Asked by an African-American board member about his objection to the inclusion of Thurgood Marshall in the textbook standards -- Rev. Marshall called the jurist not "a strong enough example" -- Rev. Marshall responded: "He's known primarily for that one very important Supreme Court decision."
Which does nothing more than prove that Peter Marshall is an ignorant boob.
The gist of the whole meeting was quite simple, really. Peter Marshall doesn't like the fact that people of a dusky hue are included in a recounting of American history. Thurgood Marshall? Pah! Cesar Chavez? A non-entity. I wonder if Marshall, like a writer to either Dear Abby or Ann Landers years ago, objected to a discussion of the Tuskeegee Airmen (when a television movie that dramatized their struggle and various triumphs was aired, a writer to one of the twins said that, as a boy he followed the Second World War on the radio, and he has no memory of any stories about an Africa-American flying unit; he wondered, in fact, if it had been made up in a fit of political correctness).
It's quite simple really. Folks don't like history. It's ugly, morally equivocal, and cumbersome. Even when attempting to construct a narrative about it, it becomes necessary to point out that even the more important persons in our past had certain, how can I put this, less-than-attractive qualities and moments. If our children are going to learn about America, it might be far more nice to paint with broad brush, tell a story full of villains and the occasional hero riding out of the night to save our collective (white) skins, and ignore a significant portion of the population because for much of our history they were, officially, non-entities (one could make a similar case, were one a historian of the west coast, for the invisibility of the American Asian population, something Ronald Takaki has gone a long way to correct).
While the Rev. Marshall certainly has a right to his asinine opinion, what he does not have is the right to (ahem) white-wash the reality of our national history because all those folks whose skin-color doesn't match his did stuff that make him feel less than heroic.
