The Politics Of History By Howard Zinn And The Genius Of American Politics

In “The Politics of History” by Howard Zinn and “The Genius of American Politics” by Daniel Boorstin, both authors largely focused on American history taught with Eurocentric ideals. Comprised of history through nationalist eyes, American history omits the struggles of minorities’ experiences. In “Why Study History?” Peter Stearns addressed that history’s main contribution is to provide a national identity. Vincent Harding and Joan Scott agree, arguing that it is important to include Black History and the history of Women to provide an identity for previously forgotten social groups. Properly writing history must include a variety of perspectives and firsthand accounts including minorities, so that the United States and American citizens can

Zinn says “history can untie our minds, our bodies, our disposition to move- to engage life rather than contemplating it as an outsider. It can do this by widening our view to include silent voices of the past, so that we look behind the silence of the present.” By including a broad range of history from different places it changes the perspectives and gives people a better understanding on what actually happened at that time. If the United States keeps having its people read the same one-sided history books they are not going to have much progress. For a country to learn and expand its views culturally and politically they need to learn history from different perspectives with first-hand

Joan Scott in “Gender and the Politics of History” makes it clear that the voices of women are important to American history and without their voices half of the United States’ history does not exist not because it did not happen, but because no one took the time to write it down, United States citizens are not taught the women’s perspectives; “by piling up evidence about women in the past it refutes the claims of those who insist that women had no history, no significant place in stories of the past.” By adding women into the writing of history it shows that women were an active part of history. Joan Scott insists “As feminists have documented the lives of women in the past, provided information that challenged received interpretations of particular periods of events, and analyzed the specific conditions of women’s subordination, they have encountered the powerful resistance of history- as a disciplined body of knowledge and as a professional institution.” Joan Scott includes that the history of women was written down in many forms it was never included which did not allow for the history people were reading to be