What should the scholarly community think, or say about the fact that it took a concerned parent to expose McGraw-Hill’s “error” in the new World Geography textbook? Who are the teachers using the textbook? Why was there seemingly no outcry by instructors using the textbook in the classroom?
Are we to expect that an instructor is nuancing the discussion around the issue of “immigration” with a caption that reads “The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations”? How can you nuance such a statement?
What does it mean that enslaved individuals, brought to the western hemisphere against their will, are described as workers in a textbook graph about American immigration?
What is, or should be the role of scholars in the field to demand that textbook companies accurately discuss slavery, as well as other issues of the black experience?
8 Replies
Constance Mandeville
The scholarly community needs to do something but I am not entirely sure what our role should be. I personally think collaborating with the teachers themselves to call for accurate textbooks would be better than acting alone. I wonder if this is something we could organize with teachers unions?
Yvonne Chireau
I have more of a problem with the idea that enslaved African people are not seen as "immigrants," but rather as "victims" with no agency. I think that historians might want to revisit the diverse meanings and experiences of immigration, especially given our situation today. Shouldn't our immigration history also include those who came reluctantly as slaves, refugees, forced laborers, and women who were sold and forced into marriages? Why are these categories of people not included when we talk about immigration?
Joseph Robertson
Several points regarding first, the publisher, and secondarily, the Texas Education Agency which according to the Newsweek article linked to above..."the texbook was vetted by Texas’s review committees..."
First, if McGraw-Hill’s CEO, David Levin wishes to make the ususal empty apologies with his statement of 'responsibility' that, "In life and business mistakes are made. The first step in correcting them is acknowledging them,” Levin wrote. “We made a mistake."
This is all well and fine, but I approach the question from that of a critical reader and professional editor (in the field of Library and Information Science. To be brief, I will pass over the Texas Education Agency's so-called vetting in silence.
If McGraw-Hill wishes to back up their apologetics with action, and an apology without action is empty rhetoric, then the textbook should be recalled as in the way that faulty or dangerous consumer products are, i.e. automobiles, are recalled and either fixed or replaced. Simply altering the online version by "a group of editors and people who have been involved in the creation of the textbook" according to the company is not good enough: it has always been standard for schools to use textbooks that are both flawed and either obsolete or obscenely incorrect. With the budget for education at wondrous lows and continually under attack it is not an option for Boards of Education to purchase new and corrected copies.
The burden of proof for the apology's sincerity lies with McGraw-Hill: replace every copy of the text in the 267 districts that have access to the print-ony version; that option is one also found in life and ethical businesses...
Ian Greaves
As a professional editor of history textbooks, I can say that I can see exactly how this error happened. Some editor was focused on the concept of immigration, and immigration for labor reasons, and thought it would actually be an homage to the injustice of slavery to pay lip service to it in the map's caption. It's illustrative of one of the more insidious and challenging aspects of institutional racism that this was probably an "honest mistake," in that the person who wrote that caption truly had no ill-will. Inasmuch as that, I suppose Levin's statement, especially the following part of the second paragraph, is accurate: While the book was reviewed by many people inside and outside the company, and was made available for public review, no one raised concerns about the caption. Yet, clearly, something went wrong.
While I'm not part of academia, I think we in the wider historical scholarly community needs to embrace how this change happened, and engage parents directly, perhaps via their children's schools. We need to capitalize on the fact that they are the most passionate and engaged members of the educational process by default (teachers are a close second, of course), and are the most likely to take action when they notice unjust mistakes like this, as opposed to chalking it up to just "the way things are," or some other fatalistic non-response.
Yvonne Chireau
Some editor was focused on the concept of immigration, and immigration for labor reasons, and thought it would actually be an homage to the injustice of slavery to pay lip service to it in the map's caption.
I fully agree with this as a potential explanation, although not to excuse it. Too many are caught up with (justified) anger over the racism element, and THAT becomes the focus, and that this why this story has become so visible. I also submit that parents are the best possible agents for change in this process.
Shawn Leigh Alexander
Read Pearl Duncan's response posted on HNN - The Shameful Error McGraw-Hill Made Can’t Be Fixed Simply by Covering It Up with Little Stickers - See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/160849#sthash.x6I48myM.dpuf
James Johnson
Duncan provides an insightful [and further] confirmation of the depth of Western wealth derived from the labor of enslaved Africans. However, her conclusion that these farmers, artists, miners, etc. were neither "immigrants" or "workers" is problematic. Tens of thousands of Europeans were sent to the Americas against their will but remain "immigrants" in the history books. However, they, like enslaved Africans were both "involuntary immigrants." Also, Africans were the unpaid, brutalized "enslaved workers" whose agri-labor fueled the West's industrial development.
James Johnson
https://networks.h-net.org/node/2606/discussions/87222/what-role-scholar...
Discussion of the McGraw-Hill depiction of enslaved people in the Americas as "workers" has led to insightful [and further] confirmation of the depth of Western wealth derived from the labor of enslaved Africans. However, some commenters argue that those pre-enslavement farmers, artists, healers, tanners, traders, fishermen and women, miners, etc. were neither "immigrants", although involuntary, nor "workers", although enslaved. By comparison, tens of thousands of Europeans were sent to the Americas against their will. Banished to the New World as criminals or kidnapped off the streets they came involuntarily too but they remain "immigrants" and “workers” in the history books as they should with such [hard to find] clarification in textbooks. But like enslaved Africans, they were "involuntary immigrants" and were commonly given the status of indentured servant. Further, the millions of unpaid, racially brutalized Africans must be viewed for what they were collectively in history, the unrequited “enslaved worker” force upon whose back arose industrial capitalism. To say “African slaves” instead of “enslaved Africans” negates their pre-enslavement status as free people, demoralizes Black students because it short circuits their rich past and racializes the terms "immigrant" and "slave".
James E. Johnson, Ph.D.
Independent scholar
Making history work for all