Our National Narrative, Part 1

...and what it gets wrong

“The master narrative is whatever ideological script that is being imposed by the people in authority on everybody else. The master fiction. History. It has a certain point of view.” Toni Morrison, Author. Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize In Literature

I keep returning to our National Narrative. Our origin story. You’d be right to wonder why. I return because it’s at the heart of so much that is happening in our country.

So strong is our narrative that portrays America as the world’s acknowledged land of freedom, and opportunity…a place where everybody regardless of race, color, creed, upbringing, national origin or circumstance has exactly the same opportunities…that we tend to view poverty as a character flaw instead of the financial flaw that it actually is.  

So strongly is our narrative embedded in the marrow of our bones that we get angry at the homeless and the panhandlers. “Why don’t they just get a job…like me?”

It’s why years ago a wealthy surgeon acquaintance wondered - with a bit of anger, “If Black people don’t like the schools their kids attend or the neighborhoods they live in, why don’t they just move somewhere else?” His question motivated me to write the second story I ever wrote and sent me on a road trip to Portland OR.

It's why 10 states turned down free Medicaid provided by the Affordable Care Act leaving millions of people without health care. “Those people don’t need either a handout nor even a hand up. In America all you need is a work ethic.” It’s right there in our founding documents and speeches. It’s in our narrative.

Our narrative is why Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt last week turned down $48 million from the feds to fund a new food program to end childhood hunger in his state. “All any American has to do is work hard and their kids won’t have to go hungry.” But because of that narrative thousands of Oklahoma’s children will go hungry. Oklahoma is one of the most food-insecure states in America, with more than 200,000 Oklahoma children go without food at some point during a year.

Our narrative is why we cut taxes to the wealthy while simultaneously cutting safety nets to the poor. “The wealthy have a good, all-American work ethic. The poor…not so much. Their suffering is their fault.”

A few months ago I wrote about the Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action decision. But a friend of mine was in complete agreement with the court. Her rational? NO ONE had ever had a tougher upbringing than she had. If she could make it here in America, than anybody could make it. Absolutely anybody. In America you don’t need help. You just need to work hard.  It’s right there in our founding narrative. My friend, solidly upper middle class, has never stepped foot into a poor, struggling, inner-city neighborhood. Yet she knew that the only thing those people needed was the grit and work ethic that she had. Afterall, this is America and she’d had that pounded into her for 70 years.

In my seminars I’ve asked hundreds of people two questions that expose our narrative: “Who here was taught that when George Washington was asked by his angry father if it was he who had chopped down the cherry tree, George responded, with ”Father, I cannot tell a lie. It was I.” Almost 100% of the participants who are over the age of 30 or so, were taught that lie^[1] in elementary school.

I then ask the folks who were taught the lie when and how they learned that Washington had owned slaves. Not one person in that group has yet to say they were taught it in school. They learned it somewhere along the way on their own.

That’s part of our American narrative. A country founded and led by White men so great that they were great even as kids. But if all is so great, why do we lie? And why do we shy away from the truth?

And of course there’s the racial aspect of all this. Poor people equals Black people, at least since Ronald Reagan popularized “Welfare queen” and equated food stamps with “That young buck in line in front of you at the grocery store” and since Hillary Clinton equated “Super predators” with young, Black males.

To understand the power of a narrative, we can look to Texas - which at one time was an independent country. The Texas narrative  - it’s “origin story” - is the story of the Alamo. The story, going on for 200 years, has always been that Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett and a bunch of other brave, White, freedom-loving patriots went down to Texas to fight Santa Ana, the Mexican dictator, to free Texas - at the time a territory of Mexico. In the face of overwhelming odds the defenders of liberty chose to stay, fight, and die. Texan colonists were fighting for liberty. They were fighting against oppression. And they chose to give up their lives (or so the narrative erroneously states) at the Alamo so that we could have what has become the modern American state of Texas.

That’s a moving narrative. It describes Texans to the world, to America, and to Texans themselves. The trouble is, it’s not true. Spoiler alert! The stirring battle at the Alamo was about race, White supremacy, and slavery.

In 1821, Mexico became independent from Spain, which opened the door for American colonists to move into Mexico. Many of those colonists were coming from the American South. As they migrated, they brought their slaves with them.

The concept of slavery was appalling to Mexicans. So Mexico outlawed slavery in their territory of Texas. But the government waffled on enforcement and continually allowed Texans another year of slavery. Every Mexican government would come in and say, “This time we’re really going to outlaw slavery.” The Texans would reply that if they did so, everybody was going to leave. So the Mexicans would relent and give them another year or two so that the Texans would not go home taking their money with them since, by then, they and their plantations were key to the Texas economy.

When you look at the causes of the Texas Revolt, slavery was paramount. It was the one thing that the Mexican government was constantly trying to take away from the Texans. For the Texans, this was not about morals, or ethics, or liberty. It was about economics. Slavery was at the heart of the Texas cotton economy.

So the narrative taught in Texas schools — that Texans were fighting to liberate Texas - leaves out the reality that they were fighting to enslave human beings. For over 200 years the false Alamo narrative has defined Texas and how Texans feel about themselves and their state.

The myth of the Alamo lies at the beating heart of the Texas creation narrative and, thus, is central to Texans’ view of themselves and the entire concept of what Texans call “Texas Exceptionalism”…the idea, dearly held by generations of Texans, that Texas is somehow just a cut above the Delawares and North Dakotas of the world. The key to Anglo rule in Texas has always been the credibility of the Texas creation myth: That Anglos were the ones who came to Texas, created something out of nothing, fought the Mexicans to gain their independence and bring liberty to the state.

Photo by David R. Tribble

Texas and America both have incredibly strong and successful narratives. The fact that Texas has a state government that today and as far back as 1898, has aggressively intervened in education and in every way possible to preserve this legend and make sure that it’s the official history and that everybody’s going to get it spoon-fed in seventh grade is a strong indication that all identity and  culture is a product—to some extent—of these successful “Master” narratives.

What I’m asking you to understand is first, as is so easily exposed with the  Alamo myth, is that our narratives hold a superpower.

And second, I ask you to understand that the American narrative, as the land of equal opportunity and liberty and justice for all - a society of merit without regard to race, color, creed, or national origin - is equally as powerful to Americans as the Alamo myth is to Texas Anglos.

Tomorrow, Part 2

Sources:

https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2021/08/the-alamo-battle-over-texas-history/619664/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/07/12/federal-funding-children-food-program-rejected/

https://researchoutreach.org/articles/master-counter-narratives-same-facts-different-stories/

https://www.macfound.org/press/perspectives/challenging-master-narrative

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/07/12/federal-funding-children-food-program-rejected/

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/forget-the-alamo-excerpt-three-texans-bust-myths

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^[1] I’m comfortable calling it a lie because the National Park Service that manages Washington’s place of birth in Northern VA calls it a lie.