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let's talk about historyography what's that well

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generally it's a piece of writing about history. yeah but we'll be using a more

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specific definition. ready for it a historiography is a history of a [woman grins next to books]

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history. all minds are blown. yeah. all right well the thing is

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that historians aren't all-knowing gods, who can look into the past and know

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exactly what happened. they have to study and sift through a lot of historical

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sources to figure out their version of what went down, but that's just it. no

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matter how good a historian is, whatever they write is only one version of what

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happened . and let's face it this well some people who have called themselves

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historians really didn't deserve the job. well here are three tips to spotting a

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bad historians. their work uses in apples and oranges approach. this bogus

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methodology compares things in different time periods that seem kind of similar

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but really aren't. presentism is also a no-no for any historian worth his or her

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salt, or no sodium salt substitute. got to watch the blood pressure .anyway. [presentism explained]

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presentism is when a historian gets all judgey and doesn't take into account

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that people back in the day couldn't travel into the future and see the

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outcomes of the things they did. lastly there's the idea that history repeats

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itself. well it doesn't. there are trends that repeat themselves but they always

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come back a little bit to remixed. so let's move on to some specific snafus in the

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way American history was recorded over the years. problem one :omitting folks.

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American history has had a problem with leaving certain groups and people out of

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the story completely. African American women religious minorities immigrants

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and Native Americans have gotten erased for the most part. if Back to the Future

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taught us anything it's that being erased is scary .all right problem 2 [man sees through hand]

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perpetuating stereotypes. well if minorities have been included there's been a

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problem with turning them into stereotypes. like the idea that Native

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Americans lived in chaotic savagery or that colonial women spent all their time

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cooking and knitting ,which is about a true is saying modern women spend all

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their time cooking and knitting, which is to say it's not true. problem 3 sidebar

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history. even if everybody is included in the history and we've managed to avoid

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stereotypes it's also pretty common for women

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and minorities to get slid it over to the side bars of textbooks. everything in

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the actual book is like white guys did this and white guys did that and then

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white guys you know bam. there's a little pop out section called African American

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inventors and by the time we're done reading it the only african-american

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inventor we know is Eli Whitney. then it's right back to white guys did this

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and white guys did that .problem four nationalism. look don't get me wrong [book picturing white man in the middle of the page]

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nationalism is awesome. we might even get a little teary-eyed when we watch

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patriotic coke commercials between the swim meets at the Olympics. but it's also

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led to history writing that forgets the rest of the world exists. despite all

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these problems historians have made huge progress in recent years in getting

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American history ography on the right track. progress in history ography is

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like social progress in all history. sometimes to go two steps forward it

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takes two steps back. kind of sounds like that's when we try to dance but just a

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lot of awkward shuffling. you know. not pretty. [man dances across the screen]

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