James Oakes has a post up at Left2Right about the dispute going on in Philadelphia over the high school history curriculum. I hadn’t read much more than headlines about this so I assumed it was just the usual disagreement about whose history should be taught, and in what quantity. It turns out to be something quite different.

[T]he new Philadelphia requirement … is based on a spurious body of pseudo-knowledge known as "Afrocentrism," wherein the great achievements of western civilization–philosophy, literature, mathematics, and science–are said to have had their origins in Africa, specifically in the ancient black civilization of Kemet, known outside Afrocentric circles as "Egypt."

History is replaced with mythology designed to make black students feel better about themselves and their origins. But, Oaks observes, there are plenty of other people, besides Afrocentrists, who think that history classes should serve this sort of image building purpose. He picks out Lynne Cheney in particular as an example.

In the end, what’s the difference between history as preached under Lynne Cheney’s American nationalist dispensation and Molefi Asante’s black nationalist dispensation? Both demand the impressment of history into the service of ideology. Confusing history with propaganda, both forsake history as a critical discipline. And both establish a bogus psychological standard for measuring the validity of any particular historical inquiry. If it makes students feel good–about their country or about themselves, it make no difference–it’s doing the job.

I think there are two problems with this. Judging only from his quotations of Cheney I think he got her view wrong. But more importantly he is missing an important distinction between the kind of nationalist approach that he is attributing to Cheney and the kind of approach adopted by Afrocentrists. Let’s start with what he said about Cheney.

Cheney hit the big time about a decade ago when she launched a pre-emptive strike on the National History Standards that she herself had commissioned as head of the NEH. According to the Los Angeles Times, Mrs. Cheney argued "that the standards were not positive enough about America's achievements and paid too little attention to figures such as Gen. Robert E. Lee, Paul Revere and Thomas Edison. At one point in the initial controversy, Cheney denounced the standards as 'politicized history.' " There were not enough references to the Constitution and too many references to the Ku Klux Klan. Not enough George Washington and too much Harriet Tubman. All in all, Cheney concluded, "We are a better people than the National History Standards indicate, and our children deserve to know it."

Cheney did not conclude that history classes should be balanced with the aim of making America, and Americans, look good. She concluded that if history classes were balanced then America, and Americans, would look good. There is a world of difference here.

The first is the sort of nationalist dispensation that Oakes is looking for. History classes should focus on the positive with the aim of making the nation look good. The second is just the view that, on balance, American history is positive. If you look at the good and the bad, with an objective eye, then the good outweighs the bad by a wide margin. Whether or not this view of American history is correct, it is distinct from the idea that history classes should serve an image building purpose.

In any case, whether or not Cheney holds the view ascribed to her, Oakes is missing another important distinction. A lot of nationalists do think that history classes should focus on the positive aspects of their respective national histories. But, and this is the important bit, they usually think that the classes should focus on the positive aspects of their respective national histories. They don’t, by and large, hold the view that historians should abandon doing history and just make up stuff that looks good.

If you like, nationalists want to tell students to see the glass half full, while Afrocentrists want to tell students that there is no glass. History is whatever you would like it to be.