Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”

For over twenty years, I have enjoyed reading and assigning Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States.” I especially like Zinn’s efforts to see history “from the bottom looking up,” that is, to capture the thoughts of not leaders and prosperous citizens but rather simple and subjugated people – workers, immigrants, women, African Americans, and Native Americans, among others. It therefore came as a surprise to learn that Mitch Daniels, Indiana’s former Governor and now President of Purdue University, attempted to drive Zinn’s book from Indiana’s schools.

While he was still Governor, Daniels emailed Indiana education officials asking them to prevent the use of Zinn’s book in the state’s K-12 classrooms. Daniels said “A People’s History of the United States” was a “truly execrable, anti-factual piece of disinformation.” Daniels also called the book “crap,” and he seemed pleased that “this terrible anti-American academic has finally passed away.”

Daniels’ criticism of Zinn and his work is on one level political. To wit, we have a right-wing politician condemning a leftist historian, albeit one who is deceased. (Didn’t Daniels’ parents ever tell him to let the dead rest in peace?) On a more fundamental level, Daniels’ criticism of Zinn also betrays a failure to grasp what the writing and the study of history entails.  

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The Societal Backdrop of the Martin/Zimmerman Tragedy

Gated Community EntranceNot surprisingly, the killing of Trayvon Martin and trial of George Zimmerman have prompted much reflection on race-related assumptions and tensions in the U.S. It might also be appropriate to reflect on the societal backdrop of these tragic events and to underscore two social developments that set the stage, namely, concealed carry laws and private, gated communities. Both suggest troubling aspects of contemporary American life.

Concealed carry laws allow the practice of carrying handguns in public in a concealed manner. These laws have grown more common in recent years, and Illinois, which had held out as the last state to ban concealed carrying, just recently gave in. Florida, one of the champions of concealed carry, has issued well over 2 million licenses for concealed carrying since 1987. No clear evidence exists proving that concealed carrying reduces crime, but the concealed carry laws seem to relieve people’s anxiety. For some, concealed carrying or, at least, the option to conceal and carry bolsters a sense of one’s “manhood.”

Private, gated communities, meanwhile, are also on the rise. Again, Florida is one of the leaders, and countless Floridians have taken comfort in residing in private enclaves, often behind walls and gates. The society outside those walls and gates is taken to be menacing and dangerous. In other states as well, many have abandoned any sort of deep and defining affiliation with a town or a city in favor of belonging to private spaces supposedly sealed off from the surrounding trouble and tumult. Often these communities have corny names such as “Deer Run” or “Oak Crest,” which are designed to connote nature. Some scholars have dubbed these private, gated communities “Privatopia.”

George Zimmerman was carrying a concealed handgun and guarding a gated community, and Trayvon Martin is dead. I do not underscore these facts in order to challenge the jury’s verdict. However, I do think the rise of concealed carry and the gated community suggests how frightened and anxious, how hostile and combative our society has become. According to the defendant in Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska,” “There’s just a meanness in this world.”

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Race, Gender and the Zimmerman Trial

Now that the selection of the jury has been completed, the trial of George Zimmerman for shooting African American teenager Trayvon Martin is even more likely to be the most racially charged trail since that of O.J. Simpson. What’s more, gender will now be important as well.

Much to the disappointment of Martin’s family and civil rights advocates, the jury will include absolutely no African Americans. In addition, none of the four alternate jurors are African American. According to census figures, Florida’s Seminole County, where the trial will take place, is 11% African American.

As recently as fifty years ago, Florida did not even allow women to serve on juries, but, in the Zimmerman trial, all of the jurors will be women. Five of the six jurors have children, and two of the four alternate jurors are also women with children.

In an ideal world, the race and gender of the jurors in a trial such as Zimmerman’s would make no difference. However, Jose Baez, lead counsel in the successful defense of Casey Anthony for killing her daughter Caylee, said the racial make-up of the Zimmerman jury made the case a “slam dunk” for the defense. Widener Law Professor Jules Epstein, meanwhile, argued that the female jurors would be especially sympathetic to the loss of a child and therefore would empathize with Martin’s grieving mother.

I lack the experience to make an intelligent prediction about either the outcome of the trial or the significance race and gender will have in that outcome. Nevertheless, I’m certain that considerations of race and gender will be important in the court of public opinion. Despite ideological pronouncements that all are equal in the eyes of the law, the American public does not take this to actually be true. Americans believe that race, gender, and wealth are major factors in what the legal system produces and invites us to take as “justice.”

 

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