American students are not being taught the full truth about slavery, a new study has said. The report, which comes from the Southern Poverty Law Center, showed that students are being shown a sanitized version of the atrocities suffered by slaves.

It basically looked at how slavery is taught in kindergarten to grade twelve classrooms. Students were usually taught a deeply incomplete version of events, the report showed.

Students are often taught about those who helped slaves reach freedom before they are educated on the horrors that slaves had to endure.

Slavery is often presented as an isolated phenomenon without discussing the white supremacist views that abetted it. The study also found that racist ideologists who have had a negative effect on American society are ignored.

Only 8 percent of high school seniors surveyed by an independent polling firm for the study identified slavery as the primary reason for the Civil War. Almost half of the students surveyed said tax protests were the main cause.

Teachers are not comfortable talking about slavery

Teachers also posted results which could be described as unfortunate. About 66 percent of social studies teachers who were polled said that they discussed the immorality of slavery with their students. A little above half of the 1,700 social studies teachers polled said they discussed the continued legacy of slavery with their students.

Over 90 percent of surveyed teachers said that they feel comfortable talking about slavery in their classroom, but others disclosed that they were very uncomfortable when answering open-ended questions.

Many of the teachers were also not comfortable talking about the abject cruelty of slavery and its accompanying abuse, particularly sexual abuse.

The study found that the sheer inhumanity of slavery can make it difficult to teach. One Utah teacher said: “It is always difficult to discuss the ability of slave owners to treat other human beings as slaves were treated. It is hard for students to understand how someone could do that, and communicating what makes it possible is difficult.”

Teachers added that they find it hard communicating a nuanced view of slavery. A Maryland teacher was quoted in the report saying, “I don’t feel that even I understand where the proper ’balance’ is between getting across the physical and psychological pain of slavery without losing sight of the efforts made by enslaved people to build emotional, spiritual and family and community resources to cope with the institution.”

No time for the subject

Some of the teachers said they were comfortable teaching all aspects of slavery but were not given more time to cover the subject. “I am not uncomfortable teaching slavery,” one South Carolina teacher said.

“I am more disturbed by the fact that so little time is allowed to teach it. More often than not it’s glossed [over] or covered in a couple paragraphs.”

The study also reviewed 15 states’ content standards and 10 popular U.S. history textbooks.

Some states performed well than others, but they generally demanded only superficial-level teaching on the subject of slavery. The researchers found that the textbooks were also problematic.

As the study noted, the issue of slavery “is not simply an event in our history; it’s central to our history.”

If the current trend of teaching on slavery is not checked, then many of the students would leave the classroom without having a clear knowledge of the world around them and its institutions, as well as, how power is distributed.

The report argued that it is very important now more than ever to teach students the reality of slavery and its continued impact on society, considering the surge in white nationalism.

“If we don’t get the early history of our country right, we are unlikely to be equipped to do the heavy lifting necessary to bridge racial divides now and in the future,” the study stated.

There is no reason to think that America’s leaders will respond any differently to the latest mass shooting.

Having prayed for the latest victims of military-grade weapons, the avowed Christians in Washington will defend those weapons as liberty incarnate. Their counterparts in Florida just refused to consider a ban on assault weapons, declaring porn to be the bigger threat to public health. The NRA-approved president wants teachers to pack heat.

In other words, even modest proposals for gun control will run into the violent conviction that “real” Americans should be able to take the law into their own hands. For deep historical reasons of race and revolution, these Americans will claim the right to use deadly force, to be “sovereign” over everyone else.

It’s a long story that Americans like myself need to understand before we can overcome.

Many European monarchs dismantled the rival armies in their realms during the early modern period. Absolutists like Louis XIV also tried to stop haughty aristocrats from fighting duels. After the political union between England and Scotland in 1707, the British Crown dismantled Highland clans in the name of the law — that is, the unitary sovereignty of the state.

This is not a history of freedom. But Europeans eventually embraced the rule of law as a kind of peace treaty in which everyone gave up the power to kill in return for shared safety.

“There, perhaps, never was in government a revolution of greater importance than this,” noted a British jurist in 1758. A disarmed population was the foundation of civil society, a starting point for progress within constitutional monarchies like Britain and Denmark or republics like France and Italy.

Slave-owners held tight to their guns

The United States took a different path. In some ways this is due to the American Revolution, which was triggered in part by British efforts to disarm colonial militias. Rejecting the king set off a long debate about the source of legitimate power, resulting in a system of divided authority between the states and the central government.

But there is a darker side to this well-known story.

Many colonial slave-owners became rebels only when they decided that the British Crown threatened their “sovereign” right to dominate their labour force. After the Revolution, they clung to this individual and race-based form of sovereignty for which they were willing to sacrifice the Union in the 1860s.

Although they lost the Civil War, their ideas lived on. Klansmen took up where slave patrols left off, rejecting any rule of law that gave equal protection to Black Americans. Western vigilantes embraced violence as a citizen’s right and duty, especially in the face of Indigenous peoples or Mexicans.

This yearning for individual sovereignty sank deep into American culture, lifting the ruthless and privileged over the people at large. Under a constitutional framework where public policy is weak and divided by design, powerful individuals and interests run roughshod over society.

The inability to stop massacres like the one last week epitomizes this deep flaw in the American DNA. Backed by powerful gun companies, the NRA spews out a steady stream of race-tinted paranoia. Their political servants reject not only government regulation, but also the very idea of civil order, of peaceful coexistence in society. They portray the nation itself as a kind of frontier free-for-all, in which only the strong survive.

The AR-15 thus becomes “America’s Rifle.” The slaughter of innocents becomes “the price of freedom.”

In the face of this bloody madness, Americans need to think outside their political boxes. Each and every American needs to be regarded as part of a cohesive national whole, a strong society whose general welfare overrules the wild fantasies and bottomless greed of any person or industry.

Americans must confront not just bad readings of the Second Amendment but also the limitations of the Constitution itself, which is now 231 years old.

Above all, Americans must rediscover themselves as a revolutionary people who are not afraid to start over.

Author:J.M. Opal: Associate Professor of History, McGill University

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The article was first published by The Conversation (http://www.theconversation.com) and is republished with permission  granted to www.oasesnews.com

The Canadian government has been taking flak lately for its arms sales.

Helicopters destined for the Philippines could be used for internal security in President Rodrigo Duterte’s harsh crackdowns, critics charge.

The $12-billion sale of light armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia has also embroiled Justin Trudeau’s government in controversy.

In response, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland has pledged to review both deals, suggesting Canada is toughening up arms sales restrictions based on human rights grounds.

But how did Canada get into the international arms trade, anyway?

A look at the history of how Canada started selling weapons overseas following the Second World War reveals that, contrary to Freeland’s implication, Canada actually used to be much more restrictive on arms sales than it is today.

Canada has not made human rights any more central to its arms export policy than it was in the 1940s — in fact, it’s reduced oversight and the consideration of human rights issues when it comes to selling arms.

“Canada’s export controls are among the most rigorous in the world,” the government states.

It “strives to ensure that, among other policy goals, Canadian exports are not prejudicial to peace, security or stability in any region of the world or within any country.” In the post-Second World War period, Canada did not exactly “strive to ensure” these things — but it did say no when there was a risk of any of them happening.

How Canada got into the arms trade

Indeed, Canada entered the arms trade cautiously and carefully. After the Second World War, Ottawa was willing to pass surplus military equipment in Europe to allied governments.

But sales to less reliable countries, and those who might actually use the weapons, always required approval by the full cabinet. Prime Minister Mackenzie King noted that “great care should be taken with respect to all sales of weapons and supplies of war to foreign governments.”

The first test came in 1946, when cabinet agreed to sell six million 30-calibre cartridges and four million magazines to the Dutch army just as it was about to embark on a colonial war in Indonesia. But when the Dutch asked for 10,000 Sten machine guns for use in Indonesia, Canadian officials turned them down.

“We have no reason to believe that Canadian public opinion would support such a sale, nor would it be in the Canadian interest to make the sale,” according to one document from the day, now filed at Library and Archives Canada.

Why?

The guns would probably be employed in the “‘pacification’ of the native population,” exposing the government to “severe domestic and international criticism for supplying these arms” and potentially “prejudic(ing) for a long time our commercial relations with the Indonesians.”

Any further talk of helping the Netherlands — a close Canadian ally — was blocked by the Department of External Affairs

No to China

Cabinet did get to decide on a proposal in 1946 to sell warships to China, then a pro-American regime desperately fighting off the advances of Mao Zedong’s Chinese communists.

The Canadian government certainly sympathized with the Chinese Republicans. And the sale of 10 or 11 surplus Canadian frigates would have netted Canada some $2 million — the equivalent of $27 million in today’s money. Yet cabinet blocked the sale on the grounds that the ships “might be used in civil warfare.”

The same logic underpinned a Canadian decision to bar all military exports to Chinese Republicans in 1947.

In both cases, the logic was clear: Canada should sell arms only to close allies, and if there was any likelihood of use against civilians, no sale should be made.

Arming a dictatorship: Indonesia

By the 1970s, however, Canada had thrown early caution to the winds, becoming a keen seeker of arms exports. A recent analysis shows that Canada supplied $5.8 billion worth of arms over the past 25 years to countries classed as “dictatorships” by the human rights group Freedom House.

The example of arms sales to Indonesia curiously shows both a greater Canadian willingness to sell and the limits to that willingness.

Indonesia notoriously invaded the former Portuguese colony of East Timor in 1975, with more than 100,000 Timorese perishing under the subsequent military occupation. From 1975 to 1991, Canada nonetheless was willing to sell arms to Indonesia.

Writing in the 1980s, Timorese leader José Ramos Horta described Canadian “double standards” in scathing terms: “These weapons play an important role in the war in East Timor. But how does the Canadian government explain the weapons exports to Indonesia if Canadian law states that export permits should be issued only for ‘non-conflict’ areas? Simply by asserting that there is no armed conflict in East Timor – knowing that to be a lie.”

Yet there were limits.

In 1991, a massacre in East Timor prompted Barbara McDougall, foreign minister in Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative government, to impose an arms embargo.

There was no suggestion that Canadian-made arms had been used in the massacre, but McDougall was taking no chances.

Arms sales to Indonesia resumed as Jean Chrétien’s government embraced Indonesia, but there was increasing dissent within the Department of Foreign Affairs about it.

“Any question of military sales to Indonesia, by definition, is a sensitive issue,” one divisional director wrote. After all, he noted acidly, “the Indonesian army is still killing people in East Timor.”

In September 1999, after extensive public pressure, foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy imposed an arms embargo as pro-Indonesia militia groups killed, forcibly relocated and terrorized the Timorese population. No evidence was required that Canadian-supplied weapons were being used against civilians. The government simply acted.

Bending away from justice

Some 80 years ago, British historian Herbert Butterfield criticized those who rewrite the past in order “to produce a story which is the ratification if not the glorification of the present.”

This “Whiggish” view of history insists that things get better over time, in a progressive arc leading to general improvement.

It’s this sense that Chrystia Freeland invokes when she promises to ban the sale of a weapon “if there were a substantial risk that it could be used to commit human rights violations” — and describes that as progress.

In actual fact, if previous debates on arms sales are anything to go by, Canada is less vigilant on human rights than it was in 1946, or even in 1999. It has some way to go before it approaches the standards that once prevailed.

The arc of Canadian arms sales is long, but it seems to bend away from, not towards, human rights.

The article was first published by The Conversation (http://www.theconversation.com) and is republished with permission  granted to www.oasesnews.comAuthor:David Webster Associate Professor of History, Bishop's University

Credit link:https://theconversation.com/canadas-checkered-history-of-arms-sales-to-human-rights-violators-91559

The article was first published by The Conversation (http://www.theconversation.com) and is republished with permission  granted to www.oasesnews.com