Resentment Studies vs 1836 Project
The 1836 Project is an advisory committee created by the Texas legislature in 2021 to draft a thumbnail sketch of Texas history for folks receiving driver's licenses in Texas. The idea was that this material would help newcomers understand Texas history and values, and give young Texas-born drivers a refresher on the place they come from. If it's visually appealing, this Texas history lesson may actually be read. The committee has discussed how best to present it. We'll see.
If you don't already know, I gave invited testimony to the Committee on August 29, 2022. You can watch it here, if you’re so inclined. My message was this: professors in "studies" departments ought to ditch their goal of splintering our history along ethnic and gender lines, get together and write a unifying history of Texas.
A recent article examining the 1836 Project Advisory Committee's finished product acts as a high-resolution snapshot of the disintegrated history profession and how our history is fractured as a result. Professors in the Resentment Studies business are not amused.
In an article dated September 26, 2022, Texas Tribune claims they "reviewed the 15-page document. . .and asked historians to comment on how accurately and thoroughly it chronicles the state’s history."
While technically correct - they did speak with people who are historians - they called only on activist historians for comment. Because the document they're critiquing is a fifteen-page pamphlet, these historians found ample room to be aggrieved that their special area of interest didn't receive more attention.
The Tribune reporter didn’t interview a single historian whose works demonstrate a broad understanding of the scope of Texas history. Go figure.
The House Bill that created the 1836 Project dares use the phrase "patriotic education". The Tribune went to activist U of H professor of Chicano studies, Raúl Ramos, who also teaches a single Texas history course to future teachers of Texas history, to comment on "patriotic education:"
“The traditional mythic version of Texas history, it’s about the heroes of the Alamo having pure intentions of liberty and freedom in the abstract rather than the liberty to conquer Indigenous and Mexican lands and freedom to own enslaved people...It’s that abstract idea that is attractive and powerful and [that’s what] people gravitate towards, and I think that’s what people associate with patriotism.”
Apparently, Ramos didn't read the 1836 Project's brief but factual treatment of the Alamo siege. And, apparently, Ramos assumes patriotism in others - living and dead - is bound up in race. Like so many of his academic fellow travelers, Ramos doesn't think it's okay for Texans feel positive about where they live because they should be focused, instead, on the heinous deeds of long-dead men, and either atoning for past perceived sins or being oppressed by them.
Back to the Tribune: "In the opening paragraph, the pamphlet says the land of Texas seemed like 'an inhospitable zone to many,' but Americans 'with fortitude and nerve' saw the opportunities and made the region productive."
What the 1836 pamphlet actually says: "The people that were born here or came here have made Texas. What seemed like an inhospitable zone to many has proved to be a land of promise to those with fortitude and nerve. This is their story—and yours."
Effectively, the committee is saying that the people who were born on this land or came to settle it up are the folks who forged Texas. To most, it seemed like an unsafe, lonely neighborhood to build a life. Those people stayed away. The ones who didn't? They made Texas. Their story is our story.
This is unacceptable to people in the Resentment Studies business.
Trinidad Gonzales, billed by the Tribune simply as a "history professor at South Texas College" says exactly what you'd guess an activist scholar of Mexican-American studies would say:
“It wasn’t just the Americans who thought it was boundless opportunities. [The pamphlet’s authors] are trying to create the simplified Manifest Destiny story that fits this older myth of white Americans coming in and basically building Texas…And when you do that, then you silence everybody else that participated in the history of Texas.”
The actual text makes no reference to "Americans." The Tribune and Gonzales do. Perhaps this is just poor writing on the part of the Tribune reporter. Later, on page 3, the pamphlet reads: "Where three hundred years of indigenous, Spanish and Mexican control had seen Tejas as full of difficulties and vexations, incoming Americans saw a land of boundless opportunity."
Still Gonzales's comments don't apply. Spain dragged up and left. Mexico had few takers willing to settle in Texas. Both points are touched on in the fifteen pages. Nobody is "silenced."
Next at the pulpit is Dr. Emilio Zamora, another activist Mexican-American studies professor, and endowed chair in Texas history at U.T. who claims the 1836 Project product “speaks very negatively about the Mexicans and the colonial settlers that preceded them."
Could Dr. Zamora be referring to the "tough, self-reliant, and independent" spirit of the Spanish settlers? Does that sound negative to you?
Perhaps the reference to Mexico's economy being in shambles after years of fighting for independence is offensive to Zamora? He doesn’t say or the reporter did not wish to include details.
(Note: Drs. Gonzales and Zamora have not shown up to any Committee meetings to offer public testimony or provide constructive professional recommendations.)
Foul Flag: Not Enough Cotton!
The next aggrieved professor is one you already know if you've read any of my writing about academia for the last two years.
The article says: “The pamphlet ‘ignores the reality that cotton production and poverty long characterized much of the Texas economy after the Civil War and through 1940. Instead it glamorizes the oil industry,’ said Walter Buenger, a history professor at UT-Austin.”
Guess what Dr. Buenger's area of study is, y'all!
(Unsubtle Hint: it's Texas between Reconstruction and the Great Depression.)
The screenshot of the pamphlet text provided by the Tribune clearly reads: "Farm laborers and cowboys who had struggled as sharecroppers and ranch hands became roughnecks and roustabouts in the everspreading oil fields of the state" but the Tribune chose not to highlight this reference to men struggling in the agrarian Texas economy. They highlighted only the parts that reinforce Buenger's point.
The pamphlet authors do not mention cotton explicitly, but cotton is not “silenced” because of oil. It's not a the both-or-nothing conspiracy Buenger claims.
Oil morphed the focus of the Texas economy from an agrarian one into one in which farmers prayed for oil to be discovered on their land. It changed the physical landscape. It created a peculiar breed of oil millionaire archetype unique to Texas.
(Note: Dr. Buenger has not shown up to any Committee meetings to offer public testimony or provide constructive professional recommendations.)
Remember Forget the Alamo?
For comment on how the pamphlet addressed the Alamo, the Tribune reporter went to Associate Professor Gene Preuss at U of H who imagines the project's product is a net positive, albeit for strange reasons.
"For a long time, Texas history has been taught from one perspective. . .I think [the pamphlet] does enough to open some cracks, which I as a professor can open further for my students so that when they come into class, they don’t say things like ‘I didn’t know [Black Texans] participated in the Texas revolution’ [or] ‘I didn’t know Tejanos were on the side of Texians and died at the Alamo.’ "
Preuss is correct in that, for a long time, Texas history focused on specific figures and events, and the voice telling the story was a decidedly white one.
But that narrative changed along with our society. It ain’t 1950 anymore.
The pamphlet doesn't say anything about blacks in the Revolution or Tejanos at the Alamo. Its purpose is to serve as a readable overview, not to involve itself in the race-power balance that academia is currently obsessed with.
(Note: Dr. Preuss has not shown up to any Committee meetings to offer public testimony or provide constructive professional recommendations.)
The Tribune opines: “In fitting the Battle of the Alamo into one abridged paragraph, the pamphlet’s authors appear to acknowledge the recent efforts to reexamine the historic event....But the pamphlet also avoids going into that reexamination. It doesn’t mention, for instance, the issues brought up in the book Forget the Alamo, which was published last year...[which] highlights how the defense of slavery played a key role in the conflict with Mexico and questions the garrison defenders’ military strategy."
Dude...it's a fifteen-page frickin’ sketch of Texas history!
That the Committee touched on the Alamo, then moved on to the next century and a half does not indicate any “reexamination.”
The Tribune author could have avoided this mind-reading to learn what the Committee intended had she asked any of the nine members for comment. She didn't.
She might have noted that the three journalists who wrote Forget the Alamo have been asked to give invited testimony to the Committee but have chosen not to respond. She didn't.
How Much Slavery Is Enough?
I know you've been wondering how the Committee fared on the moral yardstick of our time and all times: slavery.
The Tribune credits the 1836 Project for acknowledging slavery as an economic system and for mentioning Juneteenth. So do I. But the professors they talked with said the fifteen-page sketch of history, of course, didn't go far enough.
The article quotes an August Texas Monthly op-ed penned by two professors you've never heard of. So here, I'm quoting the Tribune who are quoting the Texas Monthly op-ed:
“Slavery is mentioned only as a complication that delayed annexation by the United States. The pamphlet never names any enslaved individuals, nor does it describe their fight for freedom.”
This an outright lie. It's not a misreading or misinterpretation. It's just a falsehood.
Since the Tribune claimed to have read the pamphlet, you'd think they'd have omitted this falsehood. But they didn't.
A brief summary of slavery in the 1836 Project pamphlet:
Page 4 - as an issue in 1829 when Mexico outlawed slavery then exempted Texas, as well as the slave population of Mexican Texas.
Page 5 - as part of a paragraph about the tribulations of living in early Texas: "This was doubly true for the enslaved, enduring the same hardship but under more cruel circumstances."
Page 7 - as part of the discussion of the men who participated in the Texas Revolution, it is mentioned that some owned slaves while most did not.
Page 8 - as part of the discussion on annexation, Compromise of 1850, etc.
Page 9 - The slave population of Texas in 1860, anti-slavery Texans and Unionists, Juneteenth.
No individual slave is named because very few individuals are named or given biographies.
No, it does not describe "their fight for freedom" because there was no organized slave rebellion that marked the history of Texas. Saying, "Some slaves attempted escape," while true, would have been awkward and not keeping with the tone of the pamphlet.
(Note: Neither of the Texas Monthly op-ed authors have shown up to any Committee meetings to offer public testimony or provide constructive professional recommendations.)
And, finally, we come back to Ramos, whose commentary on patriotism was so enlightening. He takes us full circle to the institutional racism talking point, claiming:
"the pamphlet’s treatment of slavery is an example of how the document takes a passive, ambiguous approach to inequity and oppression that doesn’t hold Americans who participated in institutions accountable."
Actually, Dr. Ramos, the document makes it abundantly clear that it was Americans from the South bringing slaves into Texas. Nothing ambiguous about it. Because it is not a book-length treatment of the subject, it omits much, out of necessity. Tejano ownership of slaves is a good example of what isn’t covered.
I wonder how Ramos would have the Committee hold those Americans accountable? How many pages would he have devoted to that?
I'm guessing fifteen.
I'm guessing each of the professors quoted in the article would like to have seen the bulk of the fifteen pages dedicated to their area of study.
Notice who isn't quoted, though? Any of the professional historians on the Committee.
Dr. Don Frazier (Civil War with emphasis on Texas and the Trans-Mississippi), Dr. Carolina Crimm (Latin American Studies with emphasis on Spanish/Mexican Texas) and Dr. Kevin Roberts (American history with emphasis on slavery) all confirm that they were not contacted for comment.
Takeaway: When someone tells you they interviewed "historians," find out what the historians study.
If they are in the Resentment Studies business, keep in mind that's the only lens through which they will view and present history.
Read the 15-page pamphlet for yourself (here) and draw your own conclusions about whether it encapsulates the scope of Texas history well enough.
