[Recent critiques of “presentism” fail to see that we can’t
divorce the past from the present—and that supposedly objective
scholarship has long promoted racist narratives and suppressed Black
history. ]
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BLACK HISTORIANS CRITIQUE ‘OBJECTIVE HISTORY’  
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Keisha N. Blain
September 9, 2022
The New Republic
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_ Recent critiques of “presentism” fail to see that we can’t
divorce the past from the present—and that supposedly objective
scholarship has long promoted racist narratives and suppressed Black
history. _

Pioneering historian W.E.B. DuBois,

 

In Raoul Peck’s documentary _I Am Not Your Negro_
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James Baldwin observes, “History is not the past. History is the
present. We carry our history with us. To think otherwise is
criminal.” Baldwin’s remarks succinctly capture our relationship
to the past. They also address the role of “presentism”—the use
of a present lens to interpret the past—within the historical
profession.

Historians often use the term “presentism” as a critique—to cast
doubt on the objectivity of scholarship from those who consider the
present in their analyses of the past. Scholars who resist
“presentism” will argue that it somehow distorts the historical
narrative. According to this thinking, one should never consider
present circumstances when interpreting developments of the past—or
when trying to understand figures from the past. To do so is to defy
the very essence of the profession, one supposedly based on
neutrality.

James H. Sweet, president of the American Historical Association,
certainly seems to think so. In an essay
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“Is History History?” in the September issue
of _Perspectives,_ the AHA’s monthly magazine, he bemoaned a
“trend toward presentism” in historical analysis, rhetorically
asking, “If we don’t read the past through the prism of
contemporary social justice issues—race, gender, sexuality,
nationalism, capitalism—are we doing history that matters?” He
later added, “If history is only those stories from the past that
confirm current political positions, all manner of political hacks can
claim historical expertise. Too many Americans have become accustomed
to the idea of history as an evidentiary grab bag to articulate their
political positions.”

Sweet’s critique ignited
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the role of the present in historical analyses. The backlash prompted
Sweet to append an apology to his essay, which some on the right saw
as caving to the “woke mob
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But as a Black historian who understands the power of my writing and
research, there is little to debate. Black historians have long
recognized the role of the present in shaping our narratives of the
past. We have never had the luxury of writing about the past as
though it were divorced from present concerns. The persistence of
racism, white supremacy, and racial inequality everywhere in American
society makes it impossible to do so.

Historians, like anyone else, exist in the present, and our work will
always reflect contemporary realities—explicitly or implicitly.
Contrary to popular belief, there is no standard or “neutral”
interpretation of the past. The typical standard historical account of
the United States, for example, is often distorted into narratives
that deemphasize the contributions of people of color and uphold
racial stereotypes. This was intentional. Consider the work of
historian Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, widely recognized in his lifetime
as one of the most influential historians of the South. His 1918
book, _American Negro Slavery,_ was widely read and cited. Yet it
offered no “objective” historical analysis. To the contrary, the
book only served to perpetuate
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stereotypes about African Americans, and it helped to reinforce
segregation and exclusionary laws in the U.S.

Black historians worked to challenge these kinds of accounts during
the 1920s. Anna Julia Cooper’s 1924 dissertation in the field of
history at the Sorbonne University in Paris directly condemned
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institution of slavery. As European nations maintained colonial rule,
exploiting millions of people of color across the globe, Cooper
wielded her scholarship as a weapon to challenge the global color
line.

Carter G. Woodson, founder of Black History Month and the Association
for the Study of Negro Life and History, responded similarly. By
establishing “Negro History Week” in February 1926—which would
later become Black History Month—Woodson disrupted educational norms
in the U.S. shaped by white supremacy and anti-Blackness. “The
so-called modern education, with all its defects,” he explained in
his provocative 1933 book _The Miseducation of the Negro,_ “does
others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been
worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and
oppressed weaker peoples.” Societal change is impossible, Woodson
argued, when we fail to interrogate the standard accounts of history
and other fields of study. Telling “neutral” historical accounts
of egregious practices such as slavery and lynching serves a
fundamental purpose—to excuse injustices of the present and thereby
maintain systems of oppression. It is a form of purposeful amnesia
designed to empower oppressors.

Historian W.E.B. Du Bois also made this observation in his 1935 magnum
opus, _Black Reconstruction in America._ His final chapter, “The
Propaganda of History,” confronted the many lies that
“objective” historians were peddling at the time about the history
of Reconstruction. His pioneering book, published against the backdrop
of a surge of Black radical movements of the Great Depression,
directly refuted the false narratives emerging from leading white
scholars of the Dunning School (named after William Archibald Dunning
of Columbia University). In their portrayal of Reconstruction, the
Dunning School scholars, as Du Bois explained, had portrayed the South
as victims and the North as having committed a “grievous wrong.”
Their writings on the subject treated the free and enslaved Black
population with “ridicule, contempt or silence.” They also peddled
racial stereotypes and mischaracterizations of Black intellectual
ability.

The Dunning School’s interpretation of the past was very much shaped
by present concerns at the time. They used their writings on the past
to justify—and give moral validity to—the mistreatment of African
Americans. The scholarship of these historians served to reinforce
segregation and racial discrimination in the U.S. during the early
twentieth century. White policymakers, educators, and others cited the
racist interpretations of the Dunning School to further limit Black
access in the public sphere and to uphold stereotypes. The same
scholars decrying “presentism” today most likely would have framed
Du Bois’s powerful rebuttal in the same manner—as some of his
critics did. But were it not for scholars like Du Bois, we would still
be relying on the white establishment’s racist accounts of
Reconstruction.

Du Bois’s response to the Dunning School, as well as the efforts of
Anna Julia Cooper and Carter G. Woodson, exemplify how Black
historians have taken an active role in confronting political abuses
of the past. They were not alone. Marion Thompson Wright, Dorothy
Porter Wesley, and Merze Tate were among the first generation
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professional Black historians who used their writing and research of
the past to address myriad contemporary social issues. They
recognized, as Manning Marable, the founding director of the Institute
for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia
University, observed
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1998, that “scholarship and social struggle cannot be separated.”

Indeed, historians do not produce scholarship in isolation. The work
we do has the potential to shape national debates and inform policies
that have broad implications for all Americans. The weight of this
responsibility is especially great for members of marginalized groups.
In a white-dominated world and academy, we are always fighting to
assert our voices and our histories into spaces designed to exclude
us.

More importantly, we are fighting for our lives. The commitment to
engaging present concerns is not simply a method or approach to the
scholar’s craft of research and writing. It is a matter of life and
death. The reality of the present moment propels many of us to act. In
the spirit of Du Bois, Woodson, Cooper, and others, we have a duty to
lend our expertise to the most pressing issues of our day. It is not
only logical and responsible to do so; it fulfills the underlying
mission of historical study in communities of color to illuminate the
complexity of our lived experiences.

_Keisha N. Blain
[[link removed]] @KeishaBlain
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and history at Brown University and columnist for MSNBC._

_Keep informed with independent political journalism. Subscribe
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