Lies My Teacher Told Me: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

Arguably the most important theme in American history is “the domination of black America by white America.” In order to understand the way white America perceives the history of race relations in the U.S., it’s instructive to examine the bestselling books of the 19th and 20th centuries: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, both of which take race as an important theme. Uncle Tom’s Cabin presents slavery as a moral evil to be fought at all costs, while Gone With the Wind idealizes a society founded on slavery—the antebellum South. Modern history textbooks tend to side with Stowe, not Mitchell: they present slavery as an inhuman, evil institution.

Most history textbooks before the 1970s didn’t emphasize the fact that the Civil War was, in many ways, a result of slavery. When, in 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union, its politicians condemned the Northern States for refusing to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act: the legislation that allowed runaway slaves to be captured and returned to their masters, even when they’d left the state. South Carolina, along with the other ten states that seceded, stressed its people’s rights to own slaves and protect their property, and listed these rights as a primary reason for their secession. Despite this, pre-1970 textbooks emphasize such causes as tariff disagreements and an idealistic commitment to states’ rights. Surprisingly, many of the most recent textbooks have begun to re-emphasize tariffs and states’ rights and downplay the role that slavery played in secession.

Partly because of their high school textbooks, Americans have many mistaken ideas about slavery. Most people would be surprised to learn that slaves were an important part of the Northern states’ economies, not just their Southern counterparts—indeed, the first state to legalize slavery was Massachusetts. History textbooks present slavery as unambiguously evil, but they suggest that it was largely limited to the South. The reality is that slavery—and racism, the ideology that justifies slavery—was a fundamental part of the making of the United States. History textbooks do a poor job of studying the relationship between racism and slavery. They present slavery as an obsolete historical phenomenon. But even now that slavery has largely vanished from the U.S., the ideology of racism survives, encouraging people to believe that whites are superior to blacks.

Textbooks also ignore the racism in the thinking of figures as different as Thomas Jefferson, Christopher Columbus, and Woodrow Wilson. Many students would be surprised to learn that almost all the presidents before Abraham Lincoln owned slaves and believed that it was their right as whites to do so. One textbook notes that Thomas Jefferson was “shy” and refused to wear a wig, but never once mentions that he was a proud slave-owner and an eloquent advocate for the expansion of slavery in the United States.

Slavery was not an isolated historical phenomenon: the growth of slavery in the United States profoundly influenced America’s society and foreign policy. For instance, George Washington, a lifelong slave-owner, gave huge loans to French planters in Haiti to help them suppress their slaves; a decade later, Jefferson did the same. The only early president who didn’t fund Haitian planters was John Adams—not coincidentally, one of the only early presidents who owned no slaves. Furthermore, American territorial expansion until the Civil War was largely due to the influence of slavers who needed more land for their slaves to farm. In all, the importance of slavery to America’s economy helped make America an expansionist, imperialist nation and encouraged America’s leaders to abandon the supposed U.S. ideals of equality, democracy, and self-determination.

Almost every history textbook devotes a lot of space to the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, the important Democratic Party leader of the 1850s and 60s. However, textbooks emphasize the spectacle of the debates and the eloquence of the speakers, rather than going into detail about their ideas. The truth is that both speakers had some white supremacist ideas and emphasized that whites must always remain socially superior to blacks. During the debates, Lincoln said, “I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about the social and political equality of the white and black races.” And yet, later in his life, Lincoln was a passionate advocate for equality between the races. Instead of conveying the complexity of Lincoln’s views, textbooks paint him as a pragmatic politician. If they were to depict him as an imperfect figure who, in many ways, transcended his own racism toward the end of his career, textbooks could teach an important lesson: it’s possible to overcome one’s own prejudices.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, Republicanism emerged as the dominant political party and imposed a series of racially egalitarian policies, known as Reconstruction, in the Southern states. There is still a myth that Reconstruction was a chaotic period in Southern history, in which newly elected or appointed black leaders “reigned corruptly,” and thus had to be controlled by their former masters. The reality is that blacks never “reigned” during Reconstruction—the vast majority of elected officials remained white during this era. It is tragic that so many—including African Americans—believe the myths about Reconstruction, since such myths perpetuate the lie that blacks can’t govern themselves and “need” whites to rule them.

Admittedly, contemporary history textbooks offer a more nuanced account of Reconstruction than their predecessors half a century ago. However, even these new textbooks largely ignore the major problem with Reconstruction: white violence against black people. In some parts of the South, for instance, white lynch mobs killed an average of one black person per day. White supremacists also sabotaged black schools and burned down schoolhouses for black children. Textbooks miss a key point about why Reconstruction failed: the problem wasn’t that black people didn’t know how to take care of themselves, but rather than white supremacists refused to be integrated into the new, post-slavery society.

By the 1890s, Reconstruction was largely broken: in the Southern states, politicians instituted policies that segregated black and white people, and the Supreme Court upheld the states’ right to do so in Plessy v. Ferguson. The 1890s were, in many ways, the low point of (post-slavery) black life in America: black people were bullied, harassed, and in some cases murdered, and they had few laws or rights they could cite to protect themselves. Minstrel shows, in which black people were caricatured, became hugely popular in the 1890s, and the Ku Klux Klan’s membership boomed. One of the most glaring issues with history textbooks is that they largely omit any discussion of the late 19th century as the nadir (lowest point) of African American life—not just in the South, but throughout the United States.

It is undeniable that race relations in the U.S. have improved in the last half century. But there continue to be massive racial disparities: there is a large income gap between the average white family and the average black family. As a group, black people live shorter lives, do worse on SAT tests, are more likely to be arrested, and have more health problems than white people. Perhaps even worse, there are many who believe, or secretly suspect, that these statistics reflect black people’s innate inferiority. The best way for people to understand the obstacles that African Americans have faced, and continue to face, is to learn the uncensored, disturbing, facts of history.