This Month's topic: History.

"A great nation does not hide its history: it faces its flaws, and it corrects them."

...President George W. Bush

As we begin our TOK class, we will look at the study of history. There are several historically charged discussions in the US that also pertain to our history of race relations. The most recent controversy over removing monuments to Confederate leaders, and intellectual -- historical -- arguments against the backlashes, have occupied a lot of my time and energy lately -- they also have led to me spending far too much time on Facebook.

Here are a couple of observations about history that I consider particularly relevant:

This is Larry Wilmore of the Daily Show. The episode from 2011 speaks to the need to avoid "whitewashing" our history. It occurred right after the 2010 midterm election that produced a landslide of Republican legislators, many of whom were affiliated with the Tea Party. One question that may be answered by historians in the future: To what extent was the Tea Party fueled by racial animus? The same question will be applied to the elections of even more "conservative" legislators, and of course, to president Donald Trump.




Mayor Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans -- a city with an incredibly rich history -- discusses the reasons for removing Confederate monuments. His powerful speech is a reply to the many "self-appointed defenders of history and the monuments" who decry the fact that we're "whitewashing" history by tearing down monuments. He points out the history of the construction of these monuments.

We also can look below at a clip from former Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice.  Her remarks about being aware of our history have been circulating a lot of Facebook lately -- as a justification for leaving up the monuments that Mayor Landrieu advocated removing, particularly in the wake of the white supremacist marches in Charlottesville, Virginia (which protested the removal of a Robert E Lee statue erected in the 1940's). The part about history starts at 1:48 on the clip. Interestingly, the first question to Rice is a typical logical fallacy, the Straw Man argument. More on that in our discussion.






PBS -- The Public Television Service of the United States, did a piece that examined the history of these monuments, explaining many of the same issues that Mayor Landrieu did.



At its heart, History is an effort to dig into the past to find truths that are relevant and significant in the present. As a final thought, I wanted to share the work of John Cummings, who has built a museum of our slave history. For me, this clip speaks volumes to me on the relevance and significance of history.