First Zinn Post

First Zinn Post
“But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then”(Zinn, p.7).
What I am getting from Zinn is that he is trying to tell us to not look at history from one point of view, but from every point of view. For example when Columbus landed at the Bahama islands, America has looked back on it as the perspective or Columbus, where we are finding new land where we can start a new country where everyone has a chance. What we don’t look at or avoid looking at is from the Arawaks and other Indian tribes perspective. If we would we would see that our freedom came with a price, these peoples went through great suffering. They were beaten, enslaved, fled there own land, and there villages destroyed. All of this was because they weren’t advanced enough to put a fight, too stubborn to surrender, and all they really wanted was to be friends. We can also look at the history through the perspective of the land and animals. The land was exploited and given a certain value. Which may be a good or bad thing because if it wouldn’t have happened, we might not be here. So what I have acquired from this reading is when I look back on history or am reading a history book look not just at their perspective, but look at it from as many perspectives as I can think of, then you can really learn from the history of our people.