Eric Metaxas (Right), David Barton (Left)
David Barton hasn’t gone anywhere but D’Souza is currently associated with the claim that progressive historians have kept the racist past of the Democratic party out of our education system. In 2004, Barton publihed a book called Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White in which he emphasized the Democratic failings and the Republican history of civil rights advocacy. However, he fails to account for the shift in the Democratic party during the last 50+ years. Typical of Barton, the book is missing important events such as Barry Goldwater’s failure to support the Civil Rights Act. I critiqued the book in a 2012 post.
Currently, Princeton historian Kevin Kruse is documenting on Twitter the many historians who have found D’Souza’s work to be lacking (over 100 at this writing). I was reminded that D’Souza’s spin on the Democratic party isn’t new with him by this tweet from Bruce Wilson:
As a minor point of interest, I believe the pseudo-historian David Barton was pushing the democratic-party-as-the-true-racist-party thing before D'Souza picked it up.
— There are thousands of Bruce Wilsons (@brucewilson) February 26, 2019
I don’t know how long D’Souza has been promoting the Democratic party is still the racist party line but he sounds a lot like Barton when he does it. Is it possible that D’Souza lifted it from Barton?
D’Souza claims history teachers obscure the fact that Democrats favored slavery and Jim Crow laws. That certainly isn’t true in our local school system and as Kevin Kruse regularly points out, historians teach the facts — all of them. It is D’Souza and Barton who leave out the facts they don’t like.
Kruse’s thread with the line up of historians is here:
A few days ago, someone in my mentions suggested I put together a thread of all the *other* historians who've debunked @DineshDSouza on Twitter.
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) February 26, 2019