Chapter 5, Summary and Analysis

"'Gone with the Wind': The Invisibility of Racism in American History Textbooks", develops the pervasive theme of how white Americans have dominated black Americans throughout history. Race tensions have existed since Spaniards in 1526 bring the first black slaves to the Pee Dee River in present-day South Carolina. There they rise violently and slip off to live among the Natives, while the Spaniards return to Haiti. Black/white relations doom one political party (the Whigs) and inspire the formation of another (the Republicans). They cause the Democrats for a century to label itself the "white man's party". They motivate Congress' first override of a presidential veto (the 1866 Civil Rights Act) and inspire the Senate's longest filibuster (the 1964 Civil Rights Act). They cause the South to move from solidly Democratic to Republican in 1964-72. In 1988, George Bush runs a commercial about Willie Horton...