Category: Sins of Omission

On the wintry morning of February 20, 1853, more than a hundred Chinese miners were working their claims near Rich Gulch.  Without warning, five mounted and gun-brandishing bandidos swept down upon the Chinese.  Taken by surprise and without arms themselves, the Chinese could do little but comply when ordered to hand over their gold.  An...

Every time I ask my college students if they are familiar with Nazi atrocities, the collective reply is “Of course.”  Nearly all of them have also heard of Dr. Josef Mengele and his horrific medical experiments conducted at Auschwitz.  The “Angel of Death” has been the subject of countless lectures, articles, books, movies, and documentaries. ...

At Wounded Knee Creek, on December 29, 1890, the last fight of any size or significance between the U.S. Army and American Indians occurred.  Although a terrible tragedy involving the loss of Indian women and children, the battle has been wildly mischaracterized, especially by those bent on making the Indian an innocent victim of the...

Second only to the myth of Indian as ecologist is that of red brotherhood.  Although physically similar, the Indian peoples of what is today the United States were a diverse lot.  There was no common language, culture, or identity.  A few groups of Indians evolved political organizations—the Iroquois League of the Five Nations was the...

“Nigger Charley” Tyler rode the range of the Owens Valley in the trans-Sierra country of California during the early 1860’s.  He was one of the hired hands of the ranching McGee family, who grazed their beeves in the valley and then drove them north to market at the booming mining camp of Aurora.  Paiute Indians,...

The competition for victim status is fierce in today’s America.  Considering their disproportionate degree of success here in the United States, it is ironic that, for the last several decades, Japanese-Americans have been engaged in that competition.  The relocation camps of World War II are now called “concentration camps,” relocation itself is referred to as...

For several years, Charles Truxillo, a professor at the University of New Mexico, has been proclaiming that the American Southwest will—and should—be reconquered by Mexico through massive immigration.  Most politicians and media have either ignored Truxillo or tried to characterize him as an isolated extremist, claiming that most Mexican immigrants have no political agenda and...

Three New York firefighters raise Old Glory over the rubble of the World Trade Center.  The dramatic moment is captured from afar by a photographer.  Within a day or two, the photo is featured in newspapers across the United States.  It becomes as recognizable as the Marine flag-raising on Mt. Suribachi.  T-shirts soon appear with...

Most of us learned in grammar school, if not before, that the American Indian had a special reverence for nature.  He was a kind of proto-ecologist who conserved natural resources, be they trees or beasts, with a religious devotion.  I cannot recall the number of times I heard someone repeat, mantra-like, that “The Indian used...

I learned firsthand how disturbing facts could be when teaching a U.S. history course at UCLA in 1987. One of my teaching assistants, a politically correct young woman, became terribly upset after listening to my lecture on slavery. “He shouldn’t be saying such things!” she exclaimed to another teaching assistant. When asked by the other...