Category: Sins of Omission

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...