“Here is the land of the free. Comenand take this freedom and make of itnwhat you can.” Even the land offerednto homesteaders was not a gift ofnanything other than freedom and opportunity.nFirst, the great majority ofnimmigrants came not for homesteadsnbut for jobs in New York, Boston,nChicago, Pittsburgh, etc. Secondly, thenhomesteader received no title until henhad worked the land for a number ofnyears. Thus the title was really thencounterpart to the wages which thenPrincipalities & Powersnby Samuel Francisna Ulack History Month,” sometimesncalled “February,” used to be about asnexciting as National Jogging Week, butnthis year it stood up and pranced. First,nexecutives at CBS gave the bounce toncommentator Andy Rooney to punishnhim for unkind remarks he may or maynnot have uttered about the African-nAmerican gene pool. Then, SenatornDaniel Patrick Moynihan, lifelong liberalnDemocrat, arrived at Vassar Collegento harangue the students in the annualn”Eleanor Roosevelt Lecture,” only tonhear himself denounced for “racism.”nProbably other, less illustrious citizensnalso fell under the month’s lash for theirninsensitivity to such well-established historicalntruths as the negritude of Nefertitinand the African origins of the Pythagoreanntheorem, but their names havennot surfaced and their fates are unknown.nIn any case, to humiliate anleading senator and neady ruin thencareer of a nationally famous opinionmakernin the space of less than a monthnis itself no small historical achievement.nYet the greatest accomplishment ofnthis year’s Black History Month was thendecision of the New York State Board ofnRegents to scuttle the “Eurocentric”norientation of its entire educational systemnand to authorize development of ancurriculum that would reflect, in thenwords of the New York Times, “thencontributions of non-white cultures” tonAmerican civilization. The most likelynsuch plan, which already exists andnwhich New Yorkers spent most ofnJanuary and February fretting about, isnthe now-notorious “Curriculum of In­n12/CHRONICLESnworker was paid in the cities. Thirdly,nthe lots were vacant land. No one wasntaxed to provide the homesteader withnhis sustenance. That early Americanoffered true fairness, not the fraudulentn”fairness” of the minimum wage, statenwelfare and the rest.n. . . Thus I conclude that intellectualnenlightenment can go far to cure thenmodern democratic state of its moralnobliquity. How then ought we to proceed?nIntellectual enlightenmentnpreached to the desert air will of coursenclusion,” which recommends sendingnEurocentric values, ideas, and assumptionsnto the back of the school bus.nThe plan, written by Dr. HenrynHamilton of the State University ofnNew York at Albany, where he chairsnthe Department of Atmospheric Sciences,nbegins with the assertion thatn”African-Americans, Asian Americans,nPuerto Ricans/Latinos, and NativenAmericans have all been the victimsnof an-intellectual and educationalnoppression that has characterized thenculture and institutions of the UnitednStates and the European Americannworid for centuries.” The purpose ofnthe new curriculum is to destroy thatn”oppression” by overturning and reversingnthe racial and cultural dominancenon which it is based.nOne way to achieve that purpose isnto insist, as the report and its appendicesndo throughout, that European andnAmerican civilizations are themselvesnderived from or dependent on nonwhitenand non-European races andncultures (the term “minorities,” thenreport warns us, merely reflects thenassumption that the Europeandescendednmajority is dominant).nThus, the report faults the currentnsyllabus on “Clobal History” used innNew York schools because it fails tonacknowledge sufficiently that “the latestnscientific evidence has establishednAfrica as the birthplace of humanitynand the earliest cradle of civilization.n. . . The African factor is crucial innworld history and the Nile Valley isnfundamental to appreciating its significance.”nThe new teaching on the rolenof Asians and blacks in American historynwill emphasize the importance ofnnnhave no effect. It needs to be linkednwith and supported by those forces innAmerican life which are still essentiallynhealthy. I believe that there are threenfrom which the forces of regenerationnmay take sustenance. They arenreligion, patriotism, and pride in individualnachievement. These are farnfrom dead in America. Ally your intellectnto them and you will move mountains.nAnd your grandchildren willnbless you for the America which younwill have bequeathed to them.ntheir labor in the economies of the FarnWest and the Old South, and neithernthe Framers nor even poor old ChristophernColumbus is sacred any more.n”The erroneous and racist attributionnof Christopher Columbus as socalledn’discoverer’ and ‘civilizer’ of NativenAmericans [i.e., Indians] can benexposed as an essential part of thenideology of ‘white nationalism’ designednto justify the exploitation andneventual genocide of indigenousnAmericans,” writes Leonard Jeffries,nhead of the Black Studies Departmentnat CCNY, in an appendix to thenreport. Exploring the contributions ofn”Native American” traditions tonAmerican government can combat then”racism” of the Constitution and thenquaint conceit that the Framers hadnany original ideas. “Some of thesen[‘Native American’] traditions, such asnthe Iroquois system of governance,”nwrites Dr. Jeffries, “have had an impactnon the development of institutions andnpractices of the State of New York andnthe United States.” AnthropologistnWilliam A. Starna, incidentally, in anletter to the New York Times on Marchn7, 1990, noted that “no good evidencenexists to support” the idea that thenIroquois had any influence on thenforming of the U.S. Constitution. Butnthat’s only one of the falsehoods then”Curriculum of Inclusion” perpetuates.nThe curriculum’s goal is not simplynto supplement school courses with increasednknowledge about the contributionsnof nonwhites to American civilizationnbut to challenge the merits andnlegitimacy of “Eurocentric” culturenitself. “An educational system centeredn