American history textbooks help perpetrate the archetype of the blindly
patriotic hard hat by omitting or understating progressive elements in the
working class. Textbooks do not reveal that CIO unions and some working-
class fraternal associations were open to all when many chambers of
commerce and country clubs were still white-only. Few textbooks tell of
organized labor’s role in the civil rights movement, including the 1963 March
on Washington. Nevertheless, many members of my audiences are aware that
educated Americans are likely to be Republicans, hard-liners on defense, and
right-wing extremists. Some members of my audiences know about Goldwater
voters, Muhammad Ali’s induction refusal, Birchers and education, or labor
unions and the war—information that would have helped them fill in the blanks
in Table 1 correctly. Somehow, though, they never think to apply such
knowledge. Most people fill out the table in a daze without ever using what
they know. Their education and their position in society cause them not to
think.^23
Such nonthinking occurs most commonly when society is the subject. “One
of the major duties of an American citizen is to analyze issues and interpret
events intelligently,” Discovering American History exhorts students. Our
textbooks fail miserably at this task. The Vietnam exercise shows how bad the
situation really is. Sociology professors are amazed and depressed at the level
of thinking about society displayed each fall, especially by white upper-
middle-class students in their first-year classes. These students cannot use the
past to illuminate the present and have no inkling of causation in history, so
they cannot think coherently about social life. Extending the terminology of
Jules Henry, we might use “social stupidity” to describe the illogical
intellectual process and conclusions that result.
Social stupidity continues in the twenty-first century. In 2005, for example,
the Pew Research Center found that 62 percent of Republicans agreed with the
statement, “Poor people today have it easy because they can get government
benefits without doing anything in return.”Twenty-seven percent of Democrats
also agreed. Such responses can only come from people who have neither had
a conversation with a poor person nor imagined their economic and social
reality—yet somehow imagine they know enough to hold an opinion. Educated
people are more likely to venture such ill-informed opinions.^24
Education does not have this impact in other areas of study. People who
have taken more mathematics courses are more proficient at math than those