Free Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen

“themselves” in American
     history. So do we all.
    As with the Norse, including the Afro-Phoenicians gives a more complete and complex
     picture of the past, showing that navigation and exploration did Rock heads nine feet tall face the ocean in southeastern Mexico. Archaeologists call them
     Olmec heads after their name for the Indians who carved them. According to an
     archaeologist who helped uncover them, the faces are “amazingly Negroid.” Today some
     archaeologists believe that the mouth lines resemble jaguar-like expressions Mayan
     children still make. Others think the statues are of “fat babies” or Indian kings or
     resemble sculptures in Southeast Asia.
    not begin with Europe in the 1400s. Like the Norse, the Afro-Phoenicians illustrate
     human possibility, in this case black possibility, or, more accurately, the prowess of a
     multiracial society. Unlike the Norse, the Africans and Phoenicians seem to have made a
     permanent impact on the Americas. The huge stone statues in Mexico imply as much. It took
     enormous effort to quarry these basalt blocks, each weighing ten to forty tons, move them
     from quarries seventy-five miles away, and sculpt them into heads six to ten feet tall.
     Wherever they were from, the human models for these heads were important people, people to
     be worshiped or obeyed or at least remembered." However, archaeologists have not agreed
     that they were Afro-Phoenicians, so including the story opens a window through which
     students can view an ongoing controversy.
    Of the twelve textbooks I surveyed, only two even mention the possibility of African or
     Phoenician exploration. The American Adventure simply poses two questions: “What similarities are there between the great monuments of
     the Maya and those of ancient Egypt?” and “Might windblown sailors from Asia, Europe,
     Africa, or the South Pacific have mingled with the earlier inhabitants of the New World?”
     The textbook supplies no relevant information and even claims, “You should be able to deal
     with these questions without doing research.” Nonsense. Most classrooms will simply ignore
     the questions.32 The United StatesA History ofthe Republic mentions pre-Columbian expeditions only to assure us that we need not concern ourselves
     with them: “None of these Europeans, Africans, or Asians left lasting traces of their
     presence in the Americas, nor did they develop any lasting relationships with the first
     Americans.” Unsatisfactory as these fragments are, they are the entire treatment of the
     issue in all twelve textbooks.
    American history textbooks promote the belief that most important developments in world
     history are traceable to Europe. To grant too much human potential to pre-Columbian
     Africans might jar European American sensibilities. As Samuel Marble put it, “The
     possibility of African discovery of America has never been a tempting one for American
     historians.” Teachers and curricula that present African history and African Americans in a positive
     light are often condemned for being Afrocentric. White historians insist that the case
     for the AfroPhoenicians has not been proven; we must not distort history to improve
     black children's self-image, they say. They are right that the case hasn't been proven,
     but textbooks should include the Afro-Phoenicians as a possibility, a controversy.
    Standard history textbooks and courses discriminate against students who have been
     educated by rap songs or by von Sertima. Imagine an eleventhgrade classroom in American
     history in early fall. The text is Life and Liberty; students are reading Chapter Two, “Exploration and Colonization,” What happens when an
     African American girl shoots up her hand to challenge the statement “Not until 1497-1499
     did the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama sail around Africa”? From rap songs the girl has
     learned that Afro-Phoenicians beat Da Gama by more