Distorted Use of History
The President of the American Historical Association (AHA) James Sweet found himself in hot water recently for his monthly remarks. In his August column, Sweet challenged his discipline’s recent use of history to buttress political causes of the present in an article entitled “Is History History?” He was openly critical of both liberal and conservative scholars for their resort to history to support current ideology. He urged his colleagues to relate history with integrity and interpret actions not through the optics of the present, but within the worlds of the historical actors.
As evidence of his thesis, Sweet cited, for example, his recent trip to Ghana where he toured Elmina Castle, a depot in the slave trade. Much to Sweet’s chagrin, the locals had white-washed the role of African tribes in the slave trade in order to promote a sanitized version of history that conformed to the current politicized version of slavery contained in the 1619 Project. Sweet intimated this was done to attract African American tourists. Sweet also criticized many progressive scholars for always viewing history through the lens of current social justice issues.
Sweet did not reserve his criticism just for progressive scholars, however. He also castigated conservative jurists for cherry-picking history to support the rightward turn of the Supreme Court this past summer. He criticized Justices Alito and Thomas for ignoring contrary historical examples in establishing so-called historical traditions of gun rights and abortion bans. He referenced Justice Breyer’s admonition that this misuse of “law office history” is incompatible with solving modern legal problems. As Sweet stated, “this is not history; it is dilettantism.”
Predictably, Sweet was forced to issue an apology for his remarks. Progressive scholars took issue with his attack on what they perceived to be the work of minority scholars. He was seen as attacking the quality and form of their scholarship. While I would agree that Sweet’s remarks were gratuitous at points (did he really have to point out that an African American family at Elmira Castle was reading the 1619 Project at breakfast?), the criticism is off base. It should be noted that the purpose of Sweet’s trip was to Ghana was to research a critical response to the release of the new book The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story.
Regrettably, this controversy has overshadowed the main point of Sweet’s comments–that historians far too often interpret history through a modern-day lens and ignore the historical context in which the events occurred. Sweet’s article, the unflattering response to it in some quarters, and Sweet’s subsequent apology would make a great essay question or class assignment. These are issues we need our students to grapple with as they conduct their own analysis of history and its impact.
