I think that Johann dismisses the Post-American interpretation a bit too readily as just another flawed perception. It’s real enough among younger audiences that are encountering it as lived experience, not just as another example of cherry-picked interpretation. I’d go so far, given our research with Disney/Nat Geo, to say that it’s absolutely the dominant strain among Americans below 18. And they are bringing it into classrooms because they are consuming it more broadly, well outside of anything even close to the academy. But they don’t show up in polls. So I don’t think there is a shared narrative. That’s too exclusive an understanding of audiences, in my view. From where I sit, there is a dominant narrative held by older audiences and a dominant one held by younger ones, and a mash-up in the middle that skews on either end. So the more interesting thing, to me, is about understanding what is a trend, not just a competing interpretation. For the younger folks, even “Hamilton” is problematic, regardless of who wears the funny clothes on stage.
Isn't it as much a "lived experience" as history was for the generation that came of age in the 1950s during the Cold War? I agree with you that we need to appreciate the generational divide and that this younger generation is consuming history from a much deeper well than their parents and grandparents. Their understanding of history is certainly much more inclusive and more open to discussing the hard questions of the past related to race, etc., but what does the bigger picture look like? Is it all just disparate stories with no interconnecting themes? I honestly don't know.
Always a smart take. We can talk with some authority about coherent audiences, which have markedly different appreciations of American history. The younger the audience, the more “post-American” the perception, partly because there is no collective history to them. There is a dominant tradition — which looks nothing like them — and what they see as the results of the history playing out in front of them. That’s actually the history that’s on the ground, well away from classrooms, especially at the university level. What’s striking is that conservatives think that the universities are fostering that perspective, when it’s really established long before today’s students are getting there (has anyone watched PBS Kids lately?). What younger (below 18) want is a history that sees them. A history populated only by elite white men and their stories about the attainment and maintenance of power looks an awful lot like a history entirely about that power. That might be “post-American” but I think that’s what’s now and what’s next in American demographics and I’m happy to engage those audiences on those terms.
Thanks so much for this comment. You make so many good points and I completely agree that students expect a history that reflects how they now view the world. Even in the more conservative schools where I have taught, students are no longer satisfied with a narrative that is dominated by dead elite white men. We can and should continue to expand the narrative as a means to recognize a more diverse populace, but also because of the important questions about our collective past that it raises.
Right. I think that was one of Neem's main points in his essay. We do have the polls that he cites as well as others, which suggest that something of a shared narrative still exists. What the future holds, however, is anyone's guess.
Something non-educators seem to ignore is that history is taught over all the grades, K-12. It is built, but by bit, over the years so that the upper grade students already have some “hooks to hang this information on,” as I would tell my students. So it’s not only the texts, but all of the teachers who are being attacked, as you pointed out. One of the most recent, now publicly exposed, has come from Dr. Larry Arnn of Hillsdale College, who has contracted here in Florida to start charter schools (the modern evil which takes public money to fund private, segregation academies) and will be doing the same in Tennessee. Arnn spoke at a reception for Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R): “Here’s a key thing we are going to try to do. We’re going to try to demonstrate that you don’t have to be an expert to educate a child. Because basically anybody can do it.” “The teachers are trained in the dumbest part of the dumbest colleges in the country.”
Friends, please make sure to register to vote, and then vote in every election you’re eligible for, from dog-catcher on up. Because it appears to me, a retired educator, that *1984* *Fahrenheit 451* and *The Handmaid’s Tale* are being used as political manuals.
It's such an important point that you are making re: how history is taught throughout the k-12 curriculum. Educators need to think of the work they are doing at their specific grade level as fitting into a much larger puzzle.
The inroads that Hillsdale College has made in states like Florida and Tennessee is horrifying.
I'll be interested to hear what the teachers say to you. Do report back - and have a great trip.
I don't see, for example, the Texas legislature forbidding the discussion of race (including the Emancipation Declaration and the I Have a Dream speech) in classrooms as the equivalent of the viewpoint that white supremacy (and patriarchy, come to that) are central to American history and institutions. I don't believe you do, either, but this post comes off that way just a bit. The primary difference is that those on the right - can one call them a fringe if they are making laws in numerous states? - are forcing their views on teachers and students, and the fringe on the left is merely expressing their views. I haven't seen Kendi or Hannah Jones arguing for anything other than the expansion of history, so who exactly is advocating trashing it altogether?
We had a nice exchange about Ta-Nehisi Coates a few days ago - let's keep in mind that, as a student, he saw no connection between the story of the Civil War he had been told and the story of African Americans. He, and Kendi and Hannah Jones are filling that gap in my eyes, just as feminist historians have added women to the main narrative. When I was a child, American history was not only white but male.
Absolutely. I've made my views crystal clear about Republican efforts to censor the teaching of American history. There is nothing equivalent on the other side. My concerns about the left is primarily with interpretation and an increasing commitment to a reductionist understanding of American history.
I've learned a lot over the years from Coates, Kendi, and Hannah-Jones. I've also learned from countless other Black historians and intellectuals like Annette Gordon-Reed and Danielle Allen. That's just scratching the surface. We need to continue to fill the gaps in and to push for a more honest accounting of the American past.
The question that Neem poses and one that I am increasingly concerned about is whether we can do this without 'pulling the house down.'
At this point, we have to really think hard every time we say "a majority of Americans want" about any issue, because this is usually a prelude to claiming that one stands with the majority against two extremes--which is in turn a kind of positioning that harkens back to the above-the-fray self-anointment of a lot of white liberals in the 1960s and 1970s (Schlesinger et al). A majority of Americans may say that they want a true, critical, self-examining history taught in schools, but a lot depends on how any poll asks that and what any person polled thinks is meant by that. I suspect that when you get down to the particulars, about a third of Americans want the kind of history which pulls no punches about racism, conquest of indigenous people, gendered violence, etc.--that they want a really sustained engagement with the hard parts of American history. Not the caricatured version of this that some conservatives hold out--these folks still want the Smoot-Hawley Act and Marbury v. Madison and so on taught, but they also want that nothing gets taught without talking about race, class, inequality, violence, and so on. Which I think is perfectly fair--if someone can come up with a major topic or event in American history where any such dimension is an unfair intrusion, I'd be curious to hear it.
I think another third wants American history as a kind of exquisitely calibrated act of "balance": Ibrahim Kendi one day, Gordon S. Wood the next; American history taught as it was thirty years ago one day; American history taught in a more contemporaneous style the next. Often precisely because those parents looking in on the high school curriculum see themselves as people who judiciously stand in the middle, but also because they want their kids (and themselves by extension) to have "islands of safety" where American history offers people they can admire and be interested by and issues they can debate that don't uncomfortably shadow our present conflicts.
And another third, very plainly, do not want American history taught at all, really. They want a series of comforting myths along with confirmations that they themselves are the rightful owners of the American body politic. And they have governors and their Congressional representatives and their state legislators on their side in many cases.
So I don't think there is a clear majority to stand with against the ends. I think there are substantial fractions (who are sometimes majorities in some localities). But these fractions are also very differently aligned with the power of the state. Nobody in the first third really has government fully on their side, even in very blue states. The last third has a lot of political power aligned behind it right now, with dangerous implications for professionals in secondary schools and higher education.
Thanks so much for taking the time to leave such a thoughtful comment. Your point is well taken and I readily admit that my choice of words was sloppy. The wording of any poll, of course, must be acknowledged, but from what I've seen it looks like there is more common ground as opposed to ideologically driven-competing views of American history.
My major concern is how this debate is impacting history educators. As I suggested in the post, they are paying the price for a public debate that has little to do with what is going on in the classroom. I suspect that most teachers are not ideologically driven and that they believe that the narrative introduced to students should cast a wide net, both in terms of people/organizations and events covered and some appreciation of our founding ideals.
Thanks again for reading and commenting. You always bring helpful insights to the discussion.
This is a very thoughtful post, but I think you and Dr. Neem (and lots of other commentators) have overlooked something worth examining. These kinds of articles tend to insinuate that Nikole Hannah-Jones, Ibram X. Kendi and the like are promoting some new and divisive form of American history. As if they invented a brand new historical narrative based on the idea that, in Dr. Neem's words, "this nation was founded on racism and is defined by racism".
I don't think that's correct. The idea that "this nation was founded on racism and is defined by racism" isn't new at all. As uncomfortable as it might be to face, that is an accurate summary of the lived experiences of millions of Black Americans, including nearly all of my ancestors. Of course this applies to a variety of other minority groups too, I'm just focusing on what I know from experience. Roughly every Black American that lived and died before the 1960s lived their entire lives hamstrung by degrading laws and social norms often enforced by the threat of violence. Crucially, most were also explicitly taught that America's promises of freedom and equality were not for them. You can pick up nearly any American history textbook published before 1965 and see that message clearly spelled out. State history textbooks and civics textbooks generally have that perspective too. Textbooks are my specialty, and I'm happy to recommend a few specific titles if you want to read some yourself.
After the civil rights movement, textbooks tried to accommodate a more complex narrative, but in my opinion, they failed. Dr. Neem and Dr. Zimmerman have a different perspective though:
"It was our confidence in ourselves that enabled us Americans to weather earlier battles over the content of the history curriculum. Especially in the 1970s and ’80s, as historians focused on the experiences of previously underrepresented groups, they stressed the integrity of American mythistory, exposing parts of it as closer to myth than history. The story did not fracture; it proved flexible enough to accommodate new perspectives, and even contradictions. Despite intense disagreements over what our schools should teach, “most parties to the dispute reached a rough compromise: each racial and ethnic group could enter the story, provided that none of them questioned the story’s larger themes of freedom, equality, and opportunity,"
I could write a book about just this one paragraph, but I will try to be brief. The terms of that "compromise" are incredibly limiting. It only allows a tiny sliver Black history to enter the larger narrative. Even then, Black Americans were often literally relegated to sidebars on the pages of history textbooks. It also requires that you warp entire time periods. You can't give an accurate account of reconstruction within those limitations, and that continues to be a major problem in history textbooks today.
Even though history textbooks were demonstrably better in the 1970s and 80s, this approach sent Black students a clear message that their experiences and the experiences of their ancestors don't really belong in America's history. The deeper problem was never solved. We are essentially facing the same problem that we faced after the civil rights movement: how can we integrate the lived experiences of all Americans into a coherent narrative? I do not have an answer, but I remain cautiously hopeful.
Thanks for taking the time to leave such a thoughtful comment I think you are right in pointing out that Hannah-Jones/Kendi narrative isn't new. [I actually think there are some important differences between how the two approach this issue, but I will leave it for another time.] As you probably know DuBois pointed out the problem with history textbooks at the end of his study of Reconstruction in 1935
I also agree that our textbooks have been slow in integrating the story of African Americans, though I do think we have made progress. There is so much material that can be utilized online that was never available to previous generations of students.
One of the points that I should have made in the post is that by tearing the house down (to use Neem's language) we run the risk of losing the incredibly rich history of how African Americans and other minorities embraced the Founding creed of the Declaration. I am not ready to suggest that they were wrong.
The challenges are many, but I haven't yet lost faith. Thanks again for reading.
Wow - I didn't expect such a quick response, thank you! I agree with most of what you are saying. I too want to preserve the history of Black Americans that embraced a literal interpretation of the ideas in the Declaration, even if many of those that signed the document did not. However, I am also very keen to preserve the history of Black Americans that rejected them or were indifferent to them. All of those perspectives are part of the American story and we need to discuss, understand and empathize with all of them.
As Bob Seger said: What to leave in, what to leave out.
It’s a challenge every historian faces when trying to tell a story. Every eye witness has a different perspective and we often can’t know what participants were thinking at the time. Participants writing or talking later almost always put a spin on their tale, already deciding what to leave in and what to leave out. And every history worth reading has to have a theme, I believe. Just a data dump of facts, often conflicting, is too hard to read and ultimately not enlightening. It takes much research and self-awareness of bias to write a good history. Kudos to those who succeed, although often not everyone agrees on who succeeded.
Very thoughtful post Kevin. The comment about the possible distortion of American history given how one side chooses to interpret facts reminds me of Albert J. Beveridge. When writing his biographies of John Marshall and later Abraham Lincoln, Beveridge insisted that he would only let the facts speak for themselves and would not relate any bias. Eating dinner with Charles Beard one evening, Beard laughed at Beveridge and said the very act of choosing which facts to relate and how to place them in a narrative showed as much bias as anything could. Beveridge never accepted Beard's statement, but it still obviously rings true today.
It seems as long as people are involved, bias will be an issue.
I think that Johann dismisses the Post-American interpretation a bit too readily as just another flawed perception. It’s real enough among younger audiences that are encountering it as lived experience, not just as another example of cherry-picked interpretation. I’d go so far, given our research with Disney/Nat Geo, to say that it’s absolutely the dominant strain among Americans below 18. And they are bringing it into classrooms because they are consuming it more broadly, well outside of anything even close to the academy. But they don’t show up in polls. So I don’t think there is a shared narrative. That’s too exclusive an understanding of audiences, in my view. From where I sit, there is a dominant narrative held by older audiences and a dominant one held by younger ones, and a mash-up in the middle that skews on either end. So the more interesting thing, to me, is about understanding what is a trend, not just a competing interpretation. For the younger folks, even “Hamilton” is problematic, regardless of who wears the funny clothes on stage.
Isn't it as much a "lived experience" as history was for the generation that came of age in the 1950s during the Cold War? I agree with you that we need to appreciate the generational divide and that this younger generation is consuming history from a much deeper well than their parents and grandparents. Their understanding of history is certainly much more inclusive and more open to discussing the hard questions of the past related to race, etc., but what does the bigger picture look like? Is it all just disparate stories with no interconnecting themes? I honestly don't know.
Always a smart take. We can talk with some authority about coherent audiences, which have markedly different appreciations of American history. The younger the audience, the more “post-American” the perception, partly because there is no collective history to them. There is a dominant tradition — which looks nothing like them — and what they see as the results of the history playing out in front of them. That’s actually the history that’s on the ground, well away from classrooms, especially at the university level. What’s striking is that conservatives think that the universities are fostering that perspective, when it’s really established long before today’s students are getting there (has anyone watched PBS Kids lately?). What younger (below 18) want is a history that sees them. A history populated only by elite white men and their stories about the attainment and maintenance of power looks an awful lot like a history entirely about that power. That might be “post-American” but I think that’s what’s now and what’s next in American demographics and I’m happy to engage those audiences on those terms.
Hi Taylor,
Thanks so much for this comment. You make so many good points and I completely agree that students expect a history that reflects how they now view the world. Even in the more conservative schools where I have taught, students are no longer satisfied with a narrative that is dominated by dead elite white men. We can and should continue to expand the narrative as a means to recognize a more diverse populace, but also because of the important questions about our collective past that it raises.
That’s a discussion very much worth having — what is “collective” or “shared” about our history at this point?
Right. I think that was one of Neem's main points in his essay. We do have the polls that he cites as well as others, which suggest that something of a shared narrative still exists. What the future holds, however, is anyone's guess.
Something non-educators seem to ignore is that history is taught over all the grades, K-12. It is built, but by bit, over the years so that the upper grade students already have some “hooks to hang this information on,” as I would tell my students. So it’s not only the texts, but all of the teachers who are being attacked, as you pointed out. One of the most recent, now publicly exposed, has come from Dr. Larry Arnn of Hillsdale College, who has contracted here in Florida to start charter schools (the modern evil which takes public money to fund private, segregation academies) and will be doing the same in Tennessee. Arnn spoke at a reception for Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R): “Here’s a key thing we are going to try to do. We’re going to try to demonstrate that you don’t have to be an expert to educate a child. Because basically anybody can do it.” “The teachers are trained in the dumbest part of the dumbest colleges in the country.”
https://wapo.st/3yxEw3H
Friends, please make sure to register to vote, and then vote in every election you’re eligible for, from dog-catcher on up. Because it appears to me, a retired educator, that *1984* *Fahrenheit 451* and *The Handmaid’s Tale* are being used as political manuals.
Hi Suzanne,
It's such an important point that you are making re: how history is taught throughout the k-12 curriculum. Educators need to think of the work they are doing at their specific grade level as fitting into a much larger puzzle.
The inroads that Hillsdale College has made in states like Florida and Tennessee is horrifying.
I'll be interested to hear what the teachers say to you. Do report back - and have a great trip.
I don't see, for example, the Texas legislature forbidding the discussion of race (including the Emancipation Declaration and the I Have a Dream speech) in classrooms as the equivalent of the viewpoint that white supremacy (and patriarchy, come to that) are central to American history and institutions. I don't believe you do, either, but this post comes off that way just a bit. The primary difference is that those on the right - can one call them a fringe if they are making laws in numerous states? - are forcing their views on teachers and students, and the fringe on the left is merely expressing their views. I haven't seen Kendi or Hannah Jones arguing for anything other than the expansion of history, so who exactly is advocating trashing it altogether?
We had a nice exchange about Ta-Nehisi Coates a few days ago - let's keep in mind that, as a student, he saw no connection between the story of the Civil War he had been told and the story of African Americans. He, and Kendi and Hannah Jones are filling that gap in my eyes, just as feminist historians have added women to the main narrative. When I was a child, American history was not only white but male.
Absolutely. I've made my views crystal clear about Republican efforts to censor the teaching of American history. There is nothing equivalent on the other side. My concerns about the left is primarily with interpretation and an increasing commitment to a reductionist understanding of American history.
I've learned a lot over the years from Coates, Kendi, and Hannah-Jones. I've also learned from countless other Black historians and intellectuals like Annette Gordon-Reed and Danielle Allen. That's just scratching the surface. We need to continue to fill the gaps in and to push for a more honest accounting of the American past.
The question that Neem poses and one that I am increasingly concerned about is whether we can do this without 'pulling the house down.'
you're already doing, along with the others you name, and the house is still standing.
At this point, we have to really think hard every time we say "a majority of Americans want" about any issue, because this is usually a prelude to claiming that one stands with the majority against two extremes--which is in turn a kind of positioning that harkens back to the above-the-fray self-anointment of a lot of white liberals in the 1960s and 1970s (Schlesinger et al). A majority of Americans may say that they want a true, critical, self-examining history taught in schools, but a lot depends on how any poll asks that and what any person polled thinks is meant by that. I suspect that when you get down to the particulars, about a third of Americans want the kind of history which pulls no punches about racism, conquest of indigenous people, gendered violence, etc.--that they want a really sustained engagement with the hard parts of American history. Not the caricatured version of this that some conservatives hold out--these folks still want the Smoot-Hawley Act and Marbury v. Madison and so on taught, but they also want that nothing gets taught without talking about race, class, inequality, violence, and so on. Which I think is perfectly fair--if someone can come up with a major topic or event in American history where any such dimension is an unfair intrusion, I'd be curious to hear it.
I think another third wants American history as a kind of exquisitely calibrated act of "balance": Ibrahim Kendi one day, Gordon S. Wood the next; American history taught as it was thirty years ago one day; American history taught in a more contemporaneous style the next. Often precisely because those parents looking in on the high school curriculum see themselves as people who judiciously stand in the middle, but also because they want their kids (and themselves by extension) to have "islands of safety" where American history offers people they can admire and be interested by and issues they can debate that don't uncomfortably shadow our present conflicts.
And another third, very plainly, do not want American history taught at all, really. They want a series of comforting myths along with confirmations that they themselves are the rightful owners of the American body politic. And they have governors and their Congressional representatives and their state legislators on their side in many cases.
So I don't think there is a clear majority to stand with against the ends. I think there are substantial fractions (who are sometimes majorities in some localities). But these fractions are also very differently aligned with the power of the state. Nobody in the first third really has government fully on their side, even in very blue states. The last third has a lot of political power aligned behind it right now, with dangerous implications for professionals in secondary schools and higher education.
Thanks so much for taking the time to leave such a thoughtful comment. Your point is well taken and I readily admit that my choice of words was sloppy. The wording of any poll, of course, must be acknowledged, but from what I've seen it looks like there is more common ground as opposed to ideologically driven-competing views of American history.
My major concern is how this debate is impacting history educators. As I suggested in the post, they are paying the price for a public debate that has little to do with what is going on in the classroom. I suspect that most teachers are not ideologically driven and that they believe that the narrative introduced to students should cast a wide net, both in terms of people/organizations and events covered and some appreciation of our founding ideals.
Thanks again for reading and commenting. You always bring helpful insights to the discussion.
This is a very thoughtful post, but I think you and Dr. Neem (and lots of other commentators) have overlooked something worth examining. These kinds of articles tend to insinuate that Nikole Hannah-Jones, Ibram X. Kendi and the like are promoting some new and divisive form of American history. As if they invented a brand new historical narrative based on the idea that, in Dr. Neem's words, "this nation was founded on racism and is defined by racism".
I don't think that's correct. The idea that "this nation was founded on racism and is defined by racism" isn't new at all. As uncomfortable as it might be to face, that is an accurate summary of the lived experiences of millions of Black Americans, including nearly all of my ancestors. Of course this applies to a variety of other minority groups too, I'm just focusing on what I know from experience. Roughly every Black American that lived and died before the 1960s lived their entire lives hamstrung by degrading laws and social norms often enforced by the threat of violence. Crucially, most were also explicitly taught that America's promises of freedom and equality were not for them. You can pick up nearly any American history textbook published before 1965 and see that message clearly spelled out. State history textbooks and civics textbooks generally have that perspective too. Textbooks are my specialty, and I'm happy to recommend a few specific titles if you want to read some yourself.
After the civil rights movement, textbooks tried to accommodate a more complex narrative, but in my opinion, they failed. Dr. Neem and Dr. Zimmerman have a different perspective though:
"It was our confidence in ourselves that enabled us Americans to weather earlier battles over the content of the history curriculum. Especially in the 1970s and ’80s, as historians focused on the experiences of previously underrepresented groups, they stressed the integrity of American mythistory, exposing parts of it as closer to myth than history. The story did not fracture; it proved flexible enough to accommodate new perspectives, and even contradictions. Despite intense disagreements over what our schools should teach, “most parties to the dispute reached a rough compromise: each racial and ethnic group could enter the story, provided that none of them questioned the story’s larger themes of freedom, equality, and opportunity,"
I could write a book about just this one paragraph, but I will try to be brief. The terms of that "compromise" are incredibly limiting. It only allows a tiny sliver Black history to enter the larger narrative. Even then, Black Americans were often literally relegated to sidebars on the pages of history textbooks. It also requires that you warp entire time periods. You can't give an accurate account of reconstruction within those limitations, and that continues to be a major problem in history textbooks today.
Even though history textbooks were demonstrably better in the 1970s and 80s, this approach sent Black students a clear message that their experiences and the experiences of their ancestors don't really belong in America's history. The deeper problem was never solved. We are essentially facing the same problem that we faced after the civil rights movement: how can we integrate the lived experiences of all Americans into a coherent narrative? I do not have an answer, but I remain cautiously hopeful.
Thanks for taking the time to leave such a thoughtful comment I think you are right in pointing out that Hannah-Jones/Kendi narrative isn't new. [I actually think there are some important differences between how the two approach this issue, but I will leave it for another time.] As you probably know DuBois pointed out the problem with history textbooks at the end of his study of Reconstruction in 1935
I also agree that our textbooks have been slow in integrating the story of African Americans, though I do think we have made progress. There is so much material that can be utilized online that was never available to previous generations of students.
One of the points that I should have made in the post is that by tearing the house down (to use Neem's language) we run the risk of losing the incredibly rich history of how African Americans and other minorities embraced the Founding creed of the Declaration. I am not ready to suggest that they were wrong.
The challenges are many, but I haven't yet lost faith. Thanks again for reading.
Wow - I didn't expect such a quick response, thank you! I agree with most of what you are saying. I too want to preserve the history of Black Americans that embraced a literal interpretation of the ideas in the Declaration, even if many of those that signed the document did not. However, I am also very keen to preserve the history of Black Americans that rejected them or were indifferent to them. All of those perspectives are part of the American story and we need to discuss, understand and empathize with all of them.
I completely agree.
As Bob Seger said: What to leave in, what to leave out.
It’s a challenge every historian faces when trying to tell a story. Every eye witness has a different perspective and we often can’t know what participants were thinking at the time. Participants writing or talking later almost always put a spin on their tale, already deciding what to leave in and what to leave out. And every history worth reading has to have a theme, I believe. Just a data dump of facts, often conflicting, is too hard to read and ultimately not enlightening. It takes much research and self-awareness of bias to write a good history. Kudos to those who succeed, although often not everyone agrees on who succeeded.
Great post, definitely gave me pause to consider my current perspective.
Glad to hear it, Ken.
Very thoughtful post Kevin. The comment about the possible distortion of American history given how one side chooses to interpret facts reminds me of Albert J. Beveridge. When writing his biographies of John Marshall and later Abraham Lincoln, Beveridge insisted that he would only let the facts speak for themselves and would not relate any bias. Eating dinner with Charles Beard one evening, Beard laughed at Beveridge and said the very act of choosing which facts to relate and how to place them in a narrative showed as much bias as anything could. Beveridge never accepted Beard's statement, but it still obviously rings true today.
It seems as long as people are involved, bias will be an issue.
Best
Rob