New US History Textbook Raises Anti-Trump Red Flags About ‘Not-Very-Hidden Racism’ of His Voters
Talia Wise, Christian Broadcasting Network, April 18, 2019
A new Advanced Placement American history textbook is raising red flags because of its anti-Trump language and its suggestion that Trump supporters are racist.
By the People: A History of the United States is the newest edition of a Pearson Education history book that could be made available to high school students if school districts opt to use it.
The book has not yet been distributed to students but has been introduced to teachers to see if they would want to use it as part of their curriculum in the next couple of years.
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In the book’s final section, titled “The Angry Election of 2016,” the author, New York University Prof. James W. Fraser, compares Trump and Hillary Clinton supporters.
“Clinton’s supporters feared that the election had been determined by people who were afraid of a rapidly developing ethnic diversity of the country,” it reads. “They also worried about the mental instability of the president-elect and the anger that he and his supporters brought to the nation.”
“Most thought that Trump was too extreme a candidate to win the nomination, but his extremism, his anti-establishment rhetoric, and, some said, his not-very-hidden racism connected with a significant number of primary voters,” it continues.
The book goes on to describe the demographic of those voters.
“Trump’s supporters saw the vote as a victory for people who, like themselves, had been forgotten in a fast-changing America – a mostly older, often rural or suburban, an overwhelmingly white group,” the sample copy reads.
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The ordained minister said the purpose of the book was to focus on the lives of everyday Americans from differing “communities, times, and places,” not to divide.
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“AP History ‘By the People’ was developed by an expert author and underwent rigorous peer review to ensure academic integrity,” he wrote in a statement. “This work is designed to convey college-level information to high school students and meet specific Advanced Placement standards.”
He said the purpose of the text is to promote critical thinking for students.
“U.S. history and government are important topics for students that can evoke passionate responses as they explore difficult and often controversial issues,” he wrote in a statement.
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It’s up to individual school districts to determine if they want to adopt the textbook into their high school curriculum.
