The Final Frontier?
15 years ago
Monday, September 1, 2008
The Presence of the Past Book...a cont of first blog
Rosenzweig and Thelen book The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life is a great read for anyone interested in history. The book provides evidence of how average people are engaged with their past. However, while people are engaged with their past they also are alienated from the history they have been taught in the classroom. The book tries to answer the question if history really has anything to do with the everyday lives of Americans? The authors in a quest to answer this question conducted a survey in which they asked 1,500 Americans about their connection to the past. The book is based on the responses provided. Before this survey, it was thought that the American Public had a lack of historical awareness because of the lack of historic knowledge. The book also showed that the presumption of past history is different back on ethnicity. Most white Americans in the study tend to think of history as something personal, while African-Americans were more likely to think in terms of broadly shared experiences like slavery and the Civil Rights Movement.
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As you mentioned, I thought it was interesting how Rosenzweig and Thelen were able to conclude the differences in how different ethnic groups viewed history. Rosenzweig's comments on the almost narrow-mindedness of the white American respondents view of history was an amazing find. While whites saw history more in the context of "I" and "we" as it related to their immediate family, African Americans related history to "we" and "our" as it related to not just family, but how history related to a culture and an ethnic group.
I thought it was also interesting how the authors depicted the importance of national historical events for each race. While whites told historical events as it related to how their family coped in a certain situation, African Americans kept famous characters and events as more central roles in their stories.
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