Academic Xenophobia vs. Multiculturalism

I agree with Samuel Taylor that what we teach our kids about our own history is vital. This is the only point on which he and I agree. For Mr. Taylor, the purpose of teaching American History used to be to instill patriotism, a sense of national pride, to prove American exceptionalism. For him, that ideologically and morally pure purpose has been deluded by a dirtying and filthy "multiculturalism." History was and should remain "history about white people for white people."
ARE YOU JOKING? History does have winners and losers, and white men were usually the winners (and thus writers) of History. But Mr. Taylor loses all credibility when he sinks into vicious and ridiculous cultural xenophobia. According to him, whites should not bother teaching about slavery because it was a "minor historical event" and only relevant during the Civil War!!! Slavery was built into this republic from the very beginning, and the "peculiar institution" survived because the Southern economy built its very foundations on it. Civil War and secession were being mentioned as distinctly possible as early as the 1820s, and the legacy of slavery turned seemingly sensible white men into Supremacist monsters, or at least culpable bystanders. You cannot tell the history of this country from any perspective without a discussion of slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement. This is not pandering or deluding the American heritage. It is being intellectually and academically honest, admitting that white men were (and are) capable of screwing up on a massive scale. Our History is complicated. The only reason kids know so little of Native-American history is that we (white "Americans") forcibly got rid of them! We built this country on the backs (and at the expense) of non-whites.
We can have an honest debate about how to teach kids about American identity. We can debate how to instill patriotism and pride. But we cannot lie, and continue pushing our past under the rug. It is a very short step from these distortions to the "White Nationalism" described by P.J. Tobia in "Pithissippi Burning."


To get a sense for yourself of Taylor's ideas,
http://www.vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/12/2/Taylor159-165.html