Photo via @jbenton/Twitter
June 14, 2021, 1:06 pm
A viral Twitter thread penned by Harvard writer Joshua Benton has helped to expose the Louisiana education system’s pronounced bias in favor of literal slave owners and people who fought for the Confederacy to keep Black people enslaved or at least highly oppressed.
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Benton posted photos of actual pages in 8th-grade state history textbooks describing the sad plight of a white family who “lost all their property in slaves” thanks to emancipation and described them as “refugees” because they had to move to another property in Texas for a while.
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“In the family’s absence, the few remaining slaves took over the plantation and moved into the family’s home, dividing the rooms and the Stones’ remaining person property among themselves,” the textbook reads. “The Stone women would remain refugees (people who are forced to leave their home or country)until the end of the war in 1965. They were able to reclaim their plantation but, due to emancipation (the freeing of slaves), lost all their property in slaves.”
Another chapter in the same book, titled “Reconstruction and Redemption,” introduces itself by telling the story of Francis Tillou Nicholls, a Confederate general who fought hard, literally lost an arm and a leg in the war, and ultimately rose to become a Louisiana politician who dedicated himself to encoding segregation into law.
While the textbook makes sure to mention as often as possible that, at the time, the conservative party was the Democratic Party, it also repeatedly praises the fan of slavery and segregation as a dedicated civil servant.
“Like many Americans, he suffered deeply as a result of the war, but Nicholls carried on and remained willing to serve his state. As governor, he tried to find solutions to social, political, and economic problems that had no simple answers.”
Other fun excerpts include the story of the white guy who created a musical career and traveled the world by ripping off the music he heard slaves playing on Sundays and descriptions of slave owners as dedicated yet fun-loving dandies who “prided themselves on their hospitality,” as long as the guests were white, of course.
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Sections on the actual slaves don’t appear to mention anything of how much they suffered or the cruel treatment of the slave owners and overseers, instead preferring to talk about how they would “cook, talk, sing, dance,” and hey, sometimes they even got to choose who they married.
According to Benton, this textbook was published in 2015 and is “one of the two Louisiana history textbooks that are officially reviewed by the state in the list districts get.” The book is being added to the list of those from Southern states that have been found to whitewash slavery and the Civil War to make it seem like slaves’ lives weren’t so bad and the war wasn’t really about Southerners really, really wanting to continue to enslave people to do their work for them.
Its contents are also being held up in contrast to the newest right-wing boogeyman called “Critical Race Theory,” something typically only taught on the college level but that Republicans want you to think is currently being taught to all the little children in the U.S. Far from teaching the kids that all white people are bad or whatever, many textbooks seem to have exactly the opposite agenda.
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*First Published: June 14, 2021, 1:06 pm
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