In the current issue there is Krugman's review of Reich's latest book. I posted it below but haven't read it yet.
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There is historian Drew Gilpin Faust's tribute to historian John Hope Franklin, which is of great interest to me.
The story is that you cannot understand this country without understanding American history. As Ta-Nehisi Coates says, "The answer is American history." Professor Franklin came as close as any historian to explaining ourselves to ourselves.
Professor Franklin would have turned 100 this year, leaving us in 2009. As the Civil War continues in this country with regular Confederate outbursts, his work continues to be so relevant.
"Good history is a good foundation for a better present and future," said Franklin in 1989.
"Fundamental to the task at hand would be rewriting the history of history, revising the "hallowed" falsehoods, illustrating how the abuse and misuse of history served to legitimate systems of oppression not just in the past but in the present as well. Misrepresentations of the past, Franklin came to recognize, had given "the white South the intellectual justification for its determination not to yield on many important points, especially treatment of the Negro." Post-Civil War Southerners had endeavored to "win with the pen what they had failed to win with the sword."
Franklin detailed the way the South rewrote American history to justify its commitment to slavery and the continuing debasement of people of color. He did it by unearthing new facts, by doing the painstaking work with primary sources.
His magnum opus was From Slavery to Freedom published in 1958.
Throughout his career he walked a fine line between objectivity and advocacy. The past and present of racial oppression in American angered Franklin. He experienced this in his own life. Remaining calms and objective to the end of his life after suffering numerous personal slights was a difficult chore.
Ultimately, though, he could not resist being a social activist. He used his scholarship to expose the hypocrisy underlying so much of American social and race relations. He thus walked a tightrope.
He said that the problem of the 21st Century was the color line. Right on!
Franklin sad that a color-blind society does not exist in this country and never has. No doubt.
People who say we have a color-blind society have no interest in achieving one and would be appalled even if we approached it.
It is history that can save us. History to the rescue! A full understanding our of history must be at the heart of any resolution of America's racial dilemma. However, in my opinion. it will not happen. At least I don't see it happening.
An understanding of history destroys innocence. The study of history is a sacred calling. History is where it's at. The study of history is necessary to understand the world that we have made.
Nothing will change in this country until there is a honest reckoning with our history, and I do not look for this to happen
This article is bracing for someone like me who is interested in American history.The article reminds of the importance of studying history. I am glad I was a history major.
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On page 95 there is a picture of Picasso's sculpture of a goat, a famous sculpture if ever there was one. It is on loan to the Modern Museum in NY. I once saw it there. It must have been on loan then also.
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