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What does James Baldwin mean by "What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one’s heroic ancestors"?
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James Baldwin argues that American identity is often based on myths about "heroic ancestors," typically focusing on white European settlers, which exclude the contributions of other groups like Native and African Americans. These myths propagate ideas of superiority and privilege, ignoring the complexities and injustices in U.S. history, including the involuntary arrival of many Europeans. Baldwin urges educators to teach a more inclusive and truthful history that acknowledges all contributions to American society.
James Baldwin’s essay “A Talk to Teachers” was published in 1963, a year that also brought the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four children. Peaceful demonstrators for voting rights and against segregation were routinely subjected to attacks by dogs, and buses carrying “freedom riders” had also been bombed. In this context, Baldwin reminds his readers that they were living in “very dangerous times.”
As dangerous as violence, Baldwin points out, are the myths that perpetuate ideas about superiority and privilege in the origins of the United States. That perpetuation not only continues to exclude the participation of many groups who contributed to the positive features of American society but also glorifies behaviors that had many negative aspects and negative consequences. The “heroic ancestors” of that myth—one that is told in every school—are invariably the white settlers who arrived from Europe. This exclusivity implies that the ancestors of contemporary Americans are neither people who were already on the continent at that time and not those who came, usually involuntarily, from other world areas: Native Americans and African Americans.
Even regarding the European whites themselves, Baldwin emphasizes, many of those who traveled to America did not do so of their own free will. While they are usually praised for their desire “to be free,” many were unfree: they were convicted criminals with limited choices, primarily incarceration in or deportation from their native land.
Baldwin also presents the contrast that many other, usually untold elements of United States history are positive and “more beautiful” than the ones children usually hear about, while still others are “more terrible.” In directing his essay toward teachers, he is particularly concerned that those in all-black schools—as he writes while segregation was both still legal and the norm in American public school districts—increase their efforts to teach their students about all aspects of the diversity of a country that should never exclude them from its history.
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