There is substantial evidence that, in drawing up the documents and
creating the institutions that are the foundation of the American
republic, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Rutledge, and
other founding fathers were influenced by the long-established
democratic traditions of the Iroquois Confederacy. In recent
decades this idea has created a heated controversy that has spilled
out from academic circles into school policy and the media. For its
opponents, the "influence theory," as it is called, is a perverse
attack on American identity -- an attempt to deny the foundations
of the European intellectual, cultural, and racial "credentials"
that Americans have claimed from colonial times onward. This book
gives a history of the highlights of the controversy and examines
some important issues that it raises. This controversy is not
merely "academic". It brings up very serious questions about the
ability of the intellectual elite to "manage"-- that is, to censor
and distort -- the pool of information from which public and
educational policies, media coverage, and public opinion itself are
drawn. Bruce Johansen, one of the historians who has been at the
centre of this storm, follows the controversy from its early
beginnings, providing highlights of the battle -- both attacks and
responses. Exposing the machinations of the academic establishment,
he makes it clear that academic "gatekeepers" deliberately
suppressed works favouring the theory of Iroquois influence. When
such works were eventually published, outraged establishment
critics misrepresented the theory and labelled it "a new
barbarism", "a fantasy", "a neo-Marxist ideology", and "a horror
story of political correctness" -- without examining any of the
historical evidence provided by the founding fathers. Johansen
notes that the historical evidence has become known to a wider
audience, and in a small way the "influence theory" has begun to
filter into textbooks. The controversy, however, has been taken up
by right wing media, which have linked non-European "influence" to
every dysfunction of contemporary American society from "truly
totalitarian impulses" exercised by "thought police," to the rise
in teenage pregnancies, to the fall in Scholastic Aptitude Test
scores. Barbara Mann's epilogue traces the philosophic roots of
European assumptions of racial, cultural, and intellectual
superiority, which remain the foundation of education and
scholarship in the arts and sciences -- despite tokenism and lip
service to multicultural values. She discusses the inevitable
result: the continuing exclusion of all but a handful of
non-Europeans from truly meaningful participation in our society.
General
Imprint: |
Clear Light Publishers
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
September 1997 |
First published: |
September 1997 |
Authors: |
Bruce E. Johansen
|
Dimensions: |
155 x 230 x 14mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
221 |
Edition: |
New |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-940666-79-5 |
Categories: |
Books >
Humanities >
History >
General
Books >
History >
General
|
LSN: |
0-940666-79-0 |
Barcode: |
9780940666795 |
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