certainty with which they declaim on events in the zamani. As well, textbooks
are tertiary sources, supposed to be based on secondary sources, and these
books and articles have mostly not yet been written about the very recent past.
As usually thought about, historical perspective does implicitly justify
neglecting the sasha. Historians tell us how we are too close to recent events
to be able to step back and view them in context. As new material becomes
available in archives, they claim, or as the consequences of actions become
clearer over time, we can reach more “objective” assessments. The passage of
time does not in itself provide perspective, however. Information is lost as
well as gained over time. Therefore, the claim of inadequate historical
perspective cannot excuse ignoring the sasha.
At this point we might usefully recall three changes in perspective noted in
earlier chapters. Woodrow Wilson enjoys a dramatically more positive ranking
now than he did in 1920. His elevated reputation did not derive from the
discovery of fresh information on his administration but from the ideological
needs of the late 1940s and early 1950s. In those years white historians would
hardly fault Wilson for segregating the federal government, because no
consensus held that racial segregation was wrong. The foremost public issue of
that postwar era was not race relations but the containment of communism.
During the Cold War our government operated as it did under Wilson, with
semi-declared wars, executive deception of Congress, and suppression of civil
liberties in the name of anticommunism. Wilson’s policies, controversial and
unpopular in 1920, had become ordinary by the 1950s. Statesmen and
historians of the 1950s rejected and even trivialized isolationism. Interested in
pushing the United Nations, then thoroughly under U.S. influence, they
appreciated Wilson’s efforts on behalf of the League of Nations. Historian
Gordon Levin Jr. put it neatly: “Ultimately, in the post-World War II period,
Wilsonian values would have their complete triumph in the bipartisan Cold
War consensus.”^8 Thus, Wilson’s improved evaluation in today’s textbooks
can be attributed largely to the fact that the ideological needs of the 1950s,
when Wilson was in the zamani, were different from those of the 1920s, when
he was passing into the sasha.
Changing times can also change our view of the more distant past.
Bartolomé de Las Casas and other writers and priests noted the Spaniards’
mistreatment and enslavement of the Caribbean Indians while Columbus was
still in the sasha. Later, however, Columbus was lionized as a daring man of