A Particular Influential Power Which Sways Judgment Towards a Particular Object

Name:

Date:

World Civilizations

Bias in history

What is Bias?

A particular influential power which sways judgment towards a particular object.

How might bias be used in history?

DIRECTIONS: You will examine the following reading on a similar historical topic. Pay close attention to the writers language, can you detect any bias?

The following is written by: Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn is a historian, playwright, and social activist. He was a shipyard worker and Air Force bombardier before he went to college under the GI Bill and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He is perhaps best known for A People's History of the United States, which presents American history through the eyes of those he feels are outside of the political and economic establishment.

The English landed and killed some Indians, but the rest hid in the thick forests of the island and the English went from one deserted village to the next, destroying crops. Then they sailed back to the mainland and raided Pequot villages along the coast, destroying crops again. One of the officers of that expedition, in his account, gives some insight into the Pequots they encountered: "The Indians spying of us came running in multitudes along the water side, crying, What cheer, Englishmen, what cheer, what do you come for? They not thinking we intended war, went on cheerfully... -"

So, the war with the Pequots began. Massacres took place on both sides. The English developed a tactic of warfare used earlier by Cortes and later, in the twentieth century, even more systematically: deliberate attacks on noncombatants for the purpose of terrorizing the enemy. This is ethno historian Francis Jennings's interpretation of Captain John Mason's attack on a Pequot village on the Mystic River near Long Island Sound: "Mason proposed to avoid attacking Pequot warriors, which would have overtaxed his unseasoned, unreliable troops. Battle, as such, was not his purpose. Battle is only one of the ways to destroy an enemy's will to fight. Massacre can accomplish the same end with less risk, and Mason had determined that massacre would be his objective."

So the English set fire to the wigwams of the village. By their own account: "The Captain also said, We must Burn Them; and immediately stepping into the Wigwam ... brought out a Fire Brand, and putting it into the Matts with which they were covered, set the Wigwams on Fire." William Bradford, in his History of the Plymouth Plantation written at the time, describes John Mason's raid on the Pequot village: (to finish this excerpt, click on this link and start at the top of page 15)

1. What evidence of bias do you see in Howard Zinn’s writing?

The following is written by: Daniel J. Flynn

Mr. Flynn is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia and author of the newly released, Why the Left Hates America: Exposing the Lies That Have Obscured Our Nation’s Greatness.

Who is the most influential historian in America? Could it be Pulitzer Prize winners Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. or Joseph Ellis or David McCullough, whose scholarly works have reached a broad literary public? The answer is none of the above. The accolade belongs instead to the unreconstructed, anti-American Marxist Howard Zinn, whose cartoon anti-history of the United States is still selling 128,000 copies a year twenty years after its original publication. Many of those copies are assigned readings for courses in colleges and high schools taught by leftist disciples of their radical mentor.

About Howard Zinn:

Thumb through A People’s History of the United States and you will find greed as the motivating factor behind every act of those who don’t qualify as “the people” in Zinn’s book. According to Zinn, the separation from Great Britain, the Civil War, and both World Wars all were the result of base motives of the “ruling class” — rich men to get richer at the expense of others.

Zinn’s Marxist explanation of the New World begins with Columbus who like every other settler in the New World was driven by the (evil) profit motive. “Behind the English invasion of North America, behind their massacre of Indians, their deception, their brutality, was that special powerful drive born in civilizations based on private profit.” This malicious view of people who often came to the New World to escape persecution in the old, who sometimes championed the rights of indigenous peoples and who mostly attempted to live peacefully alongside them is characteristic of the extreme anti-European, anti-white, any American prejudice of this book. The idea that the Indians who themselves were “invaders” by Zinn’s standards (they came on a land bridge from Asia and exterminated the then native peoples) somehow owned the continent is a much a fantasy as the idea that they were simply passive victims of the settlers. Zinn’s account omits the unprovoked aggressions of the Indians on each other and on the settlers. But then doing so, would spoil his leftist melodrama.

1. What evidence of bias do you see?

1. How does Flynn feel about Howard Zinn?

After reading both articles:

1. After reading both articles, who do you believe? What do you believe? Why?

1. If Daniel Flynn were to write a history book, how might it be different from Zinn’s?

1. How might this discussion influence the way you approach history in the future?

Thinking about the readings:

The excerpt written by Howard Zinn is only a piece of one chapter of his book, A People’s History of the United States. Since you don’t have the whole reading, how might this change the way you look at bias and the readings in particular?