Maintaining nationalism and capitalism for dear life.

[No Elephants]

His professors at Columbia included Harry Carman, Henry Steele Commager, and David Donald.<14> But it was Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter's The American Political Tradition that made the most lasting impression. Zinn regularly included it in his lists of recommended readings, and, after Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, Zinn wrote, "If Richard Hofstadter were adding to his book The American Political Tradition, in which he found both 'conservative' and 'liberal' presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, maintaining for dear life the two critical characteristics of the American system, nationalism and capitalism, Obama would fit the pattern."<16>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn

Zinn died in January 2010, a year, almost to the day, after the first inauguration of President Barack Obama.


According to Twit American Melissa Harris Perry, this means Zinn, as a white liberal critic of the President, was racist. (I guess MHP sees nothing racist about deciding that every single white liberal critic of the President criticizes Obama only out of racism, while people of all other races who criticize him may simply differ with his policies.)

http://www.thenation.com/article/163544/black-president-double-standard-why-white-liberals-are-abandoning-obama

Zinn was professor of history at Spelman College in Atlanta from 1956 to 1963, and visiting professor at both the University of Paris and University of Bologna.

In 1964, Zinn accepted a position at Boston University, after writing two books and participating in the Civil Rights Movement in the South. His classes in civil liberties were among the most popular at the university with as many as 400 students subscribing each semester to the non-required class. A professor of political science, he taught at BU for 24 years and retired in 1988 at age 64.

"He had a deep sense of fairness and justice for the underdog. But he always kept his sense of humor. He was a happy warrior," said Caryl Rivers, journalism professor at Boston University. Rivers and Zinn were among a group of faculty members who in 1979 defended the right of the school's clerical workers to strike and were threatened with dismissal after refusing to cross a picket line.<18>

Zinn came to believe that the point of view expressed in traditional history books was often limited. Biographer Martin Duberman noted that when he was asked directly if he was a Marxist, Zinn replied, "Yes, I'm something of a Marxist." He especially was influenced by the liberating vision of the young Marx in overcoming alienation, and disliked Marx's later dogmatism. In later life he moved more toward anarchism.<19>

He wrote a history textbook, A People's History of the United States, to provide other perspectives on American history. The textbook depicts the struggles of Native Americans against European and U.S. conquest and expansion, slaves against slavery, unionists and other workers against capitalists, women against patriarchy, and African-Americans for civil rights. The book was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1981.<20>

In the years since the first edition of A People's History was published in 1980, it has been used as an alternative to standard textbooks in many high school and college history courses, and it is one of the most widely known examples of critical pedagogy. The New York Times Book Review stated in 2006 that the book "routinely sells more than 100,000 copies a year".<21>

In 2004, Zinn published Voices of a People's History of the United States with Anthony Arnove. Voices is a sourcebook of speeches, articles, essays, poetry and song lyrics by the people themselves whose stories are told in A People's History.

In 2008, the Zinn Education Project<22> was launched to support educators using A People's History of the United States as a source for middle and high school history. The Project was started when a former student of Zinn, who wanted to bring Zinn's lessons to students around the country, provided the financial backing to allow two other organizations, Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change to coordinate the Project. The Project hosts a website that has over 100 free downloadable lesson plans to complement A People's History of the United States.

The People Speak, released in 2010, is a documentary movie inspired by the lives of ordinary people who fought back against oppressive conditions over the course of the history of the United States. The film includes performances by Zinn, Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Viggo Mortensen, Josh Brolin, Danny Glover, Marisa Tomei, Don Cheadle, and Sandra Oh.<23><24><25>
Civil Rights Movement

From 1956 through 1963, Zinn chaired the Department of History and social sciences at Spelman College. He participated in the Civil Rights Movement and lobbied with historian August Meier<26> "to end the practice of the Southern Historical Association of holding meetings at segregated hotels".<27>

While at Spelman, Zinn served as an adviser to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and wrote about sit-ins and other actions by SNCC for The Nation and Harper's.<28> In 1964, Beacon Press published his book SNCC: The New Abolitionists<29>

Zinn collaborated with historian Staughton Lynd mentoring student activists, among them Alice Walker,<30> who would later write The Color Purple; and Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund. Edelman identified Zinn as a major influence in her life and, in that same journal article, tells of his accompanying students to a sit-in at the segregated white section of the Georgia state legislature.<31>

Although Zinn was a tenured professor, he was dismissed in June 1963 after siding with students in the struggle against segregation. As Zinn described<32> in The Nation, though Spelman administrators prided themselves for turning out refined "young ladies," its students were likely to be found on the picket line, or in jail for participating in the greater effort to break down segregation in public places in Atlanta. Zinn's years at Spelman are recounted in his autobiography You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times. His seven years at Spelman College, Zinn said, "are probably the most interesting, exciting, most educational years for me. I learned more from my students than my students learned from me."<33>

While living in Georgia, Zinn wrote that he observed 30 violations of the First and Fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution in Albany, Georgia, including the rights to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and equal protection under the law. In an article on the civil rights movement in Albany, Zinn described the people who participated in the Freedom Rides to end segregation, and the reluctance of President John F. Kennedy to enforce the law.<34> Zinn has also pointed out that the Justice Department under Robert F. Kennedy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, headed by J. Edgar Hoover, did little or nothing to stop the segregationists from brutalizing civil rights workers.<35>

Zinn wrote about the struggle for civil rights, as both participant and historian.<36> His second book, The Southern Mystique<37> was published in 1964, the same year as his SNCC: The New Abolitionists in which he describes how the sit-ins against segregation were initiated by students and, in that sense, were independent of the efforts of the older, more established civil rights organizations.

In 2005, forty-one years after his firing, Zinn returned to Spelman where he was given an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters and delivered the commencement address<38><39> where he said in part, during his speech titled, "Against Discouragement," that "the lesson of that history is that you must not despair, that if you are right, and you persist, things will change. The government may try to deceive the people, and the newspapers and television may do the same, but the truth has a way of coming out. The truth has a power greater than a hundred lies."<40>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn

Then again, MHP claims that denying that her claim that white liberals criticize Obama only out of racism is itself evidence of racism.

So, I guess that my criticsims of Obama's policies plus my attempts to refute Melissa Harris Perry's racist conclusions about white critics of Obama, like Zinn, make me doubly racist.

(In fairness, if all President of the US had been African-American, I might be saying stupid things, too. I hope they would not also be racist things, though.)

For better or worse, I have also been critical of Bubba, and many other New Democrats of all hues, including Obama. So, I guess this guy at least would think that I am not a racially discriminatory critic, just someone who prefers traditional Democrats to New Democrats.

http://coreyrobin.com/2011/09/26/melissa-harris-perrys-non-response-response-to-her-critics/

[No Elephants]

1. P.S.

Remember: Clinton cited as his two biggest influences (outside family, I assume) JFK and Carroll Quigley. The latter explained that the best thing for financial markets is minimal change from one USG administration to another. Hence, Hofstadter was astute (in this respect, anyway).

[Enthusiast]

2. Zinn had it right. I will not watch MHP.

Not allowing criticism of the President mires us deeper in these problems. Then we have the RW smokescreen screaming that, "Obama is a Muslim socialist!" I am tempted to say to them, "No, he's worse than that, he's a Republican."

[No Elephants]

3. They would never believe you.

[Enthusiast]

4. He's their bestest buddy

and they just don't know it. I suspect some in the inner, inner circle know it, but not the regular smoke screen inducing, unknowing idiots like Ghomert and Palin.