Deceptive Narratives of History

      First Free-Writing Reflection Essay in response to deceptive narratives of history

As I reflect about current issues related to policies, social work or services, writing about the concept of history told in a deceptive one-sided narrative is weighing heavily on my heart and for that very reason I will begin to unpack just why this is so. To do this I am going to begin to explore what I have learned about the process of hero making by sourcing the book “White Rage” by Carol Anderson and the text, “Lies my teacher told me; Everything American History textbook got wrong,” “by Loewen James. 

Firstly, the text, “Lies my teacher told me; Everything American History textbook got wrong,” highlights how the process of hero making often highlights a more simplistic approach, which is often questionable and leads to misinformation. Because it illustrates heroes in American History in a way that does not present the whole context of that person or unit of analysis. But instead depicts half narrative or whitewashed version.  (James). An example of this was seen in the text, but I will choose my own example from the text, White Rage about former U.S President, Abraham Lincoln outlined below.

The American history made out Abraham Lincoln as a hero, because he freed the slaves. But what they failed to do was tell the whole story about how he felt about slaves, or even his objectives or intentions behind freeing the enslaved. (Anderson). This Creates a narrative that is one sided, thus leading to misinformation, which is seen as the full context of Abraham Lincoln, a supposedly hero was not told and lead to the misinformation that the injustice of African American ended when the 13 Amendment was passed.

Overall, the specific instances of history told in a deceptive one-sided narrative bothers me not only because of the misinformation it gives as I have illustrated. But also, because it alters effective change for it prevents people from learning from passed mistakes, finding effective solutions and clearing up misconceptions of prejudice, racism, stereotypes and other biases that are still inherently amongst us today. Therefore, current laws or debates about things such as banning books that speak on issues race, weighs heavily on my heart because it furthers the agenda of deceptive narrative, which is disruptive.

Truth is important, isn't it?  But truth is complex.  Every moment has so many aspects and dimensions.  In any event, or in any person’s life, we can only perceive or consier a tiny fraction of the full range of facts.  Narratives about history or another person are always highly selective.  The question we must answer is what motivates our selection of the facts?  Are we trying to give an honest and fair and accurate account of an event or person?  Are we trying to inspire people?  Are we trying to provide a cautionary warning?  I we sharing a narrative to help readers form a shared cultural identity with us?  Are we using facts selectively to present a particular viewpoint of the world and reality?  How can we judge which approach is best in creating “good” narratives or “false” narratives.

A core problem facing those of us alive today is the way some people are undermining the idea of truth or facts.  We have people engaged in a sort of post-truth political entrepreneurship.  These are people who will not even bother to create a narrative that is false or misleading—they just spew so many words that are untrue, and do so constantly, that they create confusion and disengagement.  They create an impression that no one can know what is really going on, so it’s better to let the experts figure things out, or to place our trust in people who have the vibes that we like. 

It seems to me that traditions of teaching history in the USA were shaped by the ideas that a purpose of education is to inspire people and make them patriotic and loyal to the USA, and also the belief that teaching people about the heroism or admirable qualities of historical figures would enhance patriotism and civic engagement and idealism.  No doubt there would have been many motives.  Ours is a nation of great diversity, and we want to hold together as a nation dedicated to a few basic principles, so perhaps people who created historical narratives were trying to help people get a common ideology or set of values so that we could enjoy national social cohesion and a values-based national unity.  Or, perhaps some of the textbook writers and leaders of education had more sinister motives, such as getting working classes and common people to accept a system that did not always treat people fairly.

In the case of Abraham Lincoln, consider the way our National Park System examines Lincoln and his relationship with Frederick Douglass.  Sometimes official history is capable of nuance and a recognition that people are complex, with noble qualities and admirable aspects mixed in with character flaws and personal limitations.  Sometimes people put down Lincoln by finding some passage from some speech or letter or debate, and then claiming “this is what he believed”.  This can be extremely misleading, because Lincoln grew during his life, and his views and opinions generally improved. In his last public address he mentioned that Blacks (at least ones who had served in the Union army, at a minimum) would probably need to receive a right to vote.  The conspirators (or at least John Wilkes Booth) were in the audience, and decided upon hearing this that instead of kidnapping the President and Vice President and cabinet members, they would just murder them.  An examination of Lincoln’s personal behavior and his relationship with African-Americans also shows that he had an exceptionally warm and respectful attitude, especially in the last several years of his life. 

I would prefer to have history taught in terms of themes.  The themes I’d emphasize would include: 1) progress toward recognizing the equal dignity and rights and value of all persons; 2) progress away from governments based on tyranny and aristocratic rule and toward democratic principles; 3) progress toward enhancing and increasing human freedom; 4) progress toward ensuring that basic needs are met, especially through technology in agriculture, clothing manufacturing, and energy production; 5) progress in using technology and science to improve the quality of life (e.g., water purification, mass transit, vaccinations, germ theory, antibiotics, etc.); 6) Development of peace consciousness and diminishing emphasis on warfare, imperialism, conquest, and militarism; and 7) milestones in political practice, political theory, legal developments, and basic facts about American or international law and events related to how we govern ourselves.

I would teach history and organize history textbooks in terms of these seven dimensions of history, and emphasize ways that we moved away from the ideals, and the ways we advanced those aspects.  I think history should raise awareness in the general public about the goals we have sought in our society, and how we have progressed toward those goals, and how we have regressed away from those goals. 

It is so difficult to get benefits.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about how hard it is to get help even when you really need it. I personally almost got rejected from getting Medicaid, even though I am a full-time student and only working two days a week. They told me I was not working enough hours, even though school is basically a full-time job on its own. This was really stressful because I have a lot of health issues. One of my prescriptions cost about 260 dollars, and I had to pay out of pocket before they finally approved my Medicaid. That money was not easy to come by, and it made me feel scared about what would happen if I got sick again before coverage kicked in.

Trying to get help like Medicaid or EBT takes so much time and energy. There are long phone calls, confusing letters, online portals that barely work, and rules that feel impossible to understand. You are always worried about saying the wrong thing or missing one form and losing everything. It really feels like the system expects people to mess up. I kept thinking about how many people do not have the time, internet access, or support to deal with all of this. If I felt overwhelmed, I cannot imagine how someone feels who is working multiple jobs or dealing with a serious illness.

Let’s take the I, Daniel Blake movie we watched in class as an example. Watching him go through endless waiting, being sent from place to place, and being treated like he was lying was hard to watch. The system never really listened to him. It felt very real because that is how these systems work sometimes. You can be clearly struggling, but the rules matter more than the person. The movie made it clear how harmful these long processes can be, especially when people are already at their lowest.

What scares me is that this is not just a movie. In the real world right now, new policies are making things harder for people who rely on EBT and Medicaid. Many states are adding or bringing back work requirements for SNAP, which means people have to prove they are working a certain number of hours just to get food. This affects students, people with disabilities, and people with unstable jobs the most. There is also talk about adding more limits and rules to Medicaid again, which could cause people to lose health coverage even if they still need it.

Right now, about 40 million people in the United States use SNAP to help pay for food, and over 70 million people rely on Medicaid for health care. These numbers show that these programs are not rare or extra help. They are basic supports for millions of families, kids, students, disabled people, and older adults. When rules change or benefits get cut, it does not just affect a few people. It affects entire communities and puts more stress on people who are already struggling.

All of this makes me think about how social welfare systems are supposed to help people survive, not push them deeper into stress. When food and health care are treated like rewards instead of basic needs, people suffer. It makes me even more certain about going into social work, because these systems need people who understand how hard they really are and who are willing to speak up for the people stuck inside them.

When it comes to social welfare there are two conflicting priorities in reducing error.  On one hand, we may prioritize denying benefits to those persons who do not deserve them or do not qualify for them.  We want to reduce the error of giving undeserving and “cheating” people benefits they don’t deserve. If this is our higher priority, we will make more errors of the other sort: of denying benefits to persons who deserve or qualify for them.  But, if we instead want to be sure that everyone who deserves benefits receives them, we’ll need to make it easier to qualify and easier to apply for benefits, and that means we will be allowing more people who are cheating the system or trying to get benefits that they don’t deserve. 

It seems to me that the values we have when we make a decision between which type of error to prioritize will need to be set by our conception of human nature and private property.  If we highly value private property, and we have a pessimissitic view of human nature, will want to be more vigilent and selective about who receives help. We will assume that many people will try to cheat the system and take what they do not deserve, so we will want strong systems of guarding against people taking benefits that aren’t intended for them.  And if we highly value private property, we will be extremely concerned about how public resources are distributed, because we will be very aware that gathering those resources to re-allocate them through a social safety net required taxing people, and taxes are a way of taking away time and wealth from people, removing their control over some of their private property. 

On the other hand, if we think private property is conditionally granted to us as a sort of trusteeship, or is only permited to exist because of a collective society that protects our property, we may be more willing open to seeing that our income and wealth partly belongs to us and partly is owed to society as a collective, both to secure a social welfare safety net and also to generally protect our property and our person.  

A second divide beyond the one between pesimissitic private property devotees and optimistic persons with a less fundamentalists commitement to the value of private property can be seen in the divide between people’s views of social welfare safety nets.  On one hand there are those who see the social safety net that provides housing, basic incomes, food, medical care, and various other benefits as a temporary bit of assistance that should be minimal and limited.  This is a view of social welfare safety nets as tools to help people briefly maintain their standard of living as they transition from one form of income-generating economic life to another.  The assumption is that people will take some work, and people should not be too selective about the type of work they take. The safety net should be minimal and stingy, so that people will have a reasonable incentive to recover from addictions, regain health, find employment, and take whatever job they can quickly find.  In this point-of-view, the safety net is a humanitarian gesture, but people’s fundamental duty to society is to be self-supporting and self-sufficienty.

Contrasting with this view is one where the social welfare safety net is a tool to enhance freedom or ensure that people’s human rights are being respected. With this point-of-view, welfare benefits should ensure that everyone has “an adequate standard of living, including food supplying adequate nutrition, basic health care, and shelter. In this perspective, if someone shows some degree of hunger, or lacks housing, or needs access to health care, a social welfare system is a means to supplying what they lack.  Questions of who deserves the help are not as important as making sure that everyone has enough, with “enough” being defined by some standards informed by conceptions of human rights.  The role of welfare in enhancing freedom and the power of employees would imply that benfits ought to be generous and available for long durations without threat of termination.  The perspective here is that the welfare system ought to provide a high enough standard of living that employers will need to induce workers to work for them with high salaries and attractive benefits. This approach assumes that workers need the power to refuse to take employed work, so that they can have more freedom, and that includes the freedom to leave employment where an employer is unfair or unreasonable or abusive, and the freedom to stay out of the paid labor force as long as necessary to find an attractive way to earn money. 

You and many other social work students are horrified at how unreasonable the social welfare system is, making it so difficult for people to qualify to receive benefits.  Generally, social work students have presumptions about human nature that are optimistic, assuming people want to work and be productive. You may also prefer a social welfare system that maximizes the freedom of people who are working class, easily giving them generous benefits for a long time so that employers will be pressured to improve compensation and working conditions to attract workers. You also prioritize the values found in the 25th article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.