is somehow above human identity, I think is a kind of messianic idealism not grounded in reality.

The historic American nation has always been bi-racial. Blacks, from forcible removal from Africa, to slavery, to segregation, to attempted integration, have always formed an integral part of the United States, even when subjugated.

Indians, on the other hand, until their receiving of American citizenship in the 1920s, were never a part of the historic American nation. They were not the founders of what the modern world defines as “America.” And the first Europeans who arrived here were not “immigrants.” They did not immigrate to Native American societies or attempt to join or integrate with them. They founded their own settlements and established their own nation separate from that of the natives. Whether they’re romantically referred to as pioneers or disparagingly referred to as conquerors, they were certainly not immigrants.

Likewise, calling the United States a “country of immigrants” is an illogical canard. Yes, current inhabitants of the United States are descendants of people who came from somewhere else. But that applies to every other people other country in the world. At not point did people spring fully formed from the ground. They all arrived from somewhere at different points in time. The Indians arrived to North American 10,000 years ago. Were they immigrants? The “country of immigrants” presupposition is modern cultural marxist-influenced design to degrade the idea of an American nation.

We ended with defining folk culture as arising from “people on the economic margins too poor to participate in commerce,” such as the Cajuns or people of Appalachia. I would agree with this definition.