Jazz ShawPosted at 1:14 pm on January 18, 2021
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
What the heck is going on at the Texas State Historical Association these days? I understand that this is probably a story that sounds like it’s coming from deep in the weeds, at least if you’re not from Texas, but it’s certainly curious. The “chief historian” of the TSHA recently wrote an opinion piece for USA Today in which he made some rather outrageous (and dubious) claims about the Battle of the Alamo. Our colleague Bryan Preston at PJ Media does a deep dive into the claims made by Walter Buenger, pointing out why his revisionist history is both steeped in wokeness and historically inaccurate. Buenger describes the battle as “insignificant” in historic and tactical terms, amounting to little more than an excuse to promote racism and extoll the virtues of “whiteness.” Yeah…
AP Feed
This past week, Texas State Historical Association chief historian Walter Buenger made two controversial assertions regarding the Alamo in a story published by
Although the battle has become a symbol of patriotism and freedom for many Texans and Americans, like the Confederate monuments erected after the Civil War, the myth of the Alamo has been used to “commemorate whiteness,” according to Walter L Buenger, Texas State Historical Association chair.
The battle itself was relatively insignificant tactically speaking, but it gained recognition decades later in the 1890s as backlash to African Americans gaining more political power and Mexican immigration increasing, Buenger said. In 1915, “Birth of a Nation” director D.W. Griffith produced “Martyrs of the Alamo,” which solidified the myth further by pitting white virtuous Texans against racist caricatures of Mexicans on screen.