Debunking Howard Zinn - By Dr. Mary Grabar(Christopher Columbus)

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Can you provide a summary? I don’t have the ability to listen and won’t in the near future.
 
Do you know who’s actually an accomplished author? Howard Zinn. Not that the target audience for debunking Zinn was going to read him anyway, but pretty depressing that this lady’s work exists. One can pretty easily understand Zinn’s biases and limitations by reading him and other historians. Zinn has a lot of good stuff.
 
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These are mostly her words.

She said Zinn leaves out critical information from Columbus’s diaries. He has Columbus say the opposite of what he intended by leaving out critical parts. He portrays Christopher Columbus as being a greedy capitalist. motivated by his desire for gold. He goes out and chops off hands of these gentile native people who come bearing gifts. That is not what happened. Zinn has Christopher Columbus as the symbol of capitalism, greedy capitalism that he committed genocide. and therefore he should not be honored in anyway.

Columbus’ motivation was to go to India(East Indies) because the Indians were fighting the Muslims and he wanted to proselytize the Indians.

He did cross the Arawak and did try to convert them but there are passages that Zinn leaves out, one of them is “I know they are a people who can be made free thru holy faith more by love than force.”
He felt it was his life’s mission was to evangelize his faith and needed some wealth to do this.

He had men rebel against him but his instruction were to treat the natives with kindness. He was not always there but left strict instruction. He put one of his sailors to death for cheating an Indian.

He owned no slaves but allowed slavery as it was common.Tribal groups had slaves themselves were fighting with each other. She talks about different Indian groups how some were cannibals, some tried to take over others.
 
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Kind of reminds me of Mother Teresa. Some see her as a Saint while others see her as an evil woman who caused the undue suffering, poverty and death of many.
 
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Is anyone suggesting that Columbus did not enslave virtually a whole people? Or that the outcome for that people was not extinction? Or that their land and property was taken?
 
RobertAdams said:
Do you know who’s actually an accomplished author? Howard Zinn. Not that the target audience for debunking Zinn was going to read him anyway, but pretty depressing that this lady’s work exists. One can pretty easily understand Zinn’s biases and limitations by reading him and other historians. Zinn has a lot of good stuff.
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Zinn kind of sucks. He’s a naked ideologue, not a historian. The best thing you can say about him is that once upon a time history textbooks presented an idealized, airbrushed version of American history, and that Zinn was the counterbalance. That no longer being the case, Zinns work has outlived his usefulness.
 
Yes, she is speaking about what is written in Christopher Columbus’s diaries and his life.

For sake of discussion there is a great deal of criticism of Mother Teresa’s life to give a" fair and balance" image.
A 2013 study from the University of Ottawa dispelled the “myth of altruism and generosity” surrounding Mother Teresa, concluding that her hallowed image did not stand up to the facts, and was basically the result of a forceful media campaign from an ailing Catholic Church.

Although she had 517 missions in 100 countries at the time of her death, the study found that hardly anyone who came seeking medical care found it there. Doctors observed unhygienic, “even unfit,” conditions, inadequate food, and no painkillers — not for lack of funding, in which Mother Theresa’s world-famous order was swimming, but what the study authors call her “particular conception of suffering and death.”

The answer, unsurprisingly, given the locale of her work, is racist colonialism.
Her image is entirely circumscribed by colonial logic: that of the white savior shining a light on the world’s poorest brown people.

Mother Teresa was a martyr — not for India’s and the global South’s poor — but for white, bourgeois guilt. (As Prashad says, it functioned as this instead of, not on top of, a “genuine challenge to those forces that produce and maintain poverty.”)

And how did she even help said brown people? Dubiously if at all. She had a persistent “ulterior motive” to convert some of India’s most vulnerable and sick to Christianity
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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mother-teresa-was-no-saint_b_9470988

lots of criticism


Christopher Hitchens constantly criticized her and there are lots of videos against her.

 
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RolandThompsonGunner said:
Zinn kind of sucks. He’s a naked ideologue, not a historian. The best thing you can say about him is that once upon a time history textbooks presented an idealized, airbrushed version of American history, and that Zinn was the counterbalance. That no longer being the case, Zinns work has outlived his usefulness.
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He may suck but he has written over 20 books and Dr. Grabar does state that Zinn’s book “A People’s History of the United States” was put into high school curriculum under President Obama.(Zinn Education Project)

Strange because I actually saw a family member who was in high school in 2014 bring the book home as it was given to him at a catholic high school.

Zinn denounces history and then gives his own one sided view of the Indian cultures as as being peaceful, non combatant, commune living and loving people.
 
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I see your point. I always thought of him as both a historian and a naked ideolouge. I appreciated that he was so openly wackadoo (being a communist, being addressed as “comrade Zinn” at talks), because there was no need to guess where he stood, what his angle was, and where we parted ways. I don’t know that I would agree he has outlived his usefulness, as he covers a lot of areas that aren’t commonly explored in your average history class. I think he still probably provides the best overall “dissenting view.” I dont think anyone should read “People’s History” as their US history 101 textbook, but I also think you miss out if you dont read it at all.
 
Much of Zinn’s book, “The People’s History of America,” takes much of the information written by Bartolomé de Las Casas a Dominican Missionary who traveled with Columbus and was appalled by the treatment of the Native Americans. He was responsible for the Pope to issue a Papal Bull prohibiting the enslavement and abuse of the Natives.

Grabar would have to ignore Bartolomé de Las Casas writings in order to condemn Howard Zinn
 
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JimR-OCDS said:
Much of Zinn’s book, “The People’s History of America,” takes much of the information written by Bartolomé de Las Casas a missionary who traveled with Columbus and was appalled by the treatment of the Native Americans. He was responsible for the Pope to issue a Papal Bull prohibiting the enslavement and abuse of the Natives.

Grabar would have to ignore Bartolomé de Las Casas writings in order to condemn Howard Zinn
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I am not sure she ignores them. In this video she is not asked about it. She writes that beginning 5 pages of his book were plagiarized. She seems to knows her stuff.

She also said over 100 thousand teachers sign up the Zinn Education Project which gives out free material. Number seemed very high to me but it is on the internet.

 
Zinn wrote that book quiet a while ago. If he had plagiarized anything, I’m sure it would’ve been exposed early on, and at least while he was still alive to defend himself against Grabar’s accusation.

FYI, Howie Carr is a right wing talk show host on Boston radio.

I use to listen to him in my conservative years, but learned that he leaves details out of the topics he chooses for entertainment of his viewers.

He has been wrongfully attacked by the left on issues, but he creates the hostility by his inaccurate accounts against people. He rarely talks about the issues without attacking someone. In this case, he must’ve been all too happy to attack Howard Zinn.
 
Zinn is promoted in high school curriculum by the Zinn Educaton Project. Whether Howard Zinn is alive or not, the honesty of his work has a right to be questioned. She is doing just that. She is researching each page of his book. We know there are opposing views on everything. We can see that with Mother Teresa.
But as I researched more deeply my suspicions turned to shock. Not only does Zinn put a far-left spin on events in American history, but he uses illegitimate sources (ideological New Left historians, a socialist novelist, a Holocaust-denying historian), plagiarizes, misrepresents authors’ words, leaves out critical information, and presents outright lies.
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Sounds like she was looking to put a right-wing spin of her own on the writings of Zinn

Does she say the source he plagiarized from ?

When I read the book, I recall Zinn giving credit to the writings of De Les Casa

Keep in mind, De Le Casa’s memoirs were not copyrighted. 😃
 
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JimR-OCDS said:
Sounds like she was looking to put a right-wing spin of her own on the writings of Zinn

Does she say the source he plagiarized from ?

When I read the book, I recall Zinn giving credit to the writings of De Les Casa
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I rarely listen to radio shows for that matter. I did see that someone would talk about Christopher Columbus.

Yes, she does mention that Zinn’s plagiarism comes from a history high school book. Dr. Grabar talks about how Howard Zinn work has gone thru the whole culture including the pop culture. It affects everything including art history.

She does know her stuff and looking for longer videos from her.
 
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Sounds like she has an agenda

Anyway, Howard Zinn did let Americans know that what we were taught about Christopher Columbus was whitewashed, no pun intended.

I tend to listen to Ryan Reeves on YouTube. He gives some good history on the Church and Columbus
 
JimR-OCDS said:
Sounds like she has an agenda

Anyway, Howard Zinn did let Americans know that what we were taught about Christopher Columbus was whitewashed, no pun intended.

I tend to listen to Ryan Reeves on YouTube. He gives some good history on the Church and Columbus
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Howard Zinn did let people know history was whitewashed although I think most knew that but then he whitewashed his own history in many areas including the Indians.

We all have agendas don’t we. Some love Mother Teresa and believe she represents the good in the catholic faith. Others hate her and see her life’s work, see her as evil to say the least and speak out against her.
 
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I read “A people’s History of the United States”. I think he brings up a lot of good points, He also willingly admits he took one side of the equation as a counterbalance to a historical record he feels is lopsided. I did think it was a bit one sided though. I often felt it was a victim mentality, leaving things out context. He seemed to selectively bring up negative events and certain perspectives.

I find it concerning though that both angles aren’t presented. It’s the “let’s fight bias with bias” approach. I find that this mentality brings more problems and illusions that clarity. This is especially true for those who read a book like this without understanding more about history, the complexities, the times, etc.

From a Catholic perspective I also think though that the US is by no means without fault and we could do with some repentance ourselves. To whom much us given much is expected, and we’ve been given quite a bit tbh.
 
Servant31 said:
I find it concerning though that both angles aren’t presented. It’s the “let’s fight bias with bias” approach. I find that this mentality brings more problems and illusions that clarity. This is especially true for those who read a book like this without understanding more about history, the complexities, the times, etc.
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The problem for me is that 100 thousand educators/teachers have signed up for Zinn Education Project in the last 10 years.

Where is the opposing view?
 
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