When people use the word 'woke,' it's usually liberals saying that they've become more aware to unfairness or discrimination or the sufferings of people. That implies that somebody should do something about it.
But it's what, exactly, they've 'woke up' to, and how they place it into context, that makes all the difference. Without context, facts mean more in the short run, and much less in the long run, than the purveyors of those facts intend. And those errors belong just as much to the left of the political spectrum as to the right.
Let me give you two fairly recent examples, both regarding San Francisco, in their various ways. You know, San Francisco, the haven of liberal awokeness, but where some of the homeless must still defecate in the streets because there are no public toilets to service them, so maybe not quite as 'woke' as it needs to be.
Not long ago, the San Francisco school board voted to change the name of one of its schools from "Lincoln." (It also did the same to "Washington," but we won't deal with that here.) Yes, that Lincoln, not just some other guy named Lincoln (like Austin, Texas, in which one of its high schools is named Reagan, which assumes the fairly recent president, but in fact refers to the treasurer of the Confederacy--which should be changed anyhow, but you can see that flap miles away).
Why? Well, in an attempt at 'wokeness,' the board wishes to point out that Lincoln signed off on the hanging of 38 Native Americans in Minnesota in 1862. Why did he do that? Well, because they were waging war on the oncoming settlers in the southern part of that state then, Civil War or no Civil War. They had been forced onto reservations upon Minnesota being declared a state in 1857, and had had some of that land swindled from them to boot.
They descended upon the whites and slaughtered them near New Ulm, prompting Lincoln to send what he had left of the Union Army to suppress it. The army arrested over 300 Natives, and were going to hang them all.
Yup. Every last one of them. But wait, they didn't, right? Right. That's because Lincoln commuted the sentences of over 260 of them, categorizing them as war combatants rather than mere destroyers of property and life. He only ordered the execution of 39 Natives (the largest mass execution in American history; one was later suspended so the total was actually 38) because they were direct participants in the massacre of settlers.
So yes, Lincoln actively ordered in a mass hanging. But he also used judgment in saving lives. He was the president, after all, exercising his executive powers. And it's not like he had nothing else on his plate; he had plenty of other people getting killed elsewhere, too, in places like Shiloh and Fredericksburg and Bull Run.
And he did issue the Emancipation Proclamation, the document which created the force of human rights behind the war effort. The more you research that, too, the more remarkable that act is as well.
So do you take his name off wherever it exists in your school district? I think not. I think someone failed to do, or take proper notice of, additional research and recognition that being president, at any juncture but particularly that one, is not so simple. It's not conservative to think so, either.
They made a mistake. They should correct it.
The second misjudgment happened during a lecture I zoomed the other day. The speaker's point was that much of American history has been bleached white and a lot has been hidden. I cannot debate that wholly, but much of what he's claiming has, in fact, come to light during my teaching career, which began in 1973. I'm not sure he's right about not much of it being taught as it is the probability that maybe he, and others, weren't listening.
But much of what he claimed hadn't been included, was. Textbook creators have, in fact, managed to, here and there, insert injustices committed toward people of color. And they were pointed out by teachers, white and otherwise, far and wide.
He did, justifiably, point out that Wisconsin dictated to public schools that they were to have begun, if they hadn't already, to insert education about Native history within the state. The law didn't say how much, just that teachers were to have pointed it out. So we did so. He came up with some interesting facts, yes, and things that I didn't include, I must admit. But I did pay attention to reservations established in the state and how they got there. I could have done better. Schools could have done better.
But there's also the context: the rest of American history. And there are only so many days and hours to get it in. And most recently, there are the pressures of standardized testing present so that teachers are driven to cover what they have come to know as material that will be included on those tests. So minorities, people of color, will get the coverage that is required, not what they deserve.
That being said, the speaker also assumed that a whole bunch of other things hadn't been taught, either. That annoyed me, especially one regarding Japanese-Americans. I certainly did teach that, and what's more, I provided the appropriate context, which that speaker didn't do because he clearly didn't know it.
It's called the Gentleman's Agreement, reached between the U.S. and Japan in 1907. To wit: The American government would guarantee the desegregation of San Francisco public schools to include Japanese-American students if the Japanese government would actively discourage its citizens to move to the U.S.
The speaker expressed bewilderment as to why that would happen. We actually wanted someone to stop sending people to our land? Gee, has that ever happened since? It's happening right now. And yes, there is a racist tinge to it all. Too.
But there's a backdrop to that. And it had to do with what the American president, Theodore Roosevelt, had done earlier.
Japan and Russia had fought the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-05. Much of it involved the islands strung on a curved line between the Kamchatka Peninsula and what constituted the Japanese main islands, known as the Kurils. There was also the very large, elongated island that comes quite close to the Russian mainland just northwest of those islands, Sakhalin. There was also iron-rich Manchuria, and the Korean Peninsula, and who might secure the rights to mine and settle there.
The Russians sensed the threat, and gathered their rather formidable navy, some 44 ships, and sailed them all the way around Africa and Southern Asia to take on the Japanese. The betting was on the Russians, since the Japanese were, and would be for quite some time, underestimated.
In the ensuing battle, called the Battle of Tsushima, the Japanese navy literally laid waste to the Russians, sinking or damaging 42 of those 44 ships. It was the first major naval battle of that century, and the first time that an Asian nation had gotten the better of a European one. What's more, it gave Japan tremendous confidence, which it would extend quite aggressively, building an immense empire that would take the "island-hopping" strategy of the United States to curb and conclude in World War II.
In the meantime, though, expenditures on both sides were draining them. Roosevelt had made initial statements favoring the Japanese in this war, so they approached him to sit down and hammer out the settlement. The Russians agreed, two days after their navy was wiped out.
But the land war was being won by Russia--troops arriving across Siberia via the Trans-Siberian Railroad--and that made a difference in the negotiations. The war was finally settled by the Treaty of Portsmouth (NH) in 1905. The Japanese public, celebrating the great naval victory in nationalist style, were let down by some of the provisions of the treaty, and blamed Roosevelt because he was white and seemed to favor Russia, a white nation (see, racism works both ways, always with bad results), at least in terms of its government.
Thus: Roosevelt was dealing with a nation not happy with him (and one now filled with confidence and hubris), and he had the problem of dealing with a growing Japanese population in one of his own nation's most prosperous cities. American prejudice against Japanese was at least as intense as it had been against the Chinese, who had been flat-out banned from the country in 1883 (Which the speaker did point out, but again, under the assumption that teachers hadn't taught it. Not true, but when's the last time the Russo-Japanese War came up at dinner?).
So: Roosevelt struck the Gentleman's Agreement, which held no legal water, but it diplomatically calmed the rough seas between Japan and the United States, at least for that moment (and did not stem Japan's expansionist plans, as we know). And that's why it happened.
There. That needed to be said by the speaker. He needed to provide context. He didn't. But he also tried to cover lots and lots of ground, and the presentation was getting long--exactly the problem faced by teachers all over.
To bring all that up isn't a bad idea. But there has to be sufficient follow-through. Without it, history becomes a grab-bag of trivia, just the thing the typical kid complains about. It might not be as ideologically pure than what one wishes, but few things are.
The above explanation would have obviously made it longer, but would have provided the listeners with badly-needed context. Besides, to be bewildered as a teacher is not to fulfill your mission or your goal. To teach is not to be bewildered, but to provide needed information or to guide others to find more if they're interested. The speaker did not do either. He should. Because, after all, he was teaching.
And this essay has gone on a long time, too. But knowledge and understanding take time and attention. That's what being 'woke' really is: Not only to know more and to give, perhaps, the benefit of the doubt to those who have not had it to this point, but to be sure to do it in a way in which the proper context is exposed. Otherwise, some information is almost worse than none, especially when it's used as a weapon to attack what's assumed to be unfairness.
Besides, if you don't do research well, it gives the other side an incredible advantage in refutation. They'll point out that you're 'woke' with just one eye open. That isn't how you win discussions. That's how you lose.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask inside. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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