History itself—Clio, if you will—is common to all and, therefore, contested by all. You might contend that history is nothing but the stories people tell themselves about how they (note the ambiguity!) have ended up where they find themselves—with all of the advantages and impairments they live with in their day-to-day lives. And in an important sense it is. But different people live with different advantages and impairments—all of which have a history. And ‘history’ includes all of those stories.

As a result, ‘history’—as a subject that is taught in school—is contested. These contests are emotionally charged … ¿por que? In a word: Identity. Identity—or, to use a better phrase—fictive image. Each of us ‘identify’ with/as… what? In various ways.

[This is the somewhat obvious point of intersectionality—that many people apparently need to be reminded of … and some people apparently need to be given credit for discovering. Like every teenager who has discovered sex.]

The contest (agon, which is, I believe, the term those ever-present Greek ghosts would use) is about who we are—or, more pointedly, I am (because we, by definition, includes me). No ‘I’ can identify with the evil done by those the ‘I‘ identifies with. Or may have done. And so: ‘I‘ have to deny that those ‘I‘ want to identify did any evil. Even when speaking with people who are the descendants of those ‘done evil to’—and who experience the effects of that evil in the present day. … I anticipate, an so should you, a much longer discussion of the role that race-based oppression has played in the history of the Americas—and the history of the United States in particular.

The point here (for now) is that the way history is told—the stories that are told and credited as ‘history’, and therefore taught in schools to ‘our’ children—is always going to be contested because it is a part of someone’s identity. And, because history is contested, is always political.

The question this blog will be trying to answer is: What does that matter? And then: what should those on the formerly—or currently—losing side now do? That is not just an a priori—and therefore theoretical—question. It is the quintessentially practical question.