JE#2

What we learn from De Leon in Greasers is vastly different from what I learned in elementary, middle, and high school. What I associated with the phrase, or rather the imperative, "Remember the Alamo!" was the "heroic" figure of Davy Crockett in his coonskin cap, protecting our nation, willing to die for it. As a young "tomboy," I used to steal my older brother's coonskin cap and play "cowboys and Indians" with my neighborhood friends. We knew the words to the Davy Crockett song -- he was "King of the Wild Frontier!" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txcRQedoEyY)

Though a children's game like "cowboys and Indians" may seem relatively harmless, or "just for fun," it serves as an example of how learning history only from the perspective of the conquerors works to normalize, even in children, the racist Anglo attitudes and beliefs towards other races that De Leon displays in his book. This is systematic historical amnesia: instilling via public education in all niñas/os estadounidenses what O'Sullivan wrote of the U.S. in 1839: "It is our unparalleled glory that we have no reminiscences of battle fields, but in defence of humanity, of the oppressed of all nations, of the rights of conscience, the rights of personal enfranchisement." We learn about the rationalizations Anglos used for the way they viewed and treated Mexicanos in Greasers; in school, that very belief system is reinforced, and for many remains unexamined and unquestioned. These beliefs are recycled and reused today, in new, less overt ways in debates over immigration reform. 

I think for me, growing up, historical amnesia in a way had to do with religion. I was raised in a very Presbyterian, very conservative household. The history of the church and its specific systematically violent practices were not discussed in Sunday School or at home. My historical amnesia in this sense was at an extreme level. It wasn't until I moved away from my family that I was able to break away from what was, in my community, the dominant belief system.