Sam Haselby: Out of the Mouth of Convicts
[Sam Haselby is a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and a historian.]
The U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder, is reported to be considering the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate torture by U.S. government personnel under the Bush administration.
Reports from the International Red Cross, testimony from American soldiers and articles by Seymour Hersh and other investigative journalists leave no reasonable doubt that agents of the U.S. government tortured suspected terrorists.
Yet even when confronted with these gross violations of law and human decency committed in our name, Americans are told they should close their mouths and avert their eyes. “We should be looking forward,” said President Obama, “not backwards.”
In the winter and spring of 2004, I taught American history at the Eastern and Woodbourne penitentiaries in New York State. The students, 15 in each class, were mostly poor black and Hispanic men from New York City. As a rule, we did not talk about their histories. We talked about American history.
Native Americans and Native American history in particular fascinated them. They saw it a great moral question of U.S. nationhood and a subject bearing cultural riches of unusual power. The Native Americans knew things, they would tell me; that’s why the Europeans had to kill them. Our syllabus had only one book that seriously engaged Native American history, “The Long, Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians” by the great anthropologist and historian Anthony F.C. Wallace.
From the beginning of the class, my students put forth a position: Europeans killed the Indians; they stole their land; historians cover it up. I sidestepped the matter until we got to Wallace’s book, which makes a good case that my students’ simple condemnations were wrong; that it was, in some ways, worse than that.
I had presumed that my students would feel vindicated that an eminent scholar confirmed their general suspicions. But no one wanted to talk. They were unusually sullen and silent. I asked why, pointing out that for months they had wanted to talk about Indians.
Finally, one of the students spoke up. “Look, I understand that what I did was wrong,” he said. In five months of class discussion, it was the first time any one of them had referred to his crime. “I understand that I have to pay for it, too,” he continued. “I’m not questioning that. But this Jackson did things much worse than I ever thought of doing, and he’s a hero?”
Lately, I’ve been imagining a trial of my former students. Before proceedings begin, they ask to address the court. Stepping forward, they proclaim, in an impatient tone: “It’s time to look forward, your honor, not backwards.” The judge nods gravely, and bangs his gavel. Everyone walks out of the courtroom together into a beautiful sunny day....
Read entire article at NYT
The U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder, is reported to be considering the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate torture by U.S. government personnel under the Bush administration.
Reports from the International Red Cross, testimony from American soldiers and articles by Seymour Hersh and other investigative journalists leave no reasonable doubt that agents of the U.S. government tortured suspected terrorists.
Yet even when confronted with these gross violations of law and human decency committed in our name, Americans are told they should close their mouths and avert their eyes. “We should be looking forward,” said President Obama, “not backwards.”
In the winter and spring of 2004, I taught American history at the Eastern and Woodbourne penitentiaries in New York State. The students, 15 in each class, were mostly poor black and Hispanic men from New York City. As a rule, we did not talk about their histories. We talked about American history.
Native Americans and Native American history in particular fascinated them. They saw it a great moral question of U.S. nationhood and a subject bearing cultural riches of unusual power. The Native Americans knew things, they would tell me; that’s why the Europeans had to kill them. Our syllabus had only one book that seriously engaged Native American history, “The Long, Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians” by the great anthropologist and historian Anthony F.C. Wallace.
From the beginning of the class, my students put forth a position: Europeans killed the Indians; they stole their land; historians cover it up. I sidestepped the matter until we got to Wallace’s book, which makes a good case that my students’ simple condemnations were wrong; that it was, in some ways, worse than that.
I had presumed that my students would feel vindicated that an eminent scholar confirmed their general suspicions. But no one wanted to talk. They were unusually sullen and silent. I asked why, pointing out that for months they had wanted to talk about Indians.
Finally, one of the students spoke up. “Look, I understand that what I did was wrong,” he said. In five months of class discussion, it was the first time any one of them had referred to his crime. “I understand that I have to pay for it, too,” he continued. “I’m not questioning that. But this Jackson did things much worse than I ever thought of doing, and he’s a hero?”
Lately, I’ve been imagining a trial of my former students. Before proceedings begin, they ask to address the court. Stepping forward, they proclaim, in an impatient tone: “It’s time to look forward, your honor, not backwards.” The judge nods gravely, and bangs his gavel. Everyone walks out of the courtroom together into a beautiful sunny day....