Washington's Teeth and the #BlackHistoryMonthChallenge
Day 9: Why We Need to Stop Lying to Children About the Past
I can’t speak for other countries in the world, but the one thing that frustrates me the most about Black History in the USA and Canada is that it’s almost always a subject that you have to teach yourself.
I am not saying that there are no prestigious universities in Canada or the USA that have an African Diaspora Studies Department. We absolutely have lots of Black Studies in American and Canadian universities. The University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Brown, Duke, Rutgers, Northwestern, and UCLA Berkeley all offer programs in the subject, just to name a few top schools. And I’m sure if you have the chance, you’ll work hard and earn a fine education in any of those schools.
The problem is that outside of a narrow discipline being taught at the university level, Black History tends to be erased, overwritten or avoided in the educational system. This is true not only in textbooks for K-12 history classes, but even in other university disciplines. Just as an example, the fields of Anthropology, Law, and Medicine all have blood on their hands where Black people are concerned. Anyone in those fields needs to be aware of the facts and willing to face them to avoid repeating past mistakes—if you avoid talking about the awkward past, you’re not getting a real education.
This essay is specifically a complaint about the classroom curriculum and textbooks that are aimed at public school children, for three simple reasons.
1. Not every fulfilling and meaningful job requires a college education, nor should it. Many people do not need or want to go to college when they graduate high school, and would rather start a family, a business or a career. Canada leads the G7 in the percentage of the general population who are college graduates, but even here 42% of the country doesn’t go to college, and the overall percentage in the USA is much higher, around 62%.
In practical terms, this means that mandatory K-12 education is the only dedicated period of time that a lot of people will ever have to focus on learning. For that reason alone, the information we offer public school children should be as accurate, useful, and complete as we can make it, so that time is well spent.
2. I believe it is wrong to lie to children about any subject—and a lie of omission is still a lie. It is doubly wrong to lie to kids when their parents and society are counting on you to educate them. Inaccurate and/or incomplete information about Black History in Canadian and American textbooks is a violation of the public trust, and always has been. Full stop.
3. As I hope this little series of essays has already made clear, Black History is also our history. 10-13% of the population of North America is Black, and Black people deserve an accurate picture of their own past…but teaching Black History is not something we should do solely for their sake. I would argue that we all need to know Black History, because without it we cannot properly understand anything that has happened in the western world for the last 400-odd years, but especially in the last 150.
Speaking just for myself: Black History is entwined with Jewish-American History in many ways. It’s also connected to Labor History, and the history of every town or city where I’ve lived in Canada or the USA. So if I want to have any hope of knowing who I am, or what the hell is going on around me, I need this information. And I should not have to take out a student loan to get it. At least some basic information should have been offered freely.
When I attended K-12 in the USA, the history textbooks were abysmal. I come from a generation of American school children who were taught quite earnestly and sincerely, by teachers who genuinely did not seem to know any better themselves, that George Washington once chopped down a cherry tree…and that he had wooden teeth.
Both of those stories are false. The Cherry Tree Myth was the invention of Washington’s first biographer, a money-grubbing weasel named Mason Locke Weems. Washington died in 1799, and Weems was the exact kind of vulture who was ready to publish a popular biography of him by 1800. In his book, he larded a scanty handful of facts about Washington’s life and career with a generous helping of lies aimed at the moral improvement of America’s children. The Cherry Tree myth was one of those lies that ended up sticking.
The same lie has been repeated for over 200 years since, in more than one best-selling cash cow of a biography of the first President, so it’s no wonder that people still believed it in the 1970’s and 1980’s—it wouldn’t surprise me if some people still believe it today. But the truth is that we have very little information about Washington’s relationship to his father, nor do we know what his father’s views on honesty or impromptu tree surgery might have been.
The myth of the wooden teeth is equally common, but quite a bit more pernicious—particularly as it intersects with Black History. Unlike the Cherry Tree Myth, the story about Washington’s teeth does have a kernel of truth to it—Washington did have very serious problems with his teeth, and he did have to wear progressively larger sets of dentures for many years. But Washington was also an incredibly rich man, and his dental appliances were never carved from wood. He owned several sets of false teeth over his lifetime, most them made from costly materials like gold, lead, ivory…and of course, human teeth.
Washington was a slave owner, like most of the Founding Fathers. In fact, he owned over 300 slaves. And this is where the fake story about wooden teeth takes a darker turn. Because we have documented proof that Washington bought teeth from his own slaves, and gave them to his dentist at a cut rate—presumably to offset the costs of making a set of dentures for some well-paying customer, if not for the President himself. Washington paid six pounds and two shillings for nine human teeth harvested from his slaves (far below the going rate that his dentist was paying impoverished Whites, when they came to him with teeth to sell for quick cash).
The reason I’m bringing this up is that Washington’s teeth is a perfect example of the kind of poison pill that America routinely feeds to its children. You take a tiny nugget of truth, and then you wrap it in a lie that makes it much more appetizing and sympathetic to a general audience. Most importantly, you wrap it in a lie that conceals the historical reality of Black suffering that is associated with far too many historical figures that Americans revere as heroes.
When you tell American children that their first President was once a school boy who told the truth about chopping down a tree, it makes them believe all sorts of things about the honesty of General Washington as an individual. It may also give them some false notions about the honesty of all American Presidents in general.
When you tell them that the first President wore false teeth made of wood, perhaps even from wood that he carved himself, the lie is much darker. You’re telling the kids that the first man to lead the USA wasn’t incredibly rich, because you imply that he wasn’t able to afford dentures that were made from the best materials, technology and skill that money could buy.
You’re also telling them that the most powerful man in the country suffered…without admitting that he made others suffer. Washington’s enormous wealth and power were built on the backs of over 300 enslaved people, African-Americans who lived and died as his property, and who may have been coerced into giving up their teeth so that their “master” could cut a deal with his dentist.
The reality of slave teeth may not be a pretty feel-good story about the first President, but it’s what really happened. In my line of work, telling people what really happened is called “non-fiction”.
In the field of education, they apparently call it “Critical Race Theory”, and it’s currently under attack in every state of the Union except Hawaii, California, Nevada, Vermont and Delaware.
Some people are really determined to lie to children about the past, especially where Black History is concerned. Presumably they want teach kids comforting lies so they can encourage them to blind to ugly realities in the present, as well.
I can’t imagine what the agenda of such people might be, but I’ll never believe it’s anything good. No one who lied to me as a child ever made me stronger or better by doing so. And no one who lied to me as a child ever kept me from getting hurt.
Resources:
George Washington’s Dentures: FAQ
Education Week: Where Critical Race Theory Is Under Attack
New York Review: The Long War on Black Studies by Robin D. G. Kelley