This paper reviews Susan Wyle's Revisiting America: Readings in Race, Culture, and Conflict, a textbook that reexamines U.S. history through the intertwined lenses of race, gender, class, and cultural conflict. The review surveys the book's use of primary and secondary sources—including Salem Witch Trial transcripts and wartime propaganda materials—to challenge accepted historical narratives. It also examines how Wyle addresses systemic racism, Japanese American internment, post-9/11 profiling, and the rhetoric embedded in political speeches, arguing that all history is shaped by bias and benefits from critical analysis.
Susan Wyle's book Revisiting America: Readings in Race, Culture, and Conflict explores the history of America through the lens of political, racial, social, and cultural issues that shape the nation's population. Widely known stories about America's past are revisited, and additional information about cultural conflict is used to reveal a new reality behind the country's history. Wyle's text also discusses the importance of socially constructed terminology and how the conflicts of America's past continue to shape the United States today.
The textbook includes both primary and secondary sources to explore the truth behind American history. Of particular interest are historical documents such as the transcripts from the actual Salem Witch Trials. This period of American history is symbolic of all occasions where religious zealotry and fear overtake the capacity for rational thought and cost people their civil rights. Reading these transcripts today, from the modern perspective in which we know that the events at Salem resulted from the duplicity of young girls and grave miscarriages of justice by the presiding judges, provokes anger and disgust that so many people suffered. Wyle's book asks readers to think critically about what they believe they know about American history. The documents included allow readers to question past interpretations of these papers. Historians have examined these documents and drawn conclusions about what they believe occurred. The act of reading historical documentation directly allows readers to understand history from a modern perspective and to assess whether accepted versions of that history are truly viable.
America's history is one of racism, gender oppression, and class stratification. The United States was founded on lands that once belonged to Native Americans, who were then slaughtered and systematically marginalized as their territory was seized to fuel American expansion into the frontier. The United States was also a heavy importer of enslaved people, and the Southern states in particular exploited slave labor, treating Africans as if they were property—subjecting them to rape, forced breeding, and the forced separation and sale of family members.
These were, of course, not the only instances of racism influencing policy in the United States. At the turn of the twentieth century, the United States enforced laws limiting immigration from various parts of the world, with the intent of ensuring that the majority of immigrants would come from Western European nations. There was also the internment of Japanese American citizens during the Second World War, a policy established and approved by the American government. Whole families were sent to camps and forced to live in horse stables. Their businesses were seized, their property stolen, and no reparations were made after the war ended and the internees were released. Racist ideas remain a part of American history, however much we might wish to deny it. After September 11, 2001, and the attacks on the World Trade Center, Muslims and Americans of Middle Eastern descent were viewed with widespread suspicion. Accusations continue to be levied at airports and police departments that racial profiling—not suspicious activity—drives the detainment and questioning of individuals.
The book also examines the rhetoric of certain speeches and visual media used to convey propaganda during various eras of American history. In the chapter "The Depression and the Two World Wars on the Home Front," Wyle discusses the use of propaganda during the war years. Posters from the era are analyzed to reveal both overt and subliminal messages. During the Second World War in particular, the United States sought to cultivate a unified national attitude toward the war effort both at home and abroad. Part of that unification involved persuading the majority of the population to view the Germans, Japanese, and Italians not only as enemies of the United States, but as enemies of freedom itself. Consequently, many war posters—as well as war cartoons, films, and political speeches—employed language and imagery designed to cement these ideas in the public mind.
This dynamic is equally evident in the other speeches Wyle includes in the text. A political speech is designed to convince listeners that the speaker is honest and that their perspective is the correct one. For example, the speeches of civil rights leaders featured in the chapter "Civil Rights, Protest, and Foreign Wars" were each crafted to persuade the reader that the speaker had a legitimate point and that meaningful change needed to be enacted—not only to advance the speaker's cause, but ostensibly to benefit the listener as well.
"Persuasive language in civil rights era speeches"
"All history reflects bias and requires critical analysis"
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