Well if you are teaching any US history, the newly released “1776 Report” will be a frightening reminder of the manipulation of history. It will also be a good tool to institute the ideas behind (a)historical construction. Thread: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/The-Presidents-Advisory-1776-Commission-Final-Report.pdf #historyteacher

First test this opening gambit and ask pupils to compare this statement with the fact that the DoI refers to Indigenous peoples as “merciless Indian Savages” or that the Constitution enshrined the right of white Ams to hold non-whites as property - crushing those who disagreed.

Next explore this ludicrous take on the notion that the US was empty. A good point to get students to grapple with the Doctrine of Discovery and the mandate European colonisers believed this gave them for seizure of land inhabited by non-Christians.

Even it’s narrative of democracy is completely wonky. Students might explore who could actually vote in the 1780s (clue: it wasn’t everyone), and how late these rights came to people of colour and women to name but two groups

Here students could easily explore rulings such as that of the Dred Scott case in which Justice Taney ruled that black people had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect”. Alternatively they might look at the forced and sometimes undeclared sterilisation of NA women

Ok, so I am only 10 pages into this 45 page document. I am sure more “delights” will emerge. However I will leave here something of the purpose of the document, and note the ways in which civil rights campaigners are quoted in faux support of the falsehoods within.

Oh and here are a group of “historians” to avoid!!

Though here are some helpful takes from historians

Ah, the “it’s OK because everyone was doing it” defence. Only, everyone wasn’t. And certainly most countries were not actively defending the institution in the 1860s. The institution of slavery in the US was a deliberate choice based on fear and greed.

This is literally not true. The Republic was actively enforcing slavery via the SCourt right up to the Civil War. Kansas descended into a mini Civil War because a good portion of the powerful in the Us defended it. Sumner was beaten to the floor in the Senate for opposing slavery

Fuck me! This link. The Cicil War was apparently an unpleasant side show to end slavery a bit sooner than it was going to anyway. And the real evil? Progressivism apparently. NB slavery was going nowhere in 1860 - it was highly profitable and driving industrialisation

Every time I think I have been as shocked by this as I am going to be....

I mean apart from the fact that regiments were segregated and black soldiers went home from a free Europe to Jim Crow America, yeah

I guess the failure of Reconstruction had nothing to do with a central failure to provide appropriate compensation for freed slaves... or that the Govt would not enforce civil rights gained 1865-8....some horrid accident.

Honestly running out of words to express how horrible this document is

Oh wait. Here’s a bit I agree with. Let’s hope at least one of those 25yr charges against the orange man baby sticks eh?