97 Quotes by James W. Loewen

Those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat the eleventh grade.

By downplaying covert and illegal acts by the government, textbook authors narcotize students from thinking about such issues as the increasing dominance and secrecy of the executive branch. By taking the government’s side, textbooks encourage students to conclude that criticism is incompatible with citizenship.

The antidote to feel-good history is not feel-bad history but honest and inclusive history.

These exuberant proclamations of equalitarianism in sundown towns exemplify not only base hypocrisy but also what sociologists call “herrenvolk democracy” – democracy for the master race. White Americans’ verbal commitment to nondiscrimination forms one horn of what Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal famously called “The American Dilemma.” Blatant racism forms the other horn. In elite sundown suburbs, this dilemma underlies what we shall later term the “paradox of exclusivity.

It is always useful to think badly about people one has exploited or plans to exploit.

To end our segregated neighborhoods and towns requires a leap of the imagination: Americans have to understand that white racism is still a problem in the United States. This isn’t always easy. Most white Americans do not see racism as a problem in their neighborhood. We need to know about sundown towns to know what to do about them.

When textbooks make racism invisible in American history, they obstruct our already poor ability to see it in the present.

The Civil War had been about something other than states’ rights after all. It began as a war to force or prevent the breakup of the United States.

Recovering the memory of the increasing oppression of African Americans during the first half of the twentieth century can deepen our understanding of the role racism has played in our society and continues to play today.