Admitting flaws necessary to truth

Published 1:14 pm Friday, February 24, 2012

In Richard S. Davis’ column, “Recalling the wisdom of our first president,” I disagree with his dismissal of Howard Zinn as a “revisionist historian.”

Zinn was trying to fill in the great gaps in the history of our nation as it has traditionally been taught in schools to include what happened to minorities and the underclasses instead of merely idolizing the leaders of the country or assuming the history of the white majority is the only history that counts.

I found Zinn’s history to be well-researched, including extensive quoting from primary documents, and an important addition to balance biased traditional histories. Sure, Zinn was biased, but we need a complete understanding of history to understand all that went into the making of the nation and all that influenced us in becoming who we are today. We need to look at history from a variety of viewpoints, and we need to understand the troubles of the past so we can better understand and deal with the troubles of today.

As a Christian, I see truth and justice as absolutely necessary to pursue. That’s why it bothers me to see Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” dismissed as “revisionist.” It’s even more troubling to read about attempts by conservatives to deny or minimize the abuses done to minorities in the past, such as denying that the issue of slavery was behind the Civil War.

Ignoring and minimizing past and present abuses doesn’t bring the country together, but prevents us from having honest discussions about what happened then and what is happening today. On all sides, however, we need to appreciate that we are all human and products of our respective histories, and therefore flawed. It’s only by acknowledging our flaws and forgiving each other that we can come together and overcome our problems. Only then can we hope to become the great nation that George Washington once envisioned.

Leslie Jordan

Shoreline