Even though I am a historian, I really hate history textbooks. They are a fossilized form of the consensus among history professionals. They are presented to students as if they were the equivalent of a science textbook, where everything in it was agreed upon and settled. They form the understanding of the past which becomes accepted truth. The textbook becomes “normal history.”
The idea of “normal history” comes from Thomas Kuhn’s ground breaking book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In this book he describes “normal science,” the view of science generally held by scientists of the time. A scientific revolution comes about when cracks are discovered in this “normal science.” New phenomena are discovered which cannot be accounted for in normal science. After time, these cracks become too large to ignore and a new way of thinking about the fundamentals of science are presented. Kuhn argues that older scientists, who were brought up on normal science, are reluctant to adopt this new view, but it is taken up by younger scientists. The revolutionary science becomes the new normal once the older scientists adopt the new view or die off.
I think similar phenomena is going on with what has been dubbed “Critical Race Theory.”
The history taught at all levels was made up of two narratives. The first was a US history narrative which one might call “the heroic story.” It began with the brave explorers mapping out a new land, they were followed by the settlers who began taming the wilderness. This led to the Revolutionary War as the colonists freed themselves from tyrannical British rule. This, in turn, led to westward expansion, the Civil War and the Gilded Age. The United States found its way onto the world stage with the Spanish-American War and the Great White Fleet. The US’s position was solidified in the Great War. Things went sour in the Great Depression, but World War Two brought the US to global leadership and unprecedented prosperity. At least when I was growing up, that was as far as we got. I don’t remember any class getting beyond WWII.
I don’t remember ever being taught about the Trail of Tears. “Remember the Alamo” was a call to defend the US against Mexico; “Remember the Maine '' was a call to get revenge on Spanish spies. I learned about carpetbaggers and scalawags, but not about the “Reconstruction Amendments” or the Freedmen's Bureau. And this was in upstate New York.
The other “normal” narrative was Western Civilization. The first Western Civ course was taught at Columbia University and was designed to show the connection between the United States and Europe. The idea was that if young men understood that connection they would be more willing to fight to defend Europe and make the world safe for democracy. The Western Civ course, which became standard in most colleges and universities, was a kind of reverse “American Exceptionalism.” Instead of emphasizing the uniqueness of the US, it emphasized what it had in common with Europe.
For many who grew up in the period of “normal history,” these two stories are what history is. We learned their stories through our textbooks, we memorized them, we were tested on them and we treated them as truth. But, as with a scientific revolution, when cracks develop in these narratives, something has to change.
The cracks in these two narratives developed in the 1960s and 70s. The civil rights movement showed that African-Americans had been left out of the US history narrative. In a similar vein, the American Indian Movement showed that Native Americans had been left out as well. The women's movement made it clear that half of the population had not been included in the nation’s story.
At first, these deficiencies were addressed by the formation of African-American and Women’s Studies departments. The Old Guard, the defenders of “normal history” were not prepared to alter their narrative. As a new generation of historians gained a place at the table, the stories of Blacks, Women and Native Americans were incorporated in the US history narrative. This new story is the one that those born after 1990 have largely been exposed to.
When I started teaching, back in the 1990s, I taught a Western Civ survey. We started with hunter-gatherers and worked our way through Mesopotamia, Greece, Roman, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and Reformation to Modern Europe. And, as with the American History narrative, we rarely got beyond WWII.
In 1991, I answered an ad from a school in the Bay Area to teach a course in World History. I had never heard of World History, but I decided to take up the challenge. When I started teaching, the discipline was still in its infancy. There was no standard narrative; no accepted way to tell the story. We were just feeling our way along. At that time I joined the World History Association, in the second year of its existence. I felt like a pioneer.
When I got my first real, tenure-track job, I was brought on to teach a Western Civ survey course. I was okay with doing this, but when some of my colleagues heard that I had taught World History, they were intrigued and asked me about it. When my department chair heard this, he was furious. I almost did not get tenure. But eventually, world history became the new normal history of our department.
Those who are up in arms about critical race theory are living in the world of “normal history” of the early 20th century. If Kuhn is right, we will have to hope that they will either change their mind or die off. But at least we know their children have made the change without harm.